Ten Puissant Relics for Knave and Other Games

These are written for Knave, intended to fill the niche of at-will magic abilities that 5e players (and tbh, most fantasy readers unfamiliar with the peculiarities of Vancian magic) often expect.

As such, the ones that deal damage are roughly balanced against that system's existing ranged weapons, often taking an extra item slot to account for non-combat utility, having worse quality, or having restrictions on their use.

My goals were:

• call out a specific noncombat usage, without ruling out other creative possibilities. e.g. the Electromagnetic Gauntlet attracts ferrous objects, but could potentially also be short-circuited to start a fire (probably at the cost of immediate loss of quality)
• try to write items that say something about the setting and the wielder’s relationship to it. A Carabid Ring is granted to every graduate of the arcane college of Entomon — are you a graduate or did you just shank one in an alley?
• provide easily extractable mechanics information, but also write item descriptions using natural language, and as system-neutral as possible.
• text I can release (once it’s fully-baked) under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0), i.e. not based on the text of any 5e cantrips or anything else OGL.

Let me know if you find these useful, either in your Knave games or adapted to the game of your choice.

1. TABLET OF LAW

2 slots, 1 hand, quality ❑❑❑❑
Commune with Deity: 1 turn to cast, learn local deity’s commandment (tablet holds up to 5).
Speak Commandment: Int vs Cha, force creature to obey commandment for L turns.

This clay tablet still burns cold with the pale flame of its divine firing. Cuneiform marks corresponding to no mortal tongue swim across its surface, reflecting the laws of powerful local gods. If a city worships Jupiter above all others, the tablet will reflect this, but as one nears the city gates, the tablet may show Janus’s will instead.

The tablet’s bearer can spend 10 minutes to commune with the tablet and “fix” one of the local deity’s laws in an intelligible form. A deity might have multiple teachings, but the tablet can hold at most five. Fixing an additional law requires the tablet to “forget” a previous one.
 
The bearer can utter any of the tablet’s fixed laws to attempt to compel a creature to obey it for a short time.

2. SIX COWRIE SHELLS

1 slot, 1 hand, quality ❑❑❑❑❑❑ (each loss indicates a destroyed shell)
Illusory Monster: conjures random illusion, which disappears if struck. Caster can use action to direct illusion to move 40 ft and/or make a melee attack (caster’s Int vs Cha, d6 damage).

Six cowrie shells plundered from an enormous board game in some forgotten king’s tomb. When thrown, will conjure an illusory monster — the more shells that land aperture-up, the more dangerous-appearing the illusion will be. The illusion fools sight and hearing, but is intangible and cannot interact with objects.

Regardless of form, the illusion moves as fast as a human. The wielder can direct the monster to move and/or attack a creature. Being an illusion, it assaults the victim’s mind. The monster vanishes when struck with an attack, including harmless “attacks” like tossing a pebble through it.

Thrown shells must be retrieved before they can be thrown again. Throwing fewer shells is possible should the owner so desire, or in the event some shells are lost or destroyed.
 
The following monster suggestions are from BX: Essentials: Monsters, number of shells landing aperture-up corresponds to monster Hit Dice (rounded down).
0 — normal rat, normal bat
1 — giant ferret, skeleton
2 — rock baboon, pit viper
3 — mountain lion, grey ooze
4 — dire wolf, wraith
5 — cockatrice, owl bear
6 — manticore, white dragon

3. CARABID RING

1 slot, 1 hand, quality ❑❑❑
Caustic Spray: Int vs Dex, 1d4 damage to up to 2 adjacent creatures/objects within 20 ft.
Animate Beetle: beetle-construct animates, can be given 3-word commands.

This fine silver ring is set with a life-size bombardier beetle carved from jet. It is given to all graduates of the College of Entomon, a magic school feared for their uncanny control over insects. As an action, the wearer can command the beetle to unleash a spray of boiling caustic fluid, or cause the beetle to animate and leave the ring. An animated beetle can carry 1 pound, and be given 3-word commands.

4. LEADEN SKULL OF THE DAMNED ALCHEMIST

2 slots, 2 hands, quality ❑❑❑
Transmute Object: Turn object to lead for 1 turn or until used again.
Transmute Creature: Int vs Con, 1d8 damage and slowed to 1/3 movement for 1 round. 40 ft range.

The skull of some wretched alchemist who erred in his attempt to create the Philosopher's Stone, the resulting Elixir of Life transmuting his bones to lead. A flicker of golden flame in its empty eye sockets indicates some remnant of the false Stone's power remains.

The wielder can hold the skull aloft and use its pale golden gaze to transmute an object to lead for 10 minutes or until the gaze is is directed elsewhere. Living creatures are more resistant, and will only partially transmute for a few seconds, if at all. A creature thus affected has its movement reduced to 1/3 of normal, and is effectively poisoned by the disruption to its physiology.

5. EMBROIDERY HOOP OF THE TOURMALINE COURT

1 slot, 2 hands, quality ❑❑❑
It takes 1 turn to prepare a usage of either of the following, but only 1 action to cast.
Glyph of Pain: Int vs Armour, d6 damage, 40 ft range.
Plush Conjuration: create plush version of an object, appears adjacent to you, lasts 1 turn.

A well-used pair of concentric whalebone hoops, holding taut a magic cloth woven from the fleece of the mythical Vegetable Lamb. Created as covert magical tools for the ladies in waiting of the Tourmaline Court, the secret of the hoop’s enchantment was lost when that kingdom fell.
 
The hoop is found with 3d6 feet of alchemically treated thread, enough to stitch that many motifs. Additional thread must be created in a safe haven, and costs 100 cp per foot.
 
Stitching a motif into the cloth takes 10 minutes. A completed motif immediately disappears, creating a magical effect. A motif can be left almost finished, only requiring a few seconds to complete and activate.

Knowledge of only two types of motif has survived. The Glyph of Pain is a crude sympathetic magic that can injure a nearby creature, while the Plush Conjuration causes a full-sized knitted facsimile of an object to leap forth from the cloth. This object is whatever is represented by the motif’s stitching, and can be no longer than 10 ft in any dimension. It is short-lived, soon decaying into motes of dust.

6. ELECTROMAGNET GAUNTLET

2 slots, 1 hand, quality ❑
Magnetic Pull: 1 action to cast, magnetically attracts wearer and an iron/steel object within 20 ft. Creatures holding such objects may resist (Int vs Str)
Discharge: 1 action to cast, Int vs Armour, d8 damage to a target within melee range

This heavy glove laden with voltaic piles and copper coils taps into the wielder's magical power to augment its crude application of natural philosophical principles. It regularly breaks down.
 
The wielder can attract an iron or steel object from up to 20 ft away. If the object is held by a creature, the creature can attempt to resist being disarmed. The wielder pulls lighter objects toward them, but is themself pulled toward heavier objects.

The wielder can also discharge a stroke of lightning against a target in melee range.

7. MOON STONE

2 slots, 2 hands, quality ❑❑❑❑
Tidal Control: Manipulate water level of lake, sea or ocean by up to 5 ft
Moonbeam: Int vs Dex, d8 damage, must be line of sight between moon and creature

This pearlescent sphere holds mysterious power over the moon. Stolen from a colonised people. They want it back.

The stone has power over the tides, and can call down a baleful moonbeam onto a creature, searing their flesh with a cool radiance.

8. QUICKSILVER SHARD

4 slots, no hands, quality ❑❑❑
Shard Kinesis: move/reshape shard within melee range, can support or exert 5 lb (1 slot) of force.
Forceful Blow: Int vs Armour, d10 damage, melee range.

This alien metal has great inertial mass, but transfers its gravitational mass to its wielder. It thus hovers next to them, but can be telekinetically moved with subtlety, or swung as a powerful bludgeon.

Being a liquid, it can only support 5 pounds of material before surface tension breaks and the material falls through. It is similarly limited in the sustained pressure it can exert when telekinetically pushed against a surface.
 
Unlike mundane quicksilver, it does not alloy with metals.

9. BOTTLED SPIRITS

1 slot, 2 hands, quality ❑ (depleted quality can be restored with a living sacrifice)
Psychic Miasma: Int vs Cha, 1d4 damage
Ghastly Ageing: Int vs Con, target ages 2d20 years for 6 turns or until used again

This odd bottle’s glass surface is etched with geometric binding patterns almost invisible to the eye. A dense purple fog swirls within.

Uncorking the bottle releases a spirit of despair, afflicting a nearby creature. It can either psychically assail its victim, or cause it to age magically. A magically aged creature will age 2d20 years for 1 hour or until the bottle is used again. This can't kill a creature, but it may affect its physical stats negatively, positively (e.g. a child, a dragon) or not at all (e.g. an elven young adult).
 
Occasionally the spirits grow restless, and will cease obeying the bottle’s owner until an intelligent creature is sacrificed in their name.

10. IRON ROSE

2 slots, 1 hand, quality ❑❑❑
Draw Blood: Int vs Con, d8 damage, 40 ft range, creature must already be physically wounded.
Collect Blood: Attracts spilt blood within a 40 ft radius

This rose-shaped haematite crystal exerts an uncanny pull on nearby spilt blood. Any who wield it can even draw blood forth from an open wound with a mere thought. The crystal digests any blood it touches, adding iron to its mass — eventually it will divide in two and spirit one daughter away to find a new master. It knows to do this while unseen.

Let's Read Best Left Buried, part 3

Part 1 covered some basic mechanics, and Chapters 1: Introduction & 2: Making a Character
Part 2 covered Chapter 3: Advancements

Note that the Best Left Buried pdf has been updated since those posts, so some earlier comments may no longer apply. I'll go back and revise once I've finished the book.

Chapter 4: Playing the Game

While I've already covered much of this chapter in Part 1, there's still a lot to elaborate upon. Hopefully this doesn't read too redundantly.

Stat Checks

Remember a Stat Check is 2d6 + relevant stat (Brawn, Wit or Will), trying to roll equal or greater than 9. This covers both active checks (picking a lock) and passive "saving throws" (resisting a poison).

Observation Checks are a special kind of Stat Check with no associated Stat (i.e. just roll 2d6). There is no instruction for the GM to secretly make this roll. It's 2018, players know not to metagame. I like how there's no associated stat. Perception usually becomes a skill tax in other systems, but if that's the intent, it gets undermined by the Advancements that improve Observation Checks (Ears of the Owl, Eyes of the Hawk, Nose of the Dog).
 
Now the rules say "a Stat Check is required when a PC, NPC or Monster attempts to do something that has a chance of failing." This is a pretty standard, 5e-style approach. Compare this to some storygames, that tell you not to roll unless failure is interesting. Or to Into the Odd, which doesn't require a roll to walk a narrow ledge when there's no pressure, and which instructs the GM to automatically mention presence of traps/hazards, unless the character is running, visually impaired, or somehow distracted.

If you want to use Into the Odd's approach (and it is one of the games that the free sample chapter suggests you kitbash with), then you probably want to either buff the aforementioned Advancements related to Observation Checks, or remove them.

The Upper Hand and Against the Odds are this game's equivalent of advantage/disadvantage. I like the attempt to rename them to something that has more natural language, though I've found in the course of this Let's Read that it's harder to construct intelligible sentences with those phrases than it is with the 5e terms. I suspect most players will revert to calling it the latter as well.

Unlike 5e D&D, multiple sources of either AtO or TUH can stack, and only cancel each other out one-for-one. So if there's three separate factors giving me TUH, and one making the situation AtO, it's 3 - 1 = 2, not the normal roll that 5e would have you make.

If you have one or two net instances of TUH during an attack or stat check, you roll 3d6 and use the best two dice. Same for AtO, only you use the worst two dice.

But if you have a net three or more in either direction, the roll either becomes an automatic success or automatic failure, as appropriate. The game calls these Trivial and Impossible tasks.

Now on paper this is more complicated than, say, Maze Rats's approach. But Maze Rats puts a lot of weight on GM fiat in determining whether an attempted action will auto-succeed, auto-fail, or go to a roll. This is an approach I'm comfortable with, but not everyone is. Basically this takes that tacit GM process of deciding "is the players' plan good enough to skip a roll" and adds explicit guidelines.

[I may edit this to insert a flowchart later]

It is also because of this approach that Best Left Buried uses a lower Target Number of 9, compared with Maze Rats's 10. Here's some probabilities in case you're unfamiliar with the amount of difference this 1-point shift makes.

P

In Maze Rats, a starting character making a Danger Roll with their best stat will still fail more often than not. Danger Rolls by design are the unreliable safety net for when the players fail to be sufficiently clever. In Best Left Buried, Stat Checks are more forgiving and an unsure GM can feel comfortable calling for them without screwing over their players.

It bears note that while this system is more complicated than 5e's advantage/disadvantage system, the target number for a stat check never varies. If a lock is particularly challenging to pick, that's an instance of Against the Odds, not a higher target number.

So if you want to run this game (or lift its ideas for another game), decide for yourself how comfortable you are with GM fiat. Simpler mechanics doesn't always mean easier to run, if those mechanics rely on a strong internalised sense of what makes for fair adjudication. Both Best Left Buried and Maze Rats stress the importance of players trying to set up unfair advantages for their characters as opposed to a "fair/heroic fight", they just do the accounting for that in different ways.

Combat

The overall structure of combat is similar to 5e D&D. Every PC rolls their own initiative, the GM rolls initiative for the monsters (using the same roll for multiple identical monsters), and then the combat proceeds in rounds, with characters/monsters acting in order of initiative.

Initiative is rolled on d3 + Wit, adding modifiers from certain Advancements or currently-held weapon types (i.e. Heavy and Long weapons give -1 to Initiative)

There is the suggestion of rerolling Initiative every round to shake things up, but no alternate initiative methods presented (e.g. group initiative like BX D&D, Maze Rats or Into the Odd, The Black Hack's simplified individual initiative, popcorn initiative, or Troika's token bag). The Black Hack's method is most compatible with the weapon modifiers, so I hope the Deluxe version includes that as a variant.

Surprise functions similarly to 5e. A surprised character can't act on their first turn, but isn't easier to hit unless the attacker has something like the Knife From The Shadows Advancement.

The field of combat is represented with Zones instead of a grid. If you're familiar with Fate Core or The Black Hack, you know how these work. You can move one zone each turn, two if you spend your action to move again. Most melee weapons require you and the target to be in the same zone, Long weapons can attack from 1 zone away, and Ranged weapons from up to 5 zones away.

Zones may vary in size by how easy they are to traverse -- there is no separate Difficult Terrain mechanic. For this game's focus (dungeoncrawls full of cramped, pokey corridors) this is fine, but above-ground adventures will require GM rulings about whether a bog that's multiple zones to traverse may count as fewer zones for the purpose of a ranged attack.

Actions

During your turn you get one action. The examples provided are fairly intuitive.

Attacks

You have to see your target, which may require an Observation roll for a hidden/obscured creature. Presumably you don't miss your turn if you fail the roll, you just have to do something else.

Attacks use a more complex roll than Stat Checks:

• The Target Number is variable (7-11), depending on enemy armor. The default score is 8, which I think is also the case for unarmored player characters. The rules could be more explicit and state this earlier in Chapter 2.
• 3d6 are rolled by default. If attacker has The Upper Hand (1 or 2 instances), roll 4d6 and discard the lowest. If they are Against the Odds (1 or 2 instances), roll 4d6 and discard the highest. If it's Trivial or Impossible, the attack auto-hits/misses, as with a Stat Check.
• Any two dice can be used with the appropriate Stat to see if an attack is successful. The unused die is used as the damage roll. This die may be adjusted by weapon type or by Advancements. A natural result of 6 on the damage die indicates a Critical Hit. This doesn't result in extra damage, instead it forces a roll on an Injury Table.
• If the attack is Trivial, to determine damage you roll 2d6 and use the highest die.
  

e.g. I have Brawn +2 and attack a ghoul with 8 Armour, after entangling its limbs in a net. The GM has ruled I have The Upper Hand, so I roll 4 dice, getting 1, 1, 5, 6. I discard one of the dice showing 1. Obviously the 5 and 6 beats 8 Armor, but 1 and 5 with my +2 Brawn will also equal 8 Armor, leaving the 6 left over. So I can deal 6 damage if I want, a Critical Hit!

The game text provides three examples of making an attack roll, which is good for understanding how it works. However this is still one of the fiddlier parts of the game. I would still use the rules-as-written for one session to check if my intuition is correct, but I suspect this is the first thing I would houserule away (probably for Maze Rats's attack rules)

Escaping

If you move out of a Zone with a monster in it, you risk it attacking you outside of turn order, somewhat like 5e D&D's Opportunity Attacks. The wording is unclear whether the same is true for a monster moving out of your Zone.

You can either play it safe and spend your action to safely Escape (no roll needed) or you can make a Wit Check. If you fail this check, you can choose to stay put, or move and incur an Attack from one of the monsters in the Zone. Note you don't incur an attack from every monster in the same zone, instead multiple attacks are handled by the Ganging Up rule.

Ganging Up

Only identical monsters (never PCs) in the same Zone can Gang Up. Basically, if a bunch of monsters attack the same thing, instead of rolling each attack separately, every monster past the first one is treated as an instance of The Upper Hand, and a single Attack roll is made. This means if 4 monsters attack you in melee and there's no mitigating factor, you're automatically hit regardless of how much armor you're wearing.

I really like this rule. I also like how there's a "Horde Killer" Advancement specifically for countering this Gang Up tactic, and that this section points players to it. I would rule that non-identical monsters can gang up though.

Unconsciousness, Death, and Finishing Him!

Damage is deducted from a creature's Vigour score. If a monster/NPC reaches 0 Vigour, it dies. If a PC reaches 0 Vigour, they immediately flip a coin. Tails, they die. If they survive, they're Unconscious for 1d6 hours.

A monster can spend its action to "Finish Him!", i.e. kill an Unconscious character without rolling. The monster doesn't have to be in the same Zone or use a melee attack, though I'd only have a monster Finish Him! at range if I'd established them as being dangerous at that range. A dragon might barbecue a fallen PC, a tarantula-man might fire a volley of hairs, but a troll isn't going to suddenly whip out a sling.

There's no rule for nonlethal damage/subduing a monster. Decide how you want to handle this, because odds are the PCs will want to interrogate a shadow cultist at some point.

Heroic Rescues

Finishing Him! can only be blocked if another character performs a Heroic Rescue. The rescuer can't be further than 1 Zone away, and must make a Wit Check to leave a monster's Zone, as normal. The intent of this rule is unclear and could use. I assume it happens outside of initiative order, interrupting the monster's turn, with the rescuer forgoing their next turn? And can the rescuer jump in to, say, block the monster's attack with their shield, thus staying in the same Zone and avoiding the Wit check? Or is it only meant to be dragging your ally to safety, i.e. there's no way to avoid the Wit check?

Regaining Consciousness

A character recovers from unconsciousness with 1 point of Vigour, but can spend Grip 1-for-1 (up to 6), to wake up with more. Given how hard it is to regain Grip, I don't see players doing this much?

They also wake with one random Injury and one random Madness.

Exertion

You can spend Grip to reroll dice after seeing their results, but before the GM narrates what happens. You can reroll multiple dice in a roll (1 Grip point per die) but you can't reroll the same die multiple times.
You can do this for any roll you make, or for attack rolls an opponent makes against you. So obviously it covers Stat Checks and Attack rolls, and I assume Lay on Hands, but does it cover Initiative rolls or the coin-flip to see if you die upon reaching 0 Vigour?

Grip Checks

These are special Will checks the GM might call for whenever a PC encounters a terrifying, sanity-warping monster, environment, or event. Success on this check earns 1 XP. Failure causes loss of Grip, usually 1 point, but possibly more.

Resting

You can regain Vigour by resting. The amount regained is GM-determined, with suggested amounts depending on quality of food and shelter. I really like this over a more static amount, e.g. the 1d3 healing per full day of rest in BX D&D.

You only recover Grip by resting if it's in a tavern or settlement away from the dungeon, and even then, slowly if at all. The main way to recover Grip is by voluntarily taking Consequences (Injuries, Insanities, or if playing with the forthcoming Deluxe rules, Corruptions).

The text suggests that if the "main" party members head back to town to recover Grip, the focus of play doesn't follow them. Instead, continue the dungeoncrawl with backup characters from the same expedition camp. I like this. The players presumably signed up for the dungeoncrawl experience over a broader urban/wilderness game, so going back to town is for wusses.

Levelling Up

It's totally up to the GM when XP gets awarded, and how much, with only the "1 XP for every successful Grip check" rule being a firm guideline. Other suggested times are overcoming obstacles, surviving combats, and recovering treasure. 8 XP = 1 level.

Whenever you level up, you get +1 Vigour, +1 Grip, and choose an Advancement.

Status Conditions and Weird Rules

These rules cover various edge cases: being blinded, deafened, restrained or immobilised, darkness, encumbrance, drowning/suffocating, falling, starvation/thirst, climbing/swimming/crawling, and overland travel. They're all pretty straightforward. 

Encumbrance is left to common sense, exceeding it will probably slow a character or impose Against the Odds for some checks. I know the OSR stresses inventory management, but I don't think that necessarily means strict encumbrance rules. If you prefer more rigid rules, you probably already have a subsystem in mind. Personally, I'd crib from Knave and give each character inventory slots equal to 10 + Brawn.

20 Pieces of (Hopefully) Strange Dungeon Decor

The goal of this list is to be weird, sometimes ominous, but not immediately hazardous.

I'd use this to provide tangible hints of a room's history (or perhaps at what the whole dungeon was originally built for) and overlay a "what the current faction uses this room for " table.

1. Ancient scorch marks and glassed rock surfaces. Whatever took place here weakened the barrier between worlds. During an eclipse, the barrier weakens further, and the various dungeon factions will temporarily truce and set up market here to trade with extraplanar visitors.
   
2. A copse of transparent-needled pine trees, growing in an unseeable light. Spending significant time here (e.g. camping overnight) runs the risk of radiation poisoning.
3. Scrawled-on parchment scraps joined by red twine are affixed to every square foot of wall. A player can pose a question about the dungeon and have their character spend 2 turns (20 minutes) sorting through these notes for a 1-in-6 chance of a correct answer, and a 1-in-6 chance of an erroneous answer.
   The author's bones, picked clean by flesh-eating beetles, lie in a crevasse elsewhere. If his journal is recovered the odds of a correct answer increase to 4-in-6. The walls hold enough information to answer six questions, however long that takes.
4. A ghostly ecosystem drifts through the room. It contains 1 metre wide, 10 metre long jellyfish, small fish, miniscule zooplankton, and bacteria visible only as a shimmering ghost-sediment. At present, they are intangible and harmless.
5. A clockwork well constantly generating a lot of noise. If cranked, it will dispense precisely 1 litre of water. If oiled, will generate much less noise for about a week.
6. Metal filings cover the floor. They stand on end, and are repelled by iron or steel.
7. A tiled pool filled with tepid, shin-high water that is potable and magically self-cleaning. Dungeon monsters bring their toddlers here for swimming lessons.
8. Detailed, life-size origami effigies of the player characters stand in the centre of the room. Pulling a lever on the wall will cause the effigies to refold into whatever creatures will next walk into the room. Creatures who are aware of this mechanism's existence become immune to its powers.
9. Yellowed, curling WW2 propaganda-style posters warning denizens to be ever-vigilant of water weirds (or some other "trap" monster).
10. Twenty meathooks holding clay sculptures of animal carcasses. Some are realistic, some abstract, some naïve.
11. A stream of ants marching between two crevices, carrying thin scraps of gold leaf (1,000 scraps = 1 gp) from some unseen treasure vault to another unseen room where the ants farm their gold-metabolising fungus.
12. An automatic tapestry loom dominates the room. It slowly, in real time, documents the history of the local surface-world lords above. Go on, cut a thread in active use, just try it.
13. Crystal egrets fish in a lake of unknown clear liquid (harmlessly passes unabsorbed through the system of any human who drinks it). If exposed to sunlight, the egrets will grow sickly and crumble to dust in the course of a few days.
14. This room has no flat surfaces, and is really a void in an irregular packing of chrome spheres of various sizes. Each sphere is worth its weight in silver, but may cause a cave-in if shifted.
15. A low ceiling covered in cloth sharply transitions some 40 ft into the room to a much higher ceiling out of view. The low-ceiling area is littered with human-size mousie toys.
16. Prominent stone wall, carved with a phylogenetic tree of all demihuman and humanoid species known to the characters, plus several unknown ones. This might be multiple trees if the setting history doesn't have descent from a common ancestor. One entry is chiseled out, but the stone is extremely hard and resists common hand-tools.
17. A nanosun about 1 metre in diameter hovers in the centre of this roughly spherical room. It provides bright reddish light, local antigravity (one can walk anywhere on the sphere's interior), and the occasional lashing streamer of solar wind.
18. Huge excavated tree roots with taps installed -- the sap is delicious and nourishing, but pleasantly dulls perception and is partly antimagic. Drinkers are resistant to spells (including beneficial ones) and have difficulty casting spells, these effect scales with dosage.
19. Immobile electrical apparatus fills most of the room, with a prominent terminal featuring numbered dials and a gramophone horn. Racks of large carved stone ears line the walls, each ear is 2 metres long and carved with a serial number. Dialing a number into the apparatus lets you listen through the corresponding ear over any distance.
    A random number has a 1 in 6 chance of connecting to one of the ears in the room, a 1 in 6 chance of connecting to an ear in some random nearby location, and a 4-in-6 chance of being an unassigned number, connecting to a buried ear, or being otherwise useless.
20. This whole room is a time-capsule buried by child godlings, It features 20 ft tall trading cards, an enormous packet of expired gum that now only grants *delusions* of godhood if eaten, amber marbles with humans imprisoned inside, and a really interesting stick. Disembodied choral harmonies are faintly audible at all times. Reading the cards' divine language aloud risks wild magic effects.
    The really interesting stick is quarterstaff-sized, and can be brandished as an action to transfix all creatures within 30 ft of you. A Paralyse/Petrify or Wisdom save negates the effect, which otherwise functions as Hypnotic Pattern (see the Illusionist spell in AD&D 1e or OSRIC, or the D&D 5e spell). The stick isn't magical. It's just really interesting.

5 Old-School Spell Variants

This was prompted by discussion between @jellymuppet, @stratometaship, and @mountain_foot about whether spell variants are better written up as their own self-contained statblock, or as more terse, indicative notes that instruct the reader to refer to the base spell.


From that came these two blog posts

http://soulmuppet.blogspot.com/2018/12/some-variant-spells.html
https://footofthemountainadventures.blogspot.com/2018/12/spell-variations_4.html

so I felt inspired to write up my own.

At first I thought an advantage of the latter approach is that it's more resilient to the subtle differences between different old-school rulesets and their retroclones. For example, is a combat round 10 seconds or a minute? Does Magic Missile produce just 1 missile, or scale as the caster gains levels? Does armor class ascend or descend, and does it start at 9 or 10?

So I decided to write a few. And now I'm... less sure about which approach I prefer? I don't know if this attempt at edition agnosticism has worked.

Also, because it turns out lots of my favourite spells actually date to second edition AD&D. Since retroclones of that are rarer, I decided to provide notes on how those spells function anyway. Go figure. ;-)

 

Eyeball Torpedoes (Magic-User 1)

As Magic Missile, except the missile(s) are hovering eyeballs that swim through the air like tadpoles. They rupture on impact, releasing acidic humours.

When a caster prepares this spell, the appropriate number of eyeballs rapidly grow like enormous boils in a random location on their skin. Until fired, the caster can see through them. Once fired, the skin lesion left behind fades after 1d6 days.

 

Magical Transformation (Magic-User 2)

as Armor (i.e. mage armor in later editions), except:
 ●    it is a 2nd level spell
 ●    the armor is a visible costume change
 ●    it sheds light equivalent to a torch in the colour of the caster's choosing
 ●    it grants advantage on the first Charisma-based check the target makes during the spell's duration. If this is a reaction roll made on 2d6, instead roll 3d6 and use the best two.
 ●    the target can produce up to 20 ft of ribbons (as silk rope) at will. Reusing this ability causes previously produced ribbons to vanish.

In AD&D 2e, Armor affects one touched creature and has a casting time of 1 minute. It provides protection equivalent to scale armor (AC 6), which stacks with Dexterity and shield bonuses, but not the shield spell. The duration is indefinite, but the armor is dispelled once the wearer takes cumulative damage equal to 9 + 1 per level of the caster.

 

Alter Metabolism (Magic-User 2)

As Alter Self, but causes internal, physiological changes only. A nonexhaustive list of possible effects follows. These are not intended to be balanced against each other, and it is the GM's discretion as to whether two or more effects might be possible with a single casting.

Effects without a duration use the standard duration of Alter Self. In AD&D 2e, this is 3d4 minutes + 2 minutes per level.

 ●    Water breathing. You do not grow gills, but your lungs can extract oxygen more efficiently.
 ●    Altered skin pigmentation. This is an exception to the rule that changes are not generally visible externally.
 ●    Acclimation to high altitudes.
 ●    Unharmed by nonmagical extreme temperatures.
 ●    Improved poison and radiation tolerance. You have advantage on saving throws and/or halve any damage taken.
 ●    Suppress disease symptoms and infectivity. The disease resumes its natural course after the spell ends.
 ●    Hibernate for 1 month. During this time, you can only be roused if you take hit point damage.
 ●    Safely digest organic material such as carrion, wood, peat for 1 day.

 

Consult the Elements (Cleric 2)

As Augury, except the caster's question regarding a course of action is answered by local elemental spirits. The possible answers are Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Balance, or an appropriate cryptic phrase. The answer might be literal or be more metaphorical. For example if the question is "What awaits us on the third level?", an answer of "Water", could mean dank, flooded corridors, a faction of crabfolk, or a cool dispassionate sphinx who vivisects adventurers that cannot answer her riddle.

In AD&D 2e, Augury takes 2 minutes to cast, and must relate to a course of action taken in the next 30 minutes. The base chance of receiving a meaningful reply is 70% + 1% per level of the caster.

Element    Qualities        Humoural Disposition
Earth      Cold and Dry     Melancholic (sad, pensive)
Fire       Hot and Dry      Choleric (bad-tempered, irritable)
Air        Hot and Moist    Sanguine (optimistic, positive)
Water      Cold and Moist   Phlegmatic (calm, stolid)

 

Cloth to Chiropterans, a.k.a Brocade to Bats (Cleric 4)

As Sticks to Snakes, except it turns 4d8 square feet of cloth, leather, or other textile into that many normal bats. Note as they are under the caster's control, they do not have to make morale checks every round.




If this targets textiles worn or carried by another creature, that creature is entitled to a save vs paralysis/petrify to avoid the effect.

There is a 1 in 6 chance the bats carry disease.

Stats below are from B/X Essentials: Monsters
 
Normal Bat
AC 6, HD 1hp, Att 1 × swarm (confusion), THAC0 20, MV 9’ (3’) / 120’ (40’) flying, SV D14 W15 P16 B17 S18 (NH), ML 6, AL Neutral
 ●    Swarm: 10 bats can swarm around a character’s head, causing confusion: -2 to hit rolls and saving throws; unable to cast spells.
 ●    Attacks: As normal human.
 ●    Flighty: Unless magically summoned or controlled, normal bats check morale every round.

Let's Read Best Left Buried, part 2

Chapter 3: Advancements

More so than Archetypes, most of the character customisation lies in Advancement choice. There are 30 "Journeyman Advancements" to choose from, meaning none have any talent-tree-style prerequisites. Nor are they restricted to any Archetype. They do have tags after their name like [Arcane] or [Martial]. Currently this is just fluff, which the game explicitly encourages you to reskin if desired.

Fortunately for those who baulk at reading 30 options, the game provides a shortlist of suggested Advancements in the previous chapter, under each Archetype. I've also mentioned to @jellymuppet that the Advancement list, and other parts of chargen, could use numbering. Even if the game assumes nonrandom chargen, it's nice to *facilitate* randomness. He agrees and has added it to the to-do list.

The promised "full version" of the game will have extra lists of Advancements exclusive to each tag. To take these exclusive Advancements, a character must be mid-level and already have three talents with that tag. @jellymuppet has told me these are more powerful abilities, not just rare/hyperspecialised ones. Think Fireball, not Nystul's Magic Aura. He's kindly sent me the "full version" draft, but I haven't read them yet. I want to judge the current game on its own merits, not on what I know is in the pipeline.

Also, since none of the Archetypes balance their abilities by adjusting core stats or weapon proficiencies, it'd be trivial to add the Archetype abilities you like to the Advancement list and make this game completely classless.

Most of the Advancements fall into one or more of the following buckets:

• grants The Upper Hand on certain Stat checks (e.g. Wit checks to escape in combat, or Observation checks to smell something)
• Spells and other abilities that cost Grip to use
• a small passive stat boost (e.g. +1 Wit, or +3 Grip)
  

I like this mix of effects. Much like 5e D&D's Fighter class design, or like the choice between taking a feat or ability score increase, there's room for players to keep their character mechanically simple, or introduce resource management mechanics. And since Grip is a universal resource that everyone has and which interfaces with other game systems, it feels more grounded than, say, Superiority Dice.

It also means every flashy ability you have detracts from your pool of rerolls, much like Stunts in Fate, and using them inches your character ever further to their demise.

As for the "spell" Advancements, let's look at the basic attack and healing spells:

• Fire & Lightning Strange is the main magic attack, even monster abilities like Firebreathing refer to it. Despite the name, when you select it you choose an element to fluff the attack as. Using it costs an action, and 1-3 Grip. You get to make a Will-based attack from up to one Zone away, and the damage die is multiplied by the spent Grip.
• Lay on Hands, barring any potions etc found in the dungeon, is the main source of magical healing. For 1 Grip and an action, you heal Vigour in the target equal to d3 + your Will. This doesn't specify a range, I assume it's melee.

So now I'll go through the rest in order, calling out ones I particularly like or tht have some issues.

Arcane Wards lets you spend Grip as a reaction to decrease incoming damage. I like this, but I wish you could shield adjacent allies with it. Also, consult your GM whether this downgrades a critical hit to a normal one.

Battle Frenzy is the equivalent of barbarian rage. Costs 3 Grip to enter, its benefits are expressed solely with The Upper Hand & Against the Odds rather than 5e's flat damage boost. Forces you to attack foes in melee every turn until the end of the combat or you end the frenzy early with another Grip point.

Child of Prophecy works similarly to the 5e Diviner Wizard's class feature. At the start of each day you roll two d6 and record the results. You can swap in one or both results whenever a roll is made that day. I like this mechanic and wish 5e hadn't locked it to diviners. It'd make a better feat than Lucky.

Concoctionist lets you make two kinds of potion, chosen from a list referencing the monster abilities. The default flavour is that you make the potions from monster corpses. Making potions costs 1 Grip each, but drinking them inflicts 3 Grip damage. The monster abilities are well-named, so a player will have a good idea of what the potion will do without you having to show them GM-facing rules.
You can take this advancement repeatedly, learning two new potions each time. I would houserule that a character can go into "Advancement debt", i.e. they don't have to wait until next level-up to distill the essence of the shadow-wreathed monster they just fought.

I *love* Eldritch Pact. You immediately pick two extra Advancements for the price of one, but gain a random Insanity (or Corruption, if you have access to the "full rules"). Also, obviously, your patron will also demand services from you, with dire consequences if you refuse. It feels like a great way of bringing in some 5e warlock flavour, in a way that makes sense in this ruleset, and actually feels more like "power at a price" than the 5e Warlock class. It also makes a good template for paladin oaths, extraterrestrial symbionts, etc.

Horde Killer is really neat in its effect. Basically this game handles a mob of creatures attacking together as a single attack roll with multiple instances of The Upper Hand. e.g. 4 tuber-people attacking the same character will attack just once, with 3 instances of TUH, which as I'll explain in Chapter 4 is an auto-hit. Having Horde Killer cancels out two of those instances.

I See Truth in the Stars is where the Grip system really starts shining. You nominate an amount of Grip to spend, and the GM gives you an correspondingly detailed omen for the next adventuring day. If Grip were just mana that regenerated with a long rest, there's little reason not to dump all remaining Grip each day into this, and spamming this ability might soon spoil the fun for the GM & other players. But with Grip that's difficult to regenerate and representing fragile sanity, the choice to trade it off for information has much higher stakes.

Knife From The Shadows is this game's Backstab/Sneak Attack, and it currently has issues which I've raised with @jellymuppet. When attacking an unaware enemy, you attack with The Upper Hand and deal double damage on a hit. Except I would have thought an unaware enemy would *already* grant The Upper Hand.

My Shining Armor Gleams imposes Against the Odds on *all* nonmagical weapon attacks made against you, no action or Grip cost required. This might be unbalanced if it was a game that catered to wilderness travel and urban adventures, but in a dungeoncrawl it's not hard for a good GM to provide a mix of magic and nonmagic monsters so the character feels powerful but not invincible. Also, if you're going to make me spend time writing abilities on my character sheet, they'd better be powerful enough to be worth remembering. So well done on that front.

Shadow Glamours lets you spend Grip to get The Upper Hand on stealth-related rolls, or to visually disguise yourself for a minute. I like how this is a sort of "complete package" i.e. in 5e D&D, why can't I cast disguise self in a way that camouflages me? Well with this, I can.

Spirits of the Beyond lets you spend 1 Grip to zombify a corpse "until the end of the combat", which is a little disappointing as that would be a cool power to use for noncombat problem solving.

Toxic Blade is similar to Concoctionist, in that the poisons you can craft reference monster abilities and are debuffs rather than save-or-die. For readily-craftable poisons, I like this approach. Maybe poison traps were originally built with these poisons, but over centuries the Crypt has infused them with more malicious energy. So instadeath poisons can still be a thing in his game (if desired), but only as nonreproducible treasure.

I'm torn about Trap Breaker and the other Observation check-related Advancements. Decoupling Observation from any Stat means that *anyone* can scout/search for traps, which is a very nice old-school feature. You can even go fully old-school and remove Observation rolls entirely without debuffing any Archetype. But then these Advancements enable one PC to specialise in such rolls, which undermines that flexibility. I'm not saying they should be removed, but they might require discussion within a group for whether these Advancements should be allowed, and how scouting should be handled.

Weapons Master is like a cheaper, weaker Battle Frenzy, except it works with ranged weapons and doesn't dictate your actions.


There's a bit of duplication of effects. Weapon Master and Battle Frenzy is one example. Tough As Nails gives +1 Vigour per Advancement the character has (i.e. +1 hp per level). Extra Vigour does the same thing. Each Advancement has other benefits, I feel they could use revision to be more distinct.


Finally, there's a note on destructive magic, reminding GMs that attack spells should scar/change the battlefield, especially if they miss, and that intelligent foes will retreat if they see they're outmatched or that foes have unexpected abilities. There's no explicit "Morale check" mechanic, so this is a welcome piece of advice. I'd also apply it to gunpowder weapons (much like LotFP).



Overall this is a nice set of Advancements. Apart from the wide pool of utility/ritual spells, the combination of Archetype and Advancements lets you approximate a pretty good variety of new-school D&D classes/subclasses. It reminds me of Gavin Norman's BX Warrior and BX Rogue, and his posts under his old City of Iron blog that ported mechanics back and forth between BX and 5e. And as I've mentioned at, I think some of those ideas, e.g. eldritch pacts, auguries, are more interestingly executed here than in 5e.

A shortlist of staple low-level 5e effects that I would consider homebrewing Advancements for:

• shapeshifting into animals
• wild magic surges
• animal companions
• unarmed strike/grapple specialist
• protecting allies with shields (real or magical) 
• silent image and other non-self illusions
• two-weapon fighting?

Oof, the post is already pretty long! I guess Chapter 4 will wait for next time.

Let's Read Best Left Buried, part 1

Best Left Buried is a short-ish ~17,000 word game by @jellymuppet, who blogs here http://soulmuppet.blogspot.com/

It's an OSR RPG very much focused on the dungeoncrawl, i.e. no wilderness or stronghold-building rules.



The full game is $6.50 on OBS. A free sample (Chapter 2: Making a Character) is here . The author is also working on an expanded edition that includes more Advancements for high-level PCs, and more GM-facing rules and random tables.

The mechanics are similar to Maze Rats, except with much heavier player-character customisation, thankfully without complicated talent trees. The sorts of numbers the engine spits out also look well-suited for kitbashing with PbtA games, and the Grip subsystem feels pretty storygamey.

Basically, the author, like me, is someone who fell into the OSR after starting with 5th edition. This game is an interesting example of cross-pollination, and it's worth looting for ideas, particularly if you want to run an OSR game but all your players expect character generation/level-up rules that are nonrandom, customisable, and have no "dead levels". It's certainly prompted me to rethink my Knave hack (see last post) that adjusts the system to be closer to 5e D&D.

(still working on that, btw. I have a list of cantrip-items I'm editing)

It's also entirely d6-based, though some rolls call for a d3.

Layout-wise, it's black-and-white, some nice evocative art, simple 2-column layout, the font size is large enough to print and fold into a booklet. The game is still a bit rough around the edges. There are some typos, unclear wordings, nothing too major.
So let's take a look!

Basic Mechanics

But first, I have to cover some of the basic mechanics. TBH this is one of the weaknesses of the book, it's not structured in a way that makes sense reading cover-to-cover, and I found myself having to jump ahead to contextualise what, say, a Heavy weapon critting on a 5 or 6 means. This also limits the utility of the free preview chapter.

There are three main Stats, Brawn, Wit and Will. Their starting range is +0 to +3.

Each character also has a pool of Vigour (i.e. HP) and Grip, a "coagulated mix of stamina, mana, and sanity". Vigour recovers with rest as you'd expect, but Grip is harder to recover. Downtime outside the dungeon recovers at *most* 1 Grip, in practice Grip will be recovered by *voluntarily* taking a Consequence (i.e. a Madness or Injury). You die/retire at 0 Grip. At 0 Vigour, you have equal odds of dying immediately or surviving with Consequences.

There is an optional rule that cuts out this "take Consequences to recover Grip" subsystem, if you happen to find it distasteful or just too storygamey for your liking. Under that rule, Grip just regenerates with a daily rest.

You can spend Grip to reroll dice, force enemies to reroll dice, to cast spells, or activate other character powers like a battle frenzy or an inspiring song. It can also be depleted by witnessing horrible monsters or events.

The most common roll is the Stat Check: roll 2d6 + Stat, trying to equal or beat a target score of 9. This target score never changes, instead difficulty is modeled by an advantage/disadvantage mechanic.

Observation Checks (corresponding to 5e D&D's Perception, Investigation, and Insight) are a bit of an exception. They have no associated Stat, so are just rolled on 2d6.

The other oddball is the Grip Check. This is just a type of Will Check, but some Archetype features specifically care about them, and they have special consequences for success (gain 1 XP) or failure (lose a point of Grip)

Initiative Rolls are d3 + Wit + modifiers from weapon or armour.

An Attack Roll uses three d6, and the armor score ranges from 7 to 11. The attacker chooses two dice to add together, along with the relevant Stat, and compare to the armor score. If it's a hit, the remaining die result is the damage dealt, which may be modified by weapon type. If the modified damage die is a 6, it's a Critical Hit and the target takes an Injury. If no pair of dice would result in a hit, the attack misses.

This does mean that on a roll of, say, 4, 5, 6, the attacker has leeway in deciding which dice to hit with, and how much damage to deal. This has some niche applications.

There's an advantage/disadvantage mechanic called The Upper Hand and Against the Odds. Unlike 5e D&D, multiple sources do stack, and they cancel each other out on a one-for-one basis. i.e. if there are three reasons why The Upper Hand applies to a roll, and one thing that's Against the Odds, it comes out to 2 instances of The Upper Hand. There's some complexities to the way they stack that I'll cover later.

Combat is structured pretty similarly to 5e D&D. Everyone rolls initiative at the start and gets ordered highest to lowest. There's no 5' grid, the terrain is broken up into zones much like The Black Hack or Fate Core. When your turn comes up you can move up to one zone and perform an action. Monsters have similar stats to PCs. A list of monster abilities is provided, but no actual monster writeups, as they're intended to be bespoke horrors unknown to the players.

There's a simple XP system to level up, though which tasks grant XP, and how much, is left to the GM to decide. Levelling up gives +1 Vigour, +1 Grip, and a new Advancement. Advancements are generally powerful, so characters *will* get more capable but not much more resilient, and they're always circling the Grip drain.

As the game says, "The Crypt will take you in, make you rich and powerful and then destroy you."

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 1 is brief at two pages, first an opening crawl and then an introduction. The crawl's prose is a *little* purple, but together they set the theme of the game and the general design goals -- to be short, low in mechanical complexity but still have PC customisation, make decisions have costs that can't be trivially recovered from (i.e. no getting everything back with a long rest, and definitely no resurrection), model the inevitable physical and mental debilitation of anyone foolish enough to dungeoncrawl, and to have bespoke monsters the players don't already know how to fight.

Chapter 2: Making a Character

This is the longest chapter in the book, covering all aspects of character generation (Stats, Archetype, Equipment) other than the list of Advancements.

Despite old grognards being the likely audience for this game, the chapter opens with advice on how to come up with a memorable character who will be a proactive agent in the game world. It's good advice -- it's better to learn the easy way rather than the hard way that a moody loner with no connections to the world just isn't actually that fun to play.

Players assign +0, +1 and +2 in any order to their character's three Stats, Brawn, Wit and Will. If these modifiers seem small, remember a Stat Check is made on 2d6, not d20.

Brawn covers everything you'd expect Strength or Constitution to do. Wit includes social charms, stealth, thievery, and quick/lateral thinking. Will covers spellcasting, intuition and knowledge.

As mentioned above, Observation rolls have no associated stat. I like this decision, it allows everyone to try to scout, search for traps, dig through the corpse's clothes for clues.

Characters start with Vigour equal to 6 + Brawn, and Grip equal to 4 + Will.

They choose an Archetype from the 10 provided, which are like your background or race choice in 5e D&D (currently the game is humans-only).

They also start with one Advancement, which are this game's feats/talents/class features. The next chapter lists all 30 of them TBH calling them "Advancements" is counterintuitive when you start with one (though I guess you could start at 0th level), and the word *may* be similar enough to Archetype to cause player confusion. Playtesting would figure out this kind of stuff.

When you level up, you get another Advancement, and +1 Vigour and Grip. Your Brawn, Wit, and Will never improve, unless you take certain Advancements that increase them by 1.

That's right, unlike typical OSR games, this has entirely nonrandom character generation & level-up. Now I love random chargen, but it's not to everyone's taste, and if you worry about players cheating it means chargen has to be done at the table. It's not hard to *make* chargen random if so desired. And don't worry, there are random tables for determining what horrible things happen to characters during play.

Also unlike a typical OSR game, starting characters are more bulky and competent. On average they'll take 2 hits to reduce to 0 Vigour, and even then have a 50% chance of survival. Spending Grip to force enemies to reroll makes combat more surviveable, though not without long-term cost. Compare to a 1st-level Basic D&D or Maze Rats character, who really ought to avoid combat whenever possible. This is more of that 5e influence creeping in.

Archetypes

The 10 Archetypes are Believer, Cabalist, Cut-throat, Dastard, Everyman, Freeblade, Outcast, Protagonist, Scholar, and Veteran. Protagonist is your "Chosen One" sort of character, while Everyman is a loose catchall that requires some GM approval for their abilities.

Most of these grant two beneficial features, and one penalty. In a touch that I rather like, they only confer abilities at 1st level, and they don't restrict characters' Advancement choices. In fact, none of the archetypes have spellcasting -- all spells are handled via Advancement selection. There are also no weapon/armor proficiency rules, so a Scholar can don plate armour and a greatsword just fine.

Most Archetype abilities are either:
* a virtual point of Grip that refreshes daily but can only be used in thematically appropriate situations,
* having The Upper Hand (or Against the Odds) in similar niche situations
* starting with an Injury or Insanity.

Each Archetype has a shortlist of suggested Advancements, but again there's total freedom to pick "crossclass" Advancements, and the suggestions are more about reinforcing the archetype's theme than any mechanical synergy.

There are no rules for races, though the author is thinking about how to model them, and is leaning towards a custom Archetype. I'd go the other route and "lock" their starting Advancement to a custom one unavailable to other characters, and put a restriction on how they can order their stats. For example, a Goblin might have "Can eat anything organic" and "cannot start with Brawn higher than Wit".

Equipment

Each character starts with 2 weapons, basic armour, rations, torches, and 5 pieces of equipment picked from a list. This list includes typical adventuring gear, but also extra ammunition, shields, and plate armour.

There are no encumbrance rules here, a note in Chapter 4 basically leaves it to common sense.

There are also no prices -- this is a game about dungeoncrawling, not shopping.

Weapons are divided into 6 broad categories:

• Hand weapons are your typical one-handed swords and axes, use Brawn to attack, and can be wielded 2-handed for +1 damage.
• Heavy weapons *must* be wielded 2-handed (for the same +1 damage), impose an initiative modifier of -1, but critical-hit on a damage roll of 5 or 6.
• Light weapons cannot be wielded two-handed, but are finesse weapons, attacking with Wit instead of Brawn.
• Long weapons are your reach weapons, i.e. can attack into the next Zone, but have an initiative modifier of -1. Like hand weapons, they can be wielded in one or both hands, so spear-and-shield is thankfully supported by the rules.
• Throwing weapons can also attack from one Zone away, can use either Wit or Brawn, but have -1 damage when used in melee. Also don't worry, if one of your starting weapon choices is a throwing weapon you actually get three of them to throw.
• Ranged weapons use Wit, are always two-handed (with no damage bonus), can attack from up to 5 zones away, but attack Against the Odds when used in melee.

There are no rules for two-weapon fighting beyond the suggestion that a main-gauche be treated as a shield, but as there are no rules for encumbrance or cost, *attacking* with twin axes or something can just be treated as wielding the one axe in both hands.

Some guidance for modelling exotic weapons like whips, and optional rules for gunpowder weapons, then follow. The latter are more in the vein of Lamentations of the Flame Princess than, say, gunslingers from Pathfinder or 5e -- you won't be reloading matchlock muskets in the middle of combat.

Unarmored characters have an armour score of 7. Basic Armour, which everyone starts with, gives +1 armour. Plate gives +2 armour but -1 Initiative, and requires at least +2 Brawn to wear. A Shield gives +1 armour but occupies a hand.

One rules issue here: Basic Armour says it doesn't prevent characters from casting spells, while Plate Armour doesn't clarify either way. Since spells are no different from any other other Grip-fueled Advancement, and refluffing of Advancements is encouraged, I assume spellcasting in plate armour is OK, and the note under Basic Armour is intended for people coming from games where magic-users must be unarmoured.

Finally, there's the suggestion that you should roll up two backup characters so you're ready to go when your character inevitably dies. There's also some brief discussion about the assumed campaign trajectory and source of replacement PCs -- low-level characters are part of a large cryptdigging company camped near the dungeon entrance. They're the expendable scouts, but if they survive and level up they'll take on more leadership & logistics responsibilities, including recruiting new expendable scouts.



Next time, Chapters 3 and 4: Advancements and Playing the Game!

Knave Houserules

I intended to publish this shortly after Knave's release. Oh well, hopefully it'll be of interest to the growing community.

Houserules covered below the cut:

1. Odds of Success & Vocations
2. Death & Dying
3. Races
4. Backstab / Sneak Attack

The next post will cover Spellcasting and Cantrips. But first, some context.

Knave is a new rules framework (i.e. not a complete game) by Ben Milton. You can check out its product page or his  youtube video explaining some of its features and rationale.

@valzi has an excellent blog post listing various hacks, houserules, and resources he and others have made.

I've written a spreadsheet that randomly generates a 1st-level knave.

I think with some tweaks, Knave has real potential to appeal to people who otherwise wouldn't be into OSR games. Basically, I think a lot of people out there, perhaps introduced to D&D through streaming/podcasts or because friends are playing, are looking for a game that avoids the character build and tactical combat aspects of 5e, but who also want rarer lethality and more frequent spellcasting than the typical BX clone.

Knave could be the foundation for that game. It has enough mechanical similarity with 5e that it's easy to learn, but discards everything that bogs down the game (as judged by dead air on podcasts I listen to). Knave gets rid of, among other things:

• modifiers to damage
• bonus actions
• a skill list
• spell levels not lining up with character levels
• long-winded class abilities and spell descriptions
• any rules distinction between ability checks, attack rolls and saving throws
• proficiency bonus

So below the cut are some ideas to fulfil this design goal.

For now the following calls all d20 rolls "saving throws" in line with Knave regardless of whether they'd be an attack roll, saving throw or ability check in 5e parlance. I would change this for a published standalone product, but for a bunch of houserules I think consistency is important.