Heroes of Adventure System Review 3.2: Swords and Sorceries

  This is part 2 of Part 3 of my review of the Heroes of Adventure freebie heartbreaker labour of love/AI art extravaganza/TTRPG system, where I focus on the latter half of the Player’s Handbook. Earlier parts focused on the system as a whole and the underlying math.
  When last we left our hero Dave he died in character creation. It’s assumed that eventually we’ll manage to make a character that survives a couple 1-in-6 chances to die embarrassingly, so now we need to outfit him. It’s a silver standard world out there, so let’s take our slightly tarnished coins to the shop…
Chapter Four: Equipment
  Ah, the good old shopping list. I’ll look along the lists for notable omissions or inputs, but first a bit on items…heroes can carry 12 items, plus one per strength skill die. 6 items are available at a given time, while the rest are stowed, and coins are 500 per “item slot”. The biggest difference between HoA equipment and most systems is that these things break constantly, damaged on a critical failure (natural 1), utterly destroyed if damaged again while dinged. This 5% failure rate applies to magic items, too, where enchanted items get diminished once and then start to randomly lose features. There’s a possibility of fixing things but the dangers to equipment are real. The system also uses the pretty common “shields are shattered” rule to trade a shield for a single hit’s damage. Neat.
  Weapons and armour are a list that won’t surprise most, although Gygax would frown at the piddly three polearms available, need about ten more at least. Weapons and armor have special feature tags that make them special…the Heavy tag in particular imposes disadvantage on magic and dexterity checks, trying to prevent thieves and wizards in full plate. Fair. There are oil flasks Dwarven Bombs available, although at a steep 300sp price they won’t be ubiquitous. Rations, as a good benchmark, go for 5 silver pieces per 2 days, so a bomb will feed you for a third of a year. Healing potions do exist, although they’re pricy at 250sp…better healing options are the healer’s kit (d6 healing x5) or bandages (d4 at disadvantage healing). All these things are in the DM-fiat world of “not easily available in small settlements”, so only towns have Ye Olde Alchemyst’s Shoppe.
  Finally, under “items” we do have properties, animals, and hirelings. Sell-Swords are a remarkably cheap 10sp per turn plus expenses, which means wise players will have kill squads of mercs most of the time. I do like having a hunting hawk cost 25x more than a day of a mercenary risking life and limb. Generally, I noted no major omissions on the tables here, equipment is section is perfectly fine.
Chapter Five: Crafting
  On the one hand, this section is only three pages for crafting and alchemy, so there’s some general hand-waving happening here. On the other hand, this system is pretty great considering that’s in in the player book. Basically there’s a long list of rando ingredients and materials that have a suggested crafting or potion use, and it becomes a game between player and DM to try and use the broad but useable guidelines to make the thing that the crafting player envisions. From long experience without huge mechanical benefits only about one player per dozen will be really into this system, but that one player will be really really into the system. I might actually port this crafting system into my own games I like it so much.
Chapter Six: Magic
  Long-term players of D&D are leaning forward now, licking their chops. Here, more than anywhere else, is where a fantasy adventure game sets itself apart from others. Any game where wizards are protagonists, they will tend to dominate the tone and action, all the more so as they advance in levels. Wise system designers will hang all kinds of disadvantages on their wizards, knowing that they’re going to be so dominant as the story advances, and they’re right to do so. Still, without magic we’re all just playing d20 Modern here, which is an awful thing, so let’s dive in.
  Magic is cast using the magic skill, typically with a DC 10 or a roll-off against a stat being used as the target’s save. Critical effects are applied to this skill check too, so a natural 20 will automatically amplify the spell (adding more range/bigger die/etc) and a natural 1 will mean a roll on ye olde Wild Magic table. The are no spells-per-day slots or limits, but every spell cast costs one hit point, or 2/3 if the spell is amplified/even more amplifieder, and that hit point doesn’t get healed outside of sleep at night, so that’s the limit. Taking a school of magic opens up all 10 spells in that school to cast, but unless the magician is proficient with the spell its cast at disadvantage. Each level a caster gains two spells as proficiency per school, and once the caster is proficient with all spells in a school he gains access to a miracle, a very powerful spell that permanently reduces hp by 2 and is only cast once per six months. The school list:

• Air: This is all your usual fly, wind, and fog effect, plus silence and invisibility because okay. Miracle is a tornado, natch.
• Arcane: Bedrock school with detect, read, and dispel magics, plus a magic missile and charm/illusion. Miracle is permanently enchanting a magic item.
• Chaos: General warp stuff, including a visible-range teleport. Miracle summons a chaos demon to do a task.
• Dark: Most systems call this the necromancy school; skeletons are in here. Miracle cloaks an area in night, weaksauce.
• Divine: Clerical spells in here, so heals, blessings, smites, cleansing. Miracle is swearing an oath that grants advantage on ALL ACTIONS to achieve it until fulfilled.
• Earth: You’re an Earthbender, who can miraculously earthquake in the end.
• Fire: The damage school of choice for the discerning mage. Miracle summons a fire demon to do a task.
• Form: What we called “transmutation” back in the day, miracle allows permanent polymorphing.
• Ice: Aka how the lame Wonder Twin cheats, it’s Elsa powers. Including her miraculous permafreeze.
• Light: Clerical spells again, but shiny. Miracle is raise dead, so that is available in-game.
• Matter: Telekinetic school, feels kind of sci-fi. Miracle is very vague, “change physical attributes of a settlement-sized area”.
• Nature: It’s being a druid, you know what this does. Miracle makes a really big rock or tree.
• Psionic: Standard psychic spell stuff, again sci-fi feel. Miracle makes a settlement align with your philosophy, creepy.
• Rune: It’s like arcane, but with runes, add golems. Miracle also enchanting a thing.
• Shadow: Edgelord spell school, very illusiony. Miracle is a permanent illusion.
• Time: Tricky school with time effects, but the MIRACLE TRANSPORTS ONE PERSON UP TO 100 YEARS BACK IN TIME.
• Totem: Animal powers, the buffing school. Miracle gives a permanent monster ability.
• Water: You’re a Waterbender (including the healing), who can miraculously tidal wave in the end.

  Two of the somewhat weird schools are Rune Magic and Totem Magic; Runes are painted on a subject and last for 24 hours or until activated for the effect. Totem magic is a whole other thing…it’s a minigame where the caster hunts for bits of animals and uses those bits to make totems, which then last forever until broken for the spell effect.
  Overall, the spells listed here are pretty complete and seem to be decently strong and varied, with no obvious overpowered stuff beyond the twice-a-year miracles. If anything, the spells feel like they’re tuned to be on the weaker side compared to the D&D norm, with the author clearly knowing his stuff. Magical healing is a touch parsimonious; nobody is going to be outhealing the boss damage here.  I like the magic fine.
Chapter Seven: The Gods
  Seems like a weird place to put fluff at first, but it’s actually a nifty little two-page religious spellcasting subsystem that gives a list of gods, how to impress them for “piety points”, and how to ask for their divine favors (a spell that is cast using a piety point). Only one favor can be asked for per day, and it’s a religion skill check to have a prayer successfully answered. Every character can interact with this system, and remember, this is the player-facing book. I love this subsystem and I think I’ll be stealing it.
The Rest
  The book finishes with a couple pages of pregenerated heroes and a no-frills but very functional blank character sheet. As always with a players’ book, it’s not focused on the sale of “you should play this system”, it’s more “so your DM picked this to play, here’s how”. I think the Players Handbook does a good job on this task. No player in the history of the hobby has ever read an entire player handbook, of course, but there are good systems in here for the DM to swipe and staple on the foreheads of players interested in those mechanics. Organization and presentation are fine, length is decent, content is solid…good handbook here, Nameless Designer. Now of course we need to drill down to how the game gets run…

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