The Dark Eye 4.0 by Moldless Bread
What is The Dark Eye?
Original SA post The Dark Eye 4.0What is The Dark Eye?
The Dark Eye is often called the most popular german roleplaying game. Meaning, it was both the most successful game written in Germany as well the most played game by german Gamers. I don't know if these numbers still hold up today, but both facts were definitely true in the nineties and early aughties.
So there was that guy named Ulrich Kiesow. Sometimes in the 80s, he sits down to play a newfangled thing called Dungeons and Dragons. Kiesows reaction is great, he thinks that whole pen and paper roleplaying thing is the bees knees (something we all can understand, I'm sure). Rather than getting annoyed that DnD books are hard to get in Germany and moving on with his life, he starts writing and publishing his own system and setting: The Dark Eye. Somewhere along the line in the third edition, he founds Fantasy Productions, his own publishing company, publishing the game, adventure paths and a magazine and giving opportunities to other RPGs, Fantasy and SciFi literature.
By the time 3rd edition comes around, there is a large and established fanbase of the game. Most notable of that is probably the letter-game, where fans had the chance to put their player characters in the position of lords and nobles and roleplayed political issues and campaigns. The results of these multi-year affairs shaped and influenced the history of the setting.
The 4th Edition got released in 2002. This is the edition I am reviewing and the one I have most experience with. Ulrich Kiesow died in 1997, by the way, so I am assuming this edition has little to no input from him.
2015 saw the release of 5th edition. I am only familiar with it by looking over the beta rules once. It definitely got modernized, slimming the system down somewhat, but it still was too complex and did not have a clear enough selling point for my tastes.
There was an attempt to market the 4th Edition in America, but that didn't end up successful. As a result, only the basic rules have been translated, and I don't have access to those, so I'm going to use the german books for this review. That also means some terms might be translated differently than the official version.
Personally, I'm no longer a friend of the system. I played it for years and years (don't make me count, I'm getting old) and have run again and again into small annoyances, inconsistencies and bloated subsystems, so my viewpoint might bleed through and it's possible that I complain about a perfectly serviceable rule.
My relationship to the setting is somewhat better, having lots of nostalgia for certain events and parts of the world, although there are enough things that never gripped me or actively annoyed me that might set more vitriol off.
As the biggest german RPG for many years, it also tried to cover every possible thing you could play. That is something that is already difficult for a ruleset, but with a fixed setting it becomes a nightmare. TDE tries to offer lighthearted fairytales and gruesome horror, swashbuckling duels and large-scale engagements, a low magic setting and great feats of sorcery, presents itself as a beginners game full of narrative freedom and provides loads of very expansive and very crunchy rules at the same time. In my opinion, the game constantly stumbles over this mishmash of options and both rules and setting suffer for it.
This just won't be a very objective review, is what I'm saying.
Another note is that is has been definitely more than a decade since I read the rulebooks properly, having run the game mostly from memory and houserules since then. So I might (re-)discover something I was not aware of.
Who knows, maybe this will rekindle my interest or more in TDE (which would actually be good, because it looks like I am going to play it a bit longer...). Wish me luck!
The rules – quick overview
We're starting off with a quick primer over the game's rules and world. It's going to take a while to get a complete picture going through the books chronologically, so I am giving a bit context upfront.
The basic check
The basic check is a D20 roll-under check and will be involved, one way or another, in most tests. You look up your target number, roll a D20, apply modifiers and succeed if your roll is below or equal the target number, otherwise you fail. Natural 1s are great successes, Natural 20s are blunders.
(And already, TDE decides to be bit difficult, even if it is not a huge deal. For some reason I can't figure out, the game designers insist on modifying the roll instead of the target number, adding a number to difficult checks and subtracting from easy ones. Meaning, the short notation is +X for difficult checks and -X for easy ones. And that just feels counterintuitive.
I dont't know, if that has always been a thing in earlier editions, but in 5th they changed it around)
The Attributes
And how do you get your Target number? The eight Attributes (or good characteristics, for old times sake) of a character are used both for simple Checks (Can you lift that Gate? Can you catch the falling trinket? Is your first impression a good one?) and are a part of a skill check.
The Attributes are:
Courage (CR) Raw willpower, keeping your nerves under pressure and decisiveness.
Intuition (IN) Quick wits, having the right feelings and trusting them. Understanding Stuff before you can combine all the facts.
Cleverness (CL) Logical Thinking and Memory. Being really good at Lining up the facts in your head.
Charisma (CH) Projecting Confidence, seeming empathic, being likable, regardless of your looks. Also the strength of the characters magical Aura.
Constitution (CO) Being tough. That's it, really. But what more do you need?
Agility (AG) Speed, Flexibility, Moving exactly where you want to go.
Fingers Fleetness(FF), Hand to eye-coordination, fine-motor skills.
Physical Power (PP) Not just being swole, but also knowing how to effectively use your power.
Each Attribute starts between 8 and 14 for the average Hero, (10 is the absolute average for a random person) and maxes out at 1,5 times the starting value.
Additionally, the Attributes make up some derived stats.
A Derived stat is made up of several Attributes and potentially a racial modifier. Basic Attack, for example is calculated as (CR+AG+PP)/5. This does prevent God-stats (and I guess it is has more verisimilitude than strength only), but is hell to calculate on the fly when a stat-altering spell hits.
The derived stats are:
Life Points: Keep some to survive. CO and PP. Usually ends up somewhere between 25 and 35 for starting Characters.
Stamina: Keep some to do other stuff than crawl around on the ground. CR, CO and AG. Ends up in the same Range as Life Points.
Astral Points: Spell points, Mana, Magick. However you want to call it. Only available to those born with the magic spark. CR, IN, CH. Can end up with great variance, depending on what kind of caster you are.
Magic Resistance: A passive defense to make a Wizards life a little bit harder. CR; CL, CO. Gets a negative Modifier from race and usually ends up between 3 and 6
Initiative: Act first in Combat. Becomes drastically more important if you are using optional combat rules. CR,IN, AG. Starting Characters have between 7 and 11
Basic Attack: How good are you at hitting, regardless of weapon skill. CR, AG, PP. 7 or 8 for beginners.
Basic Parry: How good are you at not getting hit, regardless of weapon skill. Also used for Dodging, but we're not calling it Defense because it was always known as Parry. IN, AG PP. 7 or 8 for beginners.
Basic Ranged attack: Hitting, but at Range. IN, DX, PP. 7 or 8 for beginners.
Wound threshold: Damage below that threshold lowers your Life points, but that's it. If the damage reaches or exceeds the threshold, you incur penalties in addition to the damage. Half your Constitution.
Skills (and Spells) and the 3D20 Method
Having those Attributes for simple challenges is nice and all, but realistically, most of your out-of-combat rolls will be made via skills.
The GM will tell the players which skill is rolled. There are plenty of choices, seeing that there are – uh, let me look– roughly 150 different skills.
Were 90s Skill lists still a thing in the 2000s? Because that is a 90s skill list.
The list does include gems like Casting metal, Weaving and Carpentry (which are distinct from Blacksmithing, Sewing and Woodworking, of course), so you're character will only have a fraction of those – fraction meaning roughly a quarter, in this case.
Some Skills are Basic skills (Everybody can use them) and others are Special skills (You can only use them if you put points in it).
They are further divided in 9 skill categories: Combat skills, Physical skills, Social, Nature, Knowledge, Languages, Writing, Crafting and Gifts.
Combat skills, Language and Writing work differently than the others, we'll skip those for now. We will get back to combat in this post, at least.
So, how we roll skill checks?
By using the 3D20 method.
Let's look at Climbing, for example. It looks like this.
Climbing (CR/AG/PP) EN x2 SRV 9
9 is the Skill Rank Value for our Example.
EN x2 is the encumbrance modifier. When climbing, you take a penalty double your encumbrance in addition to other modifiers. (For this example, we're unencumbered). That is mostly a thing for physical skills.
As you can see, there are three Attributes attached to it. Those are set by the rules, but the book points out that at the GMs discretion you could change the ones you’re using. You could only use mental skills, if the character wants to know something about climbing or replace AG with CO if you are rolling for a long, strenuous climb. The assumption is, though, that you are using the given Attributes most of the time.
Each Skill has 3 Attributes attached, although some skills have one Attribute doubled up. It's never the same attribute for all 3 checks, though.
So, with skill rank 9 you are a competent, but not amazing climber and your three stats come out as 14/12/10 in order.
How do you actually climb that wall?
In Essence, you are making three Attribute Checks and try to pass all of them. Throw 3D20 and roll, in order, below 15,13 and 11.
Having to succeed in all three rolls seems daunting, but that is what your skill ranks are for.
If you roll above your target numbers, you can change the rolled number by 1 for each skill rank you spend.
So suppose you roll 7/13/14. You would have failed, but we are using our skill ranks to lower the second roll by 1 and the third by 4. We don't get bonuses for rolling so well on the first roll.
We have now succeeded in the skill roll and even kept 4 SP* (Skill points remaining - and no, it doesn't look less clunky in German).
Some rolls will be binary success/failure with a difficulty modifier upfront, some will not have a modifier but give you a scaling success on your SP*, most rolls will use both.
If you can easily calculate the chances of success in your head, I am impressed. I certainly can't.
I've seen a reference chart made by someone with a much better head for probabilities, and that was a three-dimensional matrix.
That also means the GM is usually eyeballing the difficulty.
The 3D20 Method is at least as old as 3rd Edition and came about (as far as I can tell) because they wanted to add verisimilitude to the check (because there is more to climbing than strength). From now on it is in the game because it always has been in the game. The 3D20 Method is one of the most requested features to be kept whenever there is an Poll about desired features of (theoretical) new editions.
It has now become the trademark of the system, I suppose.
TDE is a classless system, you buy Attributes, Skills and Feats directly by spending EXP. It's therefore always a bit difficult to know how good a character should be in a given skill.
Skill ranks up to 3 represent dabbling in that skill, a rank of 7 denotes "the end of apprenticeship", a skill of 15 makes you a master. Above 20 is the realm of legendary Grandmasters and/or experienced PCs.
Spells work the same as skills. You need to pay Astral points, depending on which spell you cast, but the roll is the same. Each spell is a seperate Skill that you need to learn and raise individually.
Feats
Feats are specialized Bonuses that you buy outside the skill system. Learn your way around in a certain kind of environment, learn the secrets of certain skills, learn to power your magic with a your life force.
Any kind of combat maneuver needs to be bought as a Feat first. They are rather expensive (and getting them cheaper or for free is the greatest advantage of combat professions), but are available to any character that fulfills the requirements.
Combat
So i promised you we would get back to combat for this overview.
First you take your weapon skills and calculate your Attack and Parry.
Combat skills run in the same range of Skill ranks as all the other skills. But instead of using the 3D20 system, you split the skill rank in two numbers (Difference no greater than 5) and add one to your Basic Attack, the other to the Basic Parry. Ranged Weapons get the full Skill Rank added, but have higher penalties.
Once you have determined your Attack and Parry for each skill (Swords or Sabers or Rapiers or Hand-and-a-Half Swords or Two-handed Blades... Impact Weapons cover axes, hammers and maces though...) you hopefully pick the weapon you're best with and engage the person you deem most worthy of getting their faces rearranged.
Every Character gets one action (read: Attack) and one reaction (read: Parry) as well as a free, minor action.
At the most basic, you determine Initiative and the winner goes first. They attack their target, roll against their Attack Value and hit if the roll succeeds, otherwise the attack misses without effect*.
If the attack hits, though, the defender gets to use their reaction to roll against their parry.
If they fail, they take damage. If the roll succeeds, the Attack does nothing.
Yes, the combat system gives every character one flat chance each round to completely no-sell an successful attack. Yes, the chance is roughly equal to the chance of the attack hitting. Yes, the chance easily starts at 50 % and rises with the skill of the character, ending usually above 100 %.
Yes, combat in TDE usually takes a lot of Combat rounds, a good deal of them ending with all attacks whiffing or going *clang*.
The maneuver Feint lowers enemies parry and is more or less mandatory for any fighter. In fact, a lot of high level tactics consist of circumventing the parry roll altogether.
Back in first edition, the combat system was supposedly created to model one-on-one duels, each character taking on their own enemy. This still shows. Since you only get a single parry each round, multiple enemies can easily cut you up without much chance to do anything against this. Even experienced Fighters struggle against mediocre Bandits when outnumbered, unless there is a serious difference in damage and Armor.
Damage is always rolled in one or more D6 with a static modifier. For comparisons:
The longsword (the "gold standard" of average weapons) deals 1D+4 Damage.
Armor works as a flat damage reduction. Most characters can scrounge up at least an 2 points armor, dedicated fighters can go up to 5 or 6 without much trouble.
If the damage ends up higher than the wound threshold, the character gets a mechanical wound, taking a penalty of 2 for each of their wounds on most rolls.
When the life points reach 5 (not 0!), the character is incapacitated. If they reach 0 the character starts dying. In-Combat healing is very rare, Magical healing is somewhat more common if you can take few minutes for it to cast.
Natural healing sits at 1D6 Life points per day, plus bonuses from healing skills, likely having a character recover in around a week. You could chalk that up to genre convention, but to keep verisimilitude the Healthy Air of Aventuria is explicitly a thing.
Combat maneuvers give you a diverse array of options to change the flow of combat – increase damage, Counterattack, force the enemy into the defensive. Usually you just make an Roll with a certain penalty, reaping the benefits of the maneuver at a success , but taking additional penalties when you foul up.
*The book is very explicit that a miss can be refluffed in a lot of ways instead of just hitting air like a dummy – not finding an opening in the enemies guard, hitting but not penetrating armor, getting parried without effort, etc. Most players don’t remember that, though.
Next up: The Setting primer
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Additional Infos
If there is one thing that defines TDE, it’s lists: Long, densely packed lists full of information you need to read to understand all of your available options. I can’t withhold those from you. But instead of summarizing a whole lot of important, interesting and/or irritating things or bombarding you with several list-filled updates in a row, I am parceling some entries out over the updates. We’ll start with the Culture Corner, the Profession Parade, and the Spell selection.
Culture Corner
In the Culture Corner we will take a closer look at the people from all around the continent. I will give you a short blurb about them together with any oddities, warts and fun little details that is unique to them.
I will also comment on the mechanical effects of this culture if your character hails from these places, which will consist mostly of a small array of skill points and some automatic advantages or disadvantages.
I will present the cultures in order of the book, which is sorted by... popularity of the culture, maybe? It starts with the standard not-europeans, jumps around the entire continent and ends with a barbarian culture whose schtick is excessive cruelty. I can't really make out a pattern here.
Profession Parade
Every Character decides on a profession packet during creation to represent what they learned up to the beginning of their adventuring career. Some of the professions provide only training, others shape the characters outlook and philosophy way beyond the apprenticeship.
Every profession gives the character knowledge in an array of skills (that can be individually raised later), providing most of the starting characters skill points. They also determine the starting equipment and some other goodies or automatic dis/advantages.
I am going by to introduce the professions in the order of the book, which is divided by general focus (combat, social, magic etc) and then sorted alphabetically – in German, so the translated version will likely appear random.
Spell selection
Most magic in Aventuria works by casting discrete spells. You pick one of the known spells, roll for it and get a predictable result, the actual effectiveness often modified by the quality of the check.
Some of the spells have certain variants you can cast instead, increasing the difficulty of the check but getting some focused effect, an extended one or a result that only vaguely resembles the original spell.
The entry also lists the reversed effect (doable via a certain spell). Those should mostly be obvious, but I'll mention some of the funnier ones as well.
I'll present the spells in the order of the book, which is alphabetical order of the often charmingly silly faux-latin names most of the spells have. (Sadly, but probably reasonably, they shortened the spell names to one or two words of faux-latin instead of the rhyming chants of earlier editions.)
The world - quick overview
Original SA post The Dark Eye 4.0The world - quick overview
The rules of The Dark Eye are very closely tied to its setting, with a lot of mechanics being specifically tied to its fluff and some character classes being directly tied to the background.
TDE plays on the continent Aventuria (Yeah, I know...) in the world of Ethra (Yeah, I know...).
It is, frankly speaking, a completely generic fantasy world without any outstanding features you'd notice from a glance. It's main draws are the incredible detailed sourcebooks about most of the world, the constantly evolving metaplot (both a matter of preferences) and the fact that it is almost impossible to separate from the most widespread german RPG, often being the first contact for new players.
The standard way the world is presented always reminded of fairy tales. Sure, there are Trolls or Witches or both in the forest, and a wizard travels through the hamlet every few years (Grandma even saw one cast a spell once!), but for the most part, the people are living a completely mundane life. (City folk usually have more wizards hanging around, so they are a bit more jaded towards the weird stuff). The TDE Designers dubbed this Phantastic realism; you can basically assume the life in Aventuria to be equivalent to the real world, unless magic or divine influence is explicitly mentioned.
Of course, the more you get into the metaplot, the more you stumble upon great feats of magic, Demons walking the earth and other high fantasy stuff (hello, magic Battleship), but tone issues will be a thing I am going bring up a couple of other times in this review.
Oh, yeah, the metaplot. Year for year, the time advances both in the real world and in the game, therefore you have magical discoveries, military campaigns, political upheaval and personal drama of the rich and powerful happening across the years in real time.
Aside from setting books, novels and Campaign books referring to events in earlier publications the most visible effect is the Aventurischer Bote (Aventurian Herald), a long running magazine released every two months (Still running, at currently # 174) which is equal parts rules und community updates, a publication of short adventure scenarios and an actual ingame Newspaper detailing the newest demonic invasion and/or academic humiliation of a famous wizard of the month.
I personally never followed it and have lapsed the metaplot some years ago anyway, so I'm only pointing out the most important events. I am also going to freely jump around the timeline, depending on what I am associating with the current topic.
Lastly, I am going to bitch and rant and complain about a lot of things, but there is one thing in the game that has always been cool: Aventuria has very emancipated genders and ist tolerant of sexuality. Most cultures treat men and women as equals and have mixed groups in all parts of life, I can't remember a single instance of homophobia anywhere and there are several same-sex couples among the important characters.
Anyway, let's take a short trip around the continent.
Let's start off right in the middle, in the most central location of the gameline (geographically as well as narratively). The Middle Realm is an Empire encompassing several Provinces that all resemble different european places around the late medieval to early renaissance period, most of them with a germanic feel.
It has towns full of free citizens, minor nobles and beggars, hamlets full of peasants and hunters, feudal lords from Baron to Counts and Dukes, Meadows, Forests, Knights, well traveled roads and forsaken places deep in the forests, temples and wizard academies in cities, hermits and the odd wizard tower outside...
Again, the broad strokes are rather generic.
The city of Gareth is the biggest city on the continent, housing 200.000 people, merchants with goods from all over the continent, temples of every god and two wizard academies. It's also the traditional seat of the Imperial Court, but the court has taken to travel from province to province in recent years.
Other sample provinces are:
Weiden in the north is lagging somewhat behind culturally and resembles the later middle ages, with fewer urban centers and militaries consisting of Knights and their Men-at-arms rather than standing armies or mercenary companies.
Almada has a bit of a spanish flair, trading doublet and longsword for ruffled shirts and Rapiers. The locals take their honor seriously, live life vicariously and are involved in constant border skirmishes in the south.
Albernia lies at the western coast, has a close connection to the local fairies and – going by the names of the locals- has an Irish influence.
Warkhome on the eastern border of the empire used to be the military capital of the realm. We'll come back here later.
We will continue northeast and then move on counterclockwise. That seems unintuitive, but I have my reasons.
In the northeastern part of Aventuria lies the Foundland, which can be grossly oversimplified into two places: The once prosperous (but not yet ruined) Merchant-city of Festum on the coast, unique for having a sizable population of Goblins living together in peace with the human majority. The Goblins are clearly second-class citizens, but it's peaceful nonetheless.
And then there is Seweria, the endless wilderness to the north. The name's similarity to Siberia is no accident. The entire Country has a definite eastern-european bend. The landscape is dotted with isolated settlements, populated by serfs whose quality of life is mostly determined by how much exactly of an asshole their local Bronnjar (Noble) is.
Between those places roam wild goblin tribes, making trouble for travelers and occasionally following the words of their centuries old prophet, as well as Norbards, nomadic merchants who have a reputation for selling you everything you need (and some things you don't) and throwing amazing parties.
Going further north into the frozen wastes, we ignore the inhospitable lands of demonic cold in favor of the inhospitable lands of natural cold. As you'd expect of frozen wastes, there is straight up a whole lot of nothing for miles, with inhabitants coming down mostly to frost-elves, snow-orcs and ice-Conans either minding their own business or trying to kill each other. Also the Niveses, tribes of caribou-herders, who try to keep out of those conflicts and treat the occasionally born werewolf in their tribes with great reverence.
We could make a stop in our journey west to visit the elven lands in the south, but that is a bit of misnomer. Instead of a proper elven Kingdom it mostly means "There are an unusual amount of elven communities hidden between our human settlements." Some of the elves have even have moved to the human towns – why, almost 600 in the biggest one.
Yeah, there aren't that many elves around anymore in the setting. The ones that are usually stay in their primitive societies and look down on the short lived races.
The western half of the northern coast takes a dip into a slightly warmer climate, so we actually have things going on here.
The Svelltlands (named after the river in it), used to be an loose federation of city-states. But then the orcs came and claimed the land as their own. They now occupy the land, forcing the rural population to work for them and occasionally take slaves.
The cities are still free from occupation as long as they regularly pay tribute to the orcs. One of those cities on the coast is Riva, home to the Stoerrebrandt merchant-family, richest Aventurians alive. If you played the third Realms of Arkania game you know the city, you mostly hung around here.
But where did those Orcs come from? To the west lies the aptly named Orcland, a wide grass steppe that used to be populated by warring tribes until the Aikar Brazoragh, supposedly an Avatar of their gods, arrived and united the clans to take the fight to the humans. His goal is to the replace the humans as the dominant force in the world. There is actually a metaphysical component to this, but for now it means raiding as much of the human lands as he can.
If you played the second Realms of Arkania game, you mostly hung around here.
On the northwestern coast lies Thorwal, land of the freedom loving, hard drinking not-vikings and main setting of the first Realms of Arkania game. Depending on where exactly in the land you look (and who is writing them) Thorwalians range from good-natured, honest people who go south in their longboats to free slaves, have a good fight and kill some whalers to bloodthirsty, xenophobic assholes who go south to sink ships, pillage coastal towns and kill some whalers.
Thorwalians love whales, is what I am saying, and that actually puts them at odds with the Gjalskers, Barbarians north of the Orclands who wear kilts, channel totem animals and bury their dead by hurling them into a sea with a catapult.
Further South lie Nostria and Andergast, two kingdoms locked in a centuries old, sometimes-hot-sometimes-cold war, started for a reason nobody remembers. Nostergast (don't call it that in front of locals) is on the cultural and technological level of the early-to high middle ages and is seen as a beginners area, providing limited scope and map-size, easy politics and lots of potential mysteries in the dense forests.
This area is another one where the oscillating tone of the game is more prominent, flip-flopping between a place where poor peasants are trying to scrape out a meager living between famine, disease and uncaring nobles that could call on them to die in a senseless war on the one hand. On the other, it is a place that is constantly creating new noble positions with increasingly ridiculous names in an attempt to out-posh the other side and is feverishly working to win an arms race to have a more prestigious navy(with Nostria sporting "several fearsomely painted fishing boats" and Andergast being able to present a proper, modern warship – anchored in a lake, with the kingdom being landlocked and all...)
Going past the Middle-realm provinces of Albernia and Windhague we arrive in the southern half of the continent and begin with the Realm of Horas. The Horasians have an actual renaissance going on, harkening back to the not-roman Empire of Bosparan (the calender of the game counts in years since Bosparans fall). They are a small nation, but rich and technologically advanced with high-sea capable ships, plenty of clockwork and a standing army of not-musketeers (there are most definitely no gunpowder weapons in Aventuria, their guns being miniaturized versions of roman torsion ballistae. There are black powder fireworks, though).
The flavor of the Horasians is full-on swashbuckling. Courtly intrigue, Rapier fights on the roofs of the city and fancy capes with wide-brimmed hats are all found here.
The Cyclops-Isles – an island chain with an old-Greece flavor that also houses the last remaining cyclopes, who are as likely to dispense ancient wisdom as they are to sink your ship with huge rocks – is a vassal of the Horasian realm.
South Aventuria proper is filled with impenetrable jungles, forgotten temples of ancient civilizations and a sea full of isolated Islands that allow some Caribbean Pirate feel.
The rainforest is filled with plenty of tribal societies of native people who are trying to keep their indigenous lifestyle and animistic beliefs, but this is hard with the missionaries from the north and all the city states expanding their influence.
Some of those cities are colonies of the northern realms, but most belong to the Black Alliance of Al'Anfa. The Alliance seems mostly written as an antagonistic force in the south, being portrayed as a ruthless society full of backstabbing and hedonism, that nonetheless has large presence in the southern sea and lays claim to its natural resources.
A bright spot however, is that unlike the feudalistic lands of the north, there is vertical mobility– the society is cutthroat, but technically anyone is able to rise to the top and found one of the ruling families.
That only applies to the free citizens though – slaves are a different matter.
Slavery in Al'Anfa is legal and widespread and slaves are generally seen as expendable. Most Slaves are from the surrounding tribes, but that is a matter of pragmatism rather than any strictly racial motivation – one of the Grande families consists entirely of descendants of local natives.
Aside from that ugly issue, Al'Anfa is mostly notable being a theocracy. The patriarch of the Alliance is also the counter-pope of one the major religions.
Going back up north on the eastern side coast we come to the Lizard Marshes. Just like the elven lands, this isn't a place the Lizardmen are controlling and more an area you're more likely to find their tribes.
Lizardmen used to control great empires, but these days they have retreated from their former places and are busy hiding from their gods.
There is also the city of Selem. It used to be an the Capital of an old sultanate, an enormous and prestigious city more than a millennium ago. Then a meteor struck the bay of the city, shattering parts of of the coastline and flooding parts of the city and the surrounding countryside.
Today the city and the surrounding Ruins are suffused with feelings of squalor, madness and decay, humans and lizardmen lead lives of constant paranoia. Fishmen, toadmen and Crocodilemen are more common here than in any other part of Aventuria, possibly congregating in a tempel to an Archdemon under the sea. The Library of old is supposedly still intact, possibly still holding secrets from the old sultanate.
I am also once again baffled how many sapient underwater people there are for a game that gives so little support for adventures there.
Leaving the coast for a minute, we move further inland to the Khom Desert and the Caliphate. The seat of the caliphate and some other urban centers sit on the eastern edge of the desert, which is an endless sea of sand inhabited only by Novadi tribes who travel the dunes from oasis to oasis.
The Novadi and the caliphate are mainly united by their religion, its belligerent nature leading to constant clashes with other cultures.
What cultures are those? Almada in the north, Horasia in the west, Al'Anfa in the south, Amazons and Ferkina barbarians in the mountain ranges around them and occasionally remnants of the Lizardmen empire from a parallel dimension. They are busy people. To be fair, the Ferkina are assholes to everyone.
(The Novadi are strongly coded as muslims, xenophobic, very patriarchal and the book presents them as borderline unplayable. They used to be more sympathetic in earlier editions.)
Going back to the coast, Mhanadistan around the River Mhanadi and the Tulamidian city states are all heirs to the old Diamond sultanate, an old empire that got destroyed by Bosparan. The entire area is modeled after the stories of 1001 Nights and the local language is more or less Arabic.
The rural people are farmers in the fertile lands, nomadic animal herders or small communities formed around mining, while the city states range from the cosmopolitan Merchant city of Khunchom to the Magocracy with an oppressed underclass Fasar. Unlike the caliphate, they share most of their religion with the Middle realm, so the relationship is a lot more relaxed.
In the middle of Mhanadistan lies the Gorian Desert, which is not so much a proper desert as it is an area that had all its life sucked away by a magic ritual.
Further north lies the Matriarchy Arania, which is also an heir to the sultanates. The biggest difference to the other Tulamidians is that Arania has been under Middle realm occupation for a long time, becoming independent only recently. The resulting hybrid culture always struck me as an introduction to Tulamidian culture, allowing players to acclimatize if they want to shift their campaign there.
I like the Arani, but every story you could set here gets easily overshadowed by the fact that half of the country is currently occupied by the Blighted lands and its horrorshow.
What are the Blighted lands? Well, before we get there lets take one more step north to arrive at the Realmshield (Or Wildermarch, in a few Metaplot beats), located at the current eastern border of the Middle realm. Current, because the Middle realm used to stretch from coast to coast, but some shit happened and now the Blighted lands are squatting in the eastern provinces.
The area around Warkhome, then, is the frontline of a war that has become entrenched. Troops from all over the Middle realm come here to reinforce Fortresses and try to take bridgeheads, Warcamps across hundreds of miles of mountains, but concentrated around the Trollgap, constantly rotate fresh recruits with hundreds of wounded and soldiers gone mad from the demonic warfare whenever one side tries to advance.
Over time, the frontline will get frayed, Warkhome will fall and the area will become a no mans land, pockets of warlords and Bandits staking their own claim. For now though, the frontline runs right along the Trollpeak mountains. Yes there are trolls here, but they are not the man-eating monsters they are in most other games, but instead witnesses to ancient times and all around rather chill dudes.
Sigh. So, the Blighted lands, also known as the Black lands, the Shadow lands, Borbarads heirs, the Shardlands, Not-Mordor, Grimdarkistan, Evil-Dead-Land and DOOM DOOM DOOM DOOM (I may have made some of those up).
So, in recent years ("recent" meaning that it was a playable campaign in 3rd edition, the first module being released in 1994) Borbarad, an ill-tempered demigod gets reborn (as is usual for him). He takes a look around the world, decides "Fuck all of you", gathers up an army of mercenaries, opportunists and demons and starts a campaign of terror and conquests to... I don't actually know what his endgame was.
Anyway, he conquers several lands, including the eastern provinces of the middle realm.He and his armies get stopped at the Trollgate by the combined armies of the continent led by seven great heroes (5 of those unspecified, because they are supposed to be PCs). Borbarad himself gets slain by the heroes (who also put a stop to the "constantly getting reborn" thing by hurling his soul forward through time to the end of existence, which is admittedly a novel and metal way to deal with that). Several of Borbarads lieutenants cut their losses, each grab a shard of the demonic crown he was wearing, granting them a leverage in deals with one specific Archdemon each, and bugger off to occupy their own little playgrounds. Those end up the Blighted lands.
The lieutenants now rule those areas with a terror regime, each putting their own little twist (and that of their Archdemons) on their devices. Demons (who aren't just Dudes from another Dimension, but terrible blemishes on reality making the very fabric of existences scream by their mere presence) openly walk the land. People suffer and get mad, get killed to root out resistance fighters, to fuel demon summoning and to satisfy general assholishness, Children get pressganged as soldiers and the families of people trying to escape get horribly tortured as punishment.
I personally find the whole deal rather unfun to play, not just because of the unrelenting horribleness, but also because of the general depiction of the almighty Shardbearers punishing each every (player) action immediately and the expectation of the metaplot makes it hard to give the players any sense of success.
The Authors seemed to agree to that at some point, because as far as I can tell 4th Edition ended with several Campaigns that liberated the Blighted lands.
The inhospitable lands of demonic cold, half of Arania and large parts of the Island Maraskan belong to the Blighted lands as well, even if they are geographically seperated, but most of the lands are wedged between the Middle realm and the Foundland.
The Bloody sea is technically part of the Blighted lands as well, but I feel there are some things to talk about. The entire eastern coast is in the grasp of the the Archdemon of the sea, threatening the coastal towns and villages with raids from fish-, toad- and lobsterpeople and peppering the sea with demonic krakens and sea serpents, sudden maelstroms, patches of boiling water, fields of entangling seeweed and Demon Arks, enourmous living ships made from flotsam and organic detritus.
Unlike the rest of the Blighted lands however, the area is too big to be terrible everywhere. It is possible to cross the sea from its southern bounds up to Festum and encountering nothing but the bloody rain that gives the sea its name.
Since there are plenty of harbor cities trading and requiring supplies within the area (both from free lands and in the Blighted lands) there is an achievable objective for the players, there is a realistic chance of dealing with the problems popping up and that nautical horror tickles something I find kinda cool. I hate the Blighted lands, but I like the Bloody sea.
One last place: In the Bloody sea lies the Island of Maraskan. The Island is one of the few places it is possible to mine Endurium, a magical metal that can create extraordinary weapons and armor. Therefore it has a history of getting invaded. The Middle realms already invaded the island several years ago, but got bogged down in multi year guerilla war and was forced to retreat. Now, the Blighted lands have set up shop and are supplying the rest of the lands with the precious metal.
The insanely deadly flora and fauna gives the Island shades of Australia, the guerilla war in the jungle resembles Vietnam and arms and armor are clearly modeled after Japanese weapons, and yet the island as a whole resembles none of the above. Maraskani are weird, but I like them, and just like Arania it is a shame a lot of the place gets overshadowed by the blighted lands.
Did I forget something? Ah, Dwarves, I always forget Dwarves. Dwarves live (predictably) in several mountain ranges, mostly around the Middle realm. Some live together with humans in cities, although usually in separated quarters. Dwarves are available in the Flavors of Classical Dwarf, painfully cliched Turbodorf, Hobbit and and midget Cyrano de Bergerac.
Dragons are comparatively rare, range from dog-sized Gripedragons, to wingless Cave dragons and to giant Emperor dragons, who are highly intelligent and possess enormous magical skill. A couple Dragons involve themselves in human politics, but most are minding their own business, collecting their hoards.
So, now we know the continent we're supposed to play on. What do we know of the rest of the world?
To the west lies the continent Myranor, known as the Golden land in Aventuria. The Thorwalians and people from the Middle realm (as well as Horasia, the Foundland and large parts of the Al'anfanian Alliance) are actually native to this continent, having immigrated to Aventuria Millenia ago. The god of the seas specifically messes with everybody trying to cross the ocean these days, so the continent mostly exists in as a myth for the current Aventurians.
Myranor is a bit more high-fantasy than aventuria, featuring widespread non-humans, empires of sorcerer Kings and airships.
Fanpro created a gameline for Myranor, but it only met middling success and wasn't continued.
To the south lies Uthuria which is, to be brief, Fantasy-Africa. The Sailing routes aren't closed by divine decree like the western seas are, but sea monsters, underwater volcanoes and a continent-sized patch of closely packed algae made the trip all but impossible for millenia. Recently, some explorers made it back and brought back maps that allowed other ships to travel there (read: Adventure paths/sourcebooks have been published) and since I am currently starting to play in a campaign that's focused on exploring the continent, I can't actually tell you all that much about it.
Instead I'm going to complain about publishing model of spreading the setting book over the campaign books which seems to me like pushing the campaing on the players instead of just handing them the setting and letting them run wild.
Unless I am surprised by the ending of the the campaign I am probably going to have some unkind words about the campaign (and possibly the setting) down the line.
To the east lies the Giant's land which actually has a land bridge in the northeast of Aventuria, but it and all possible landing points for ships are blocked by the Brazen sword (Brazen, really? Does that make sense in english?), a mountain range reaching 33.000 feet above sea level.
There has been no official release, but all glimpses we've seen paint the land as Conan-y sword and sorcery. It's just that everything is bigger over there.
There are actually seven distinct Planes in the setting, but given that all others are places like the divine Castle Alveran, the stars above the world and the Netherhells, the characters probably won't hang around there. They are going to travel to the limbo (Etheric space between the planes) at most.
Placed in the Limbo are Globules, little pockets of liveable space that range from a few square meters of an Archmages personal retreat to Zze Tha, the remnant of the Lizard-Empire that decided to nope out of existence via a greater ritual when their Dragon Emperor got killed. It's more or less the size of the desert Khom, seeing as the desert got created when the lizards took all of the plants (and the weather, apparently?) with them when they left.
The fairy realms are their own distinct places that count as Globules as well.
Next: Magic and Religion
Culture Corner
We start of with Garetia. Rather than having the character hail from the Empires central province, as the name would imply, this is the culture shared by all inhabitants of the Middle Realms cities, encompassing both the central as well as the northern lands. The text points that out and admits a better name would be "Cities of the Middle Realm" which is the name the culture has been given in the 4.1 Rules. I guess it's good the writers named the culture appropiately eventually, but why not in the first place if you're putting that little admission right after the title...?
The culture is still a generic pastiche of medieval cities, but the text puts some effort in giving the reader a feel for the life in the city, making distinctions of the life between craftsmen, beggars and criminals and rich ne'er-do-wells.
I'll take the genericness as an excuse to list the subcategories of trivia each culture has. Those being: Place (The cities of the middle realm) Lifestyle (said tidbits about different milieus) Outlook and Faith (Generic Middle-Agers believing in the twelve gods, more cosmopolitan than rural people) Habits and Traditions (Very different. Buy the regional sourcebooks!) Clothing and Arms (Shirts, Tunics and Cloaks. Knows the basics of Polearms and Crossbow from Milita training) Roleplaying tips (However you like, but you know 'your' city), Language (Garethi, which is basically German. This subcategory also lists uncommon naming conventions outside the ones typical for the language) and Sources (lists the salient 3rd Edition Sourcebooks at this point)
Mechanically you get the cost in Generation Points (0! If your Character concept isn't married to a specific place, you're from here, I guess), Limits to Social Status and additional Stat Bonuses, Automatic, suggested and unfitting dis/-advantages and which professions can be found in this culture, followed by the cultures skill points. None of those are very exciting for Garetians – the skills are mostly inoffensive fluff skills, none above +2, but you get a smattering of a foreign language.
After the main stats comes a list of variants, in case it's really important for your character sheet to say you're from a coastal town. Those cost additional GP and gives some extra skill points, but Garetian Variants are incredibly pricey for the few +1 Skills they give.
Garetian Variants are: Harbor Cities, Religious centers, Colonial towns of the northern Regions. More interesting is the Noble Variant, which gives you the Nobility advantage for half price.
You can combine Variants unless specified.
Profession Parade
We begin with Combat professions
Although technically, every woman living on an amazon castle counts as an Amazon, only the ones that get their warrior training are the real deal. They don't just fight as light cavalry, every part of their training and combat is a holy service to the goddess Rondra at the same time, so they also put stock in looking awesome both in formation and in single combat. That's also why they wear their embarrassingly low-cut armor.
The text points out the amazons sometimes pick up a girl from outside of their castle and train her as a warrior, if she is badass enough.
Amazons cost a medium 13 GP, can only be women (obviously) and get the awesome Academic training (warrior), but always live by a Code of honor. They get good skills for cavalry charges and one-handed blades, some basic combat and Physical skills and a disappointingly low riding skill (probably to be used in tandem with the amazon culture). Otherwise there a very few skills in the other categories, but they get a decent all-rounder selection of feats (both automatic and discounted) as well as the most important feats for mounted combat.
They get their unique Amazon armor and saber among their Equipment.
Spell selection
Abvenenum purified food is a neat little utility spell, making rotten food edible again as well as purifying it from potential poison and diseases. The elvish version removes all alcohol from the drinks.
Accuratum Magic needle allows the wizard to change the color and cut of a piece of clothing in mere minutes. There are modifications for creating a piece of cloth from raw materials or changing the fabric.
Adamantium stone-like structure turns an object "almost indestructable" but has it become "incredible brittle" once the magic ends. Rules wise, it triples hardness and Structure HP but halves them afterward, so depending on the object it might now work quite as advertised.
The standard spell allows only for enchanting a few pounds of matter, but a variant exists to apply it to entire walls.
Other variants turns an expendable weapon in a short lived magic one, turns the object to shiny crystal or making the spell permanent.
Religion
Original SA post The Dark Eye 4.0Religion
Let's talk religion. The most widespread creation myth is that Sumu, the earth mother and Los, the Sky father met in the swirling nonexistance of chaos and fought each other, Los dealing a killing blow. Sumus dead body became the world and the flowing blood from her wounds created titans. Los, meanwhile, wept over his actions before going to sleep for eons, and his tears became the gods.
The gods and titans wage war on each other, with the fallen titans becoming mountain ranges.
The six last remaining Gods and the six last remaining titans finally make a truce, retreat to the divine Castle Alveran and start shaping the world and creating its Inhabitants, producing the world we are playing in.
The last gods and titans became the Twelve Gods, which is the most widespread religion on the continent. Not only is the religion accepted by all goldenlanders and (with variations) the tulamidians, but many of the other religions turn out to pray to one or more of the Twelve in disguise or their children.
But for the followers of the Twelve, they are the greatest and mightiest anyway.
(That is supported by the mechanics. The priests of the Twelve wield greater power than the priests of any other god)
The twelve are generally seen as benevolent, and the usual Dogma of the religion is and all or nothing deal (with "nothing" being heresy). Every faithful usually has a main god, but believes in and respects the others and may pray or sacrifice to them if he needs help in their speciality.
Most of the things we "know" about the gods are mortal interpretations of the divine powers, by the way. They vary rarely interact with humans in a comprehensible manner, the miracles of the priests being fueled by the divine power but shaped by the priests belief.
The twelve gods are:
Praios, god of light, of order and of the law (but not necessarily justice) and the prince of the twelve. He is the the sun and hates all magic. His church keeps up the "natural" order (feudalism, for example) demands discipline and obedience from the common people and is in general an approptiate stand-in when an author wants to criticize the Catholic Church. The also act as impartial judges and legal advisors, and the more sympathetic priests don't shy away from calling bullshit on authorities abusing their power.
Given the anti-magic bent of the religion, the church houses not one, but two Inquisitions. One, considering dark magicks and demon cultists are real, is portrayed as a necessary if flawed institution, the other goes "burn the witch" 24/7.
Rondra ist the goddess of thunderstorms, of chivalry and honorable combat. That specifically does not include war, but the lack of a more fitting god (and the necessity of divine support in recent years) sees them pushed in that situation regardless. How to arrange a belief in fair Duels and honest Challenges with the realities of war is a source of lots of headscratching, teeth grinding and cursing both in the church and around the gaming table.
The ideal follower and priests of Rondra is supposed to protect the weak and helpless, either as a Guard integrated in the community, or a wandering knight errant, honing his weaponskills and solving every problem that can be solved via sword with honorable fights between equals and referring to the laws of the land when it can't. Or maybe they just want to be immortalized in legends about their heroic deeds. That's cool too.
Efferd is the god of the sea, of storms, and the associated elements of water and air. He has a temperamental streak, creating all those storms in the first place. The church then, is mostly present on the coast and around big rivers, guiding the sailors and placating their god.
Travia is the goddess the family, the hearth and hospitality. They are the usual go-to place to get married (technically every church can marry people, but marriage is commonly known as Travias Bond). The church as a bit of a conservative streak, but supports anything to keep homes safe and comfortable, both for ones family and for travelers seeking shelter. They are also usually the ones running orphanages and poorhouses.
Boron is the god of death, of dreams and of letting go. The church mostly offers funeral services, their priests preparing the dead for burials and holding (mostly silent) masses to guide the souls to the realm of the dead, but also take on more mundane jobs like maintaining the cemeteries and helping the family deal with grief. They also try to give people restful sleep and help the faithful to interpret dreams or visions.
They specifically hate the undead, having a military arm to fight them. They also maintain an order that runs sanitariums, where they try to heal mental trauma and madness.
The other Boron is – of course - the same god, but the church of Boron had a major schism. While the northern church is satisfied caring for their flock in times of need and hunting undead, the southern is a bit more ambitious. They have declared Boron to be the chief of the gods, running off the logic that eventually, Boron rules over everybody.
The church is therefore politically active, has a bit of an darker bent (requiring human sacrifice once a year) and is a bit more ... proactive in inducing visions, but still takes up the other jobs.
Hesinde is the goddess of knowledge, sciences and magic. Their traveling priests try to learn as much of the world as possible, contributing their journals to the great library after their deaths. The local churches, when not engaged in philosophical discussions, also put great effort in educating the populace, both in general and by supporting universities and scholars, especially the magical ones.
While not a clear mandate of their goddesses aspects, the church also feels responsible for rooting out tainted magic.
Firun is the god of nature, winter and the hunt. Firun personifies the harsh, uncaring side of nature, where everything follows its natural order, even if that order results in death. Aside from propagating the good hunt (putting emphasis on the active competition between the hunter and their prey, shirking traps and hunting partys) his most human-facing aspect is that of self-reliance, steeling yourself to deal with the harshness of the world.
Firun is, therefore, not the most popular god to pray to. If you kept his tenets, after all, you wouldn't need his help, now would you?
Southern priests often act as gamewardens, but most priests of the north are solitary mystics, vanishing into the forests and steppes for months to test their mettle against the uncaring wilderness and getting closer to Firun (and maybe killing a bear with nothing but knife along the way).
Tsa is the goddess of youth, fertiliy and renewal. The church has a very flat hierarchy without a proper high priest and very few actual temples, so most of of the strictly pacifistic and perpetually cheerful priests do their own thing, caring to shrines and traveling around to act as midwives and healers, both learning new things and trying to expand the horizons of the people they meet.
They strongly reject tradition, some even flirting with dangerous and forbidden concepts like *hushed whisper* democracy or treating all peoples as equals.
Phex is the trickster-god of thieves, merchants and adventurers. "Help yourself, then Phex will help" is the battle-cry of his priests, encouraging the dispossessed to fight the injustice they suffered, preferably with some daring heist or other audacity. Some skip the middle man and perform these coups themselves to get closer to their god. The cleverness of these tasks and readiness to take risks is more important that the actual winnings. Stabbing a sleeping merchant and taking his chest wins you no points.
Generally chill people, until you remember they consider it a sin to help someone without demanding compensation...
The hierarchy of the church is pretty muddled, with most priests hiding their ordination. Sometimes hidden temples in the same city don't know about each other. In fact, nobody knows the identity of the churches high-priest, The Moon.
(Yes, the pope of the trickster god can introduce himself with the words "I am the Moon." I'm fairly certain that precedes the meme, but I just thought you wanted to know.)
Peraine is the goddess of agriculture, healing and shutting-up-and-getting-shit-done. The church is mostly there for the common people, using their knowledge and divine powers to protect the crops, tending to cattle and dealing with common and not-so-common diseases of the people.
The church doesn't give much about their status and joins the people when another pair of hands is needed. Be it harvesting a field before the storm ruins the crop, tending to the victims of a contagious disease or treating the wounded while the battle is still raging on around them, priests of Peraine are right in the thick of it.
Ingerimm is the god of fire, of craftsmanship in general and smithing in particular. The church is a rather political one, organizing guilds and securing the livelihood of the artisans. The interests of individual priests veer toward a mystic interest in fire and mastering their craft. Therefore they are able to produce amazing weapons and armor (as well as beautiful glass baubles, really sturdy clothes and amazingly detailed frescoes, but let's face it, those don't come up that often)
Rahja is the goddess of joy, of love, of beauty. The church is naturally very popular with people across all ways of life, helping everybody to find (or create) happiness in their lives, navigating the complicated paths of love and, of course, organizing holy feasts (and supplying holy wine).
The church supplies all kinds of pleasure to the people, but on an individual level priests endeavour to turn whole lives around. Their priests provide the muse to an artist, help star-crossed lovers elope and free unhappy people from their chains, whether those are fear, shyness or literal ones from iron.
As long as you are free and open to happiness and feel love for other people, you are doing Rahjas work.
Aside from that, they have some more practical responsibilities, like horse breeding and growing wine.
(And yes, every kind of love mentioned includes the physical kind. I'm sure we can all be grown up about that.)
The Nameless One is the thirteenth god and technically no longer part of the pantheon. Unlike his brothers and sisters, he is clearly painted as an evil god (both ingame and outgame), lording over domains like power, cruelty and betrayal. According to the legends, the other twelve overpowered him and bound him to the breach between the stars of Ethra and the Netherhells beyond. Since then he is ranting and smoldering with rage, tearing pieces of his body and throwing them down to Ethra, to become his agents and work towards his freedom. The last part is not merely a legend, several people called Eyes of the nameless, Hand of the nameless, Tongue of the nameless etc. Have influenced Aventurian history at some points.
Small note about the calender at this point: The year is divided into twelve months, one for each god, 30 days long. The remaining 5 days are attributed to the nameless one. Those days are considered cursed, with disease and demons running rampant. And indeed, this has effects on some rules.
Despite both being evil, The Nameless One is still an enemy of the twelve Archdemons. Each of the gods has a counterpart residing in the swirling chaos of the Netherhells, each representing a twisted version of the gods domains. Praios counterpart stands for tyranny and revenge, Rondras for bloody massacres and wanton cruelty etc...
Most summonable demons are attributed to one of the Archdemons, and their powers always have different interactions with their respective Gods power.
And yes, the irony of having beings of pure chaos fit neatly into the same categories as the gods is acknowledged and sometimes questioned, but the rules are clear...
Other gods and religions
Other Gods that pop up now and then:
The Demigods count as children of the twelve serve as minor deities in that religion, although they, too, moonlight as Gods in other pantheons now and then.
Kor is the son of Rondra and a dragon and stands for the Lust for battle and is the patron of Mercenaries. Aves is the son of Phex and Rahja and presides over travel and exploration.
Ifirn is Firuns daughter and represents the milder, forgiving parts of Nature. She's the one you're actually praying to if you get stranded in a middle of a blizzard.
Swafnir is technically a Demigod as well (Efferd and Rondra), but the Divine Whale is mostly worshipped by the Thorwalians, where he lords even over the other Gods the Thorwalians accept.
Angrosch is the main God of the Dwarves and is essentially Ingerimm with the aspect of Dorfiness tacked on. Some Dwarves attribute one or more of the Twelve Godesses as his wives.
Brazoragh and Tairach, the son-and-father duo stand for strength and death, respectively and are the Gods of the Orcs. They are the ones who supposedly sent Brazoraghs avatar to unite the orcs.
The orcs that are more willing to coexist with the humans pray to thinly veiled variants of Peraine and Ingerimm
Druids pray to the Earth Mother Sumu herself and believe she is dying, but still alive, while witches worship her daughter Saturia as the surviving representative of femininity.
Rastullah might be the Skyfather Los stirring in his sleep, the first signs of a Titan/mountain range awakening, the prank of an Illusionist gone out of control or none of the above. The Novadi try to live by the 99 laws dictated during his revelation, but going by the mechanics, he has no influence on the world.
Magic and its Traditions
Magic in Aventuria cannot be learned by everyone, Casters needs to be born with the Astral spark to feel and direct the magic energies. The birth rate of magically gifted children is pretty low, hovering around *looks it up* 1 in a 100 Births? That actually seems like a lot. I guess most Children don't get discovered and have their Talent wither to keep the low Fantasy feel?
Children between two Gifted have a higher chance of creating a gifted sucessor, but it's still far from guaranteed.
Depending on who trains the child, the magic takes on the structure of the teachers Tradition, putting limitations and certain idiosyncrasies on the Casters magic that are hard to shake.
The biggest and most visible of these traditions is the humble (hah!) Wizard. Wizards take a scientific approach to magic, quantifying and analysing the strands of magic, creating complex formulas and multi-dimensional matrices to be filled with Astral power to channel spells or perform rituals.
Wizards are organized into Guilds that provide their members with supplies and legal help, create and maintain Wizard Academies to train new talent and conduct research, and hunt down rogue Wizards before the Inquisition gets too trigger-happy.
Wizards are required by law to wear robes and silly hats.
The League of the white Pentagram sees themselves as stalwart defenders against all kinds of dark magic. Being faithful to the Twelve Gods is just as important as following the dressing and weapon regulations, and the thought of even researching demonology or necromancy at one of their academies is unthinkable.
The Great Grey Guild of the Mind (the alliteration is complete in German) cares more about research than about politics (on paper, at least) and accepts any academy that doesn't ping as obviously evil. The goddess Hesinde is still considered the patron of all magic, but members of other religions are still welcome in their ranks.
Dark Magics get researched and occasionally taught, mostly to prepare their students to defend against it.
The Brotherhood of Knowing Ones (AKA the black guild, NOT gender-restricted despite the name) sees it as their highest goal to enable free and unhindered research for all their members. Nearly all academies that concentrate on demonology, necromancy and other unsavory magics have moved here, but the both the Guild leader and his strongest Rival agree that Wizards that sell their souls to demons and sympathize with Borbarad and his heirs have no place in their Guild, hunting them down with their private armies.
People are free to believe in the Twelve and other religions, of course, but most black wizards are actually proponents of the Wizards Philosophy ("No gods, no masters!").
Wizards are the only Tradition that is officially accepted by the authorities, enabling them to actually earn money with their spells. All others live at the edge of legality, but at least an old decree prevents them from being prosecuted just for being unregistered Mages.
Elves all have the astral spark when born, and all their Elf-specific professions are fully trained wizards with magic that supports their specific niche, be it fighting or shaping the environment.
An elf that loses access to their song-based magic also loses access to the supernatural connection to their community and can only be pitied by the rest of their tribe while they wither away from their broken heart...
(We haven't yet begun to probe the depths of drama Aventurian elves are capable of.)
The druids try to preserve the nature to save the dying Earth Mother. They shun all kinds of processed metal and draw their magic from nature itself and the elements to protect sacred groves and other places of power. Aside from the circles forming around those places, most druids are solitary hermits.
Witches used to be the most persecuted Tradition in earlier times, so their emotion-fueled magic focuses on being subtle. Even their covens only meet in secluded places, only reachable by the flying brooms, barrels or rocking chairs the witches use.
The game flip-flops a bit about the question if they are supposed to be unfairly hated by the common folk and have to fear the inquisition despite being innocent or if the adversity is justified by them being both capable and mechanically likely to destroy a hamlets crops and kill all their cattle because the innkeeper wasn't polite enough...
Demi-casters actually encompass very different Traditions – Shamans, Spelldancers and flunked out Wizards - but they all share a lack of widespread organization and strongly limited access to magic, being only able to perform rituals or using strongly pared down Spell-lists.
Minor casters are gifted that either never had that much magical juice to begin with, or had their talent wither due to lack of training.
There are some actual Traditions in this category (alchemists and totem-warriors), but the majority are everyday people, often not even aware of their powers themselves. The still have access to a few spells and can get supernaturally good at skills.
The Dark Eyes
So, what is a dark eye and why is the game named after it?
Dark Eyes are are magical Artifacts, black orbs used for divination, allowing to user to look at far away places and enabling limited communication. In short, they are Palantir.
There are only a few Dark Eyes in the game (I want to say two or three dozen) and are most likely used as a plot point.
Seems weird to name your game after that, right? Legend has it, Kiesow actually named the game "Aventuria" but the publishers thought the name sounded too silly. So pressed for time, he said the first fantasy-ish thing that popped into his head, and wrote the artifacts later into the game when that name was accepted.
The literal translation is "The Black Eye", by the way, but I think we can all see why that was changed.
With just a short overview already becoming longer than I planned, we stop relying on my memory and actually look at the books next time. Also, the updates will probably get shorter.
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Culture Corner
The Middle Realm should – again – be called Rural places from the Middle realm and represents exactly that. You're a peasant or from a place with less than 1.000 people from about any knights and kings setting you've ever seen. Most of what was said about Garetia can be applied here too (aside from hating strangers and having a much narrower selection of temples), but the book points out unless you're a minor noble earned your freedom in army or church, you probably shouldn't be adventuring. Go back to your field and farm that shit, peasant.
The culture costs 3 GP and has a very basic skill array (but broader than Garetians) with a focus on nature and crafting.
Variants are Coastal Areas, Along Trade route, Weiden and Griffinsford Provinces, Northern Settlements, Mountains, Deep Wilderness or rural noble. Notable are – again – the noble that gives you a useful advantage (this time without the discount, but with lots of useful skillpoints as a bonus) and the deep wilderness, which denies you the skill points from the Social category (both of them) and gives you some wilderness-focused skills and a survival feat for an environment of your choice.
Profession Parade
The Gladiator comes before the Ensign, which isn't correct in German either. Huh.
Anyway, they are exactly what you’re thinking of: Someone who doesn’t fight just to win, but also to entertain the crowd, mostly from southern Aventuria, since the northern countries don’t have Arenas. Unlike most other classes, who get a general chassis and then several variants on top, the gladiator presents its variants as fully independent classes.
Also the first part of the text tells us Gladiators like to fight flashy and show off in all fights, the second part tells us they are embittered and fight as efficient as possible. Which is it, Book?
The first variant is the Gladiator from Fasar. Those are the Gladiators from the town of Fasar, where the crowd is more interested in seeing people die gorily than seeing an exciting duel. The gladiators from these places are usually slaves or criminals and are forced to fight wild animals or each other to the death.
Mechanically, they are amazingly cheap (2 GP!) and get some basic skills in weapons (two out of a large list), unarmed and physical skills and not much else skillwise. They get a free unarmed fighting style, a good assortment of discounts for basic combat feats and decent, if unexciting equipment ( severely lacking proper armor). They also get the ‘Must-have-for-warriors’ advantage Iron Skin for free.
They also count as starter professions, which becomes important for the Widespread Education advantage (Multiclassing, for a lack of better explanation). The Fasarian gladiator specifically has a reputation for enabling some ridiciously cost-efficient shenanigans.
Gladiators from Mengbilla, Chorhop and Brabak get shoved under the same header, where we are advised to look at the gladiator from Fasar for inspiration and stats. Smooth editing, that.
Gladiators from Al’anfa still fight for life and death, but aren’t slaughtered like the other gladiators thanks to Priests of Kor presiding over the arena and enforcing ‘Good fights’. The successful can becomes celebrities popular with the upper crust.
They pay a reasonable price (12 GP) for Iron Skin advantage, a slightly better but similar skill spread,and some of the discounted feats of the Fasarian Gladiator get upgraded for free.
I’m not entirely sure that’s a fair trade for the price hike.
There are more Gladiator(-ish) professions next time.
Spell Selection
Eagles Eye and Lynxes Ear is a classical buff spell, enhancing perception checks for all five senses. Can't be all positive, of course (that wouldn't be verisimilitudous), so the user can be stunned by bright light, sudden loud sounds, hot chili etc...
Eagles Wings and Wolvish shape is another classic, turning the caster into an animal the size between a rat and a horse while keeping sapience. It only polymorphs the caster, not his equipment, so you have to strip before using it. You aquire "the physical attributes" of the animal, but the book offers a lot of haggling and bullshitting the GM to let you do stuff instead of offering concrete rules. It does note your attributes are capped by the doubled Skill-rank, though. You do get the animals hitpoints, but carry over injuries proportionally ( both human-to-animal and animal-to-human), so you better have a calculator ready.
Elves (more specifically, characters with the "Elvish worldview" drawback) can only turn into their spirit animal and then tend to get carried away by the animals instinctive behavior, being forced to hunt a rabbit instead of being useful. No mention of when this happens or how you can avoid that. They also get charged Astral points per hour instead of 5-minute-interval and can fuck off and truly embrace their animal for an entire day to buff their spellcasting.
If you're really good at this spell, you can break the size limitations. Which animals you choose specifically "has to be agreed upon with the GM".
Box Releases
Original SA post The Dark Eye 4.0In 2002, Fanpro released the Basic Rules of the 4th Edition. Rather than true basic rules, it rather is a shortened version of the by-then not completely released rules and ends up redundant. I am therefore skipping those and am going to move on to the three box releases of the TDE 4.0 Rules.
Box release, because rather than selling single books TDE always used to sell box sets, spreading the rules over several softcover books in one box together with some goodies, for example a scrapbook of prepared character sheets, a magazine full of Archetypes or a poster.
The releases were changed to Hardcovers shortly after, with the release of the 4.1 ruleset (now under management of Ulisses Spiele) being seperated in several Hardcovers (Character Creation, Normal Rules, Magic rules etc. all being several books).
4.1 is called that because the rules were not so much changed as they have been updated, the rule changes being no larger than having some costs of mandatory character resources folded together rather than buying them separately and removing a whole 3 skills from the bloated skill list (offering 2 as feats and folding the third into a different skill). It's therefore better regarded as an errataed re-release (though one after some public playtesting).
I mostly have access the 4.0 rules and am going to review those. I'll occasionally call out a change or two if I find something interesting. (as well as make a comparison with 3rd or 5th edition here and there). I might go over some supplements and/or adventure modules afterwards.
The first Box set is Swords and Heroes, counting as a general or basic box and includes the books:
- Aventurian Heroes – Character creation including Races and Cultures, mundane professions
- With Fleet Fingers – general rules and advancement
- With Flashing Blades – Combat rules and everything related to that, Combat professions, equipment
The second Box set is Sorcery and Witchcraft (or Wizardry and Magecraft? I guess you could pick any two synonyms for "doing magic shit" and end up with a technically correct translation) which includes:
- Aventurian Wizards – Magical professions, feats and Dis-/Advantages
- With Knowledge and Will – Magical Rules, Ritual Magic, Magic setting Information, Rules for Demons, Undead and others (I'm tempted to call it With Wisdom and Will instead)
- Liber Cantiones – Spells, spells, spells
Last of the Box sets of the Rules is Gods and Demons, covering everything religious of the setting. It included the books:
- Aventurian Servants of the Gods – Clerical professions, feats and Dis-/Advantages Rules for divine powers
- With Spirits Might and Planar power – Setting information about demons, Rules for playing a Demon's pactmaker, Expanded rules for Demons, Undead and others
- Gods, Cults, Myths – a closer look at the aventurian religions, a setting book without rules
A thorwalian Pirate, an Albernian fencer and an Amazon in an action shot.
Going in Order, we begin with With Fleet Fingers:
The book begins with a Preamble that gives an overview about all the available Books and other boxes. It also advises to get the Basic rules under the logic that some rules aren't reprinted. I'm fairly sure that only applies to two or three minor rules.
On the other hand, there is no What is roleplaying spiel anywhere in the boxes, no example of play and the Roleplaying and GMing chapter is a bit lacking, so I might have to see if I can get access to a digital copy of the basic rules somewhere...
Anyway, after setting up the three boxes, the basic rules and the three books in Swords and Heroes, we also get to directed to With Flashing Blades if we are looking for an Index.
I mean, I can see why you don't want to reprint the index three times, but if the attempt of quickly look up a rule starts with looking for the Index, that’s not a great start.
The next paragraphs introduces the modular Rules System, dividing every Rule in General Rules, Optional Rules and Expert rules. The standard play is supposed to be with General and Optional Rules. General Rules provide a complete ruleset, but lack a lot of character options and dials. Expert Rules provide even more options and tactics and make the game supposedly avoid some of the annoyances of the system but usually require lots of bookkeeping.
Also here we find the obligatory permission to change the rules if we find them unfun in a short and clear declaration. The game won't always be so gracious...
Finally there is a reference to the downloads on the homepage as well as not only an Email address, but also a telephone number if you wanted to contact the developers directly for feedback or rules clarifications, which I find weirdly charming. I mean, there was no twitter back then, but still.
(Legend has it that several Character options are only in the game because someone called the hotline in the 3rd Edition Age and told the chief designer they wanted Barbarians/a Fireball spell/playable Goblins. That runs counter to the detailed an metaplotted world, but the creators were always close to the community, so I'm inclined to believe it.)
The next pages are an overview of the most basic Rules (which I covered in an earlier post), Damage calculations for fire, poison, falling and asphyxiation, the relevant Units for Time (Combat Round = 3 Seconds, Game Round = 5 minutes and specific times in minutes and hours) and Space (A step is a metre, a mile is not a mile but a kilometre*) and the first (and IIRC only) rules the book refuses to explain and references the Basic rules instead: Movement speed (8 steps per combat round for most characters, the range only goes from 7 to 9) and Exhaustion (That one I'm actually going over later).
Next time, we are taking a closer look at the rules.
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Culture Corner
Andergast and Nostria makes you an inhabitant of one of the two kingdoms locked in a centuries old (currently cold) war, as well as experiencing the occasional orcish or thorwalian raid. You’re kind of a joke to the people from other lands for being a hick from the woods (and you’re fucking sick of that). But you’ve been through a lot of shit in your life and it has made you tough and good at improvising, if very stubborn and conservative.
The country has feudal structures, but the noble families have a living standard that’s often equal or poorer than the richer common folk in other lands, and the actual peasants are constantly fighting with hardship and malnutrition.
People from Nostergast generally believe in the Twelve Gods, but Andergast in particular has plenty of people still practicing druidic faith.
Andergast is also an exception to the gender equality, being patriarchy and denying women to wear pants - unless her job requires it. So what I am reading here, is that an Andergastian will be not quite comfortable with a female PC but not make a huge deal out of it.
Mechanically, the rather pricey 8 GP will give you bonus hitpoints and stamina, a wide array of +1s in combat, physical, nature and craft skills as well the Master of improvising Feat for free. You have access to to a lot of professions that aren’t too modern or too outlandish and get the variants of living in a city and the Rural Noble. I know I keep mentioning that one, but we’re almost out of Cultures with classic Nobility.
Profession Parade
We're still at gladiators (kinda)
Stagefighters fight for the splendor splendor, for glory and most decidedly not for their life. These choreographed fights have a predetermined victor and offer the audience spectacular duels and compelling stories around the fight. The reward is decent income and invitations to all kinds of events and parties for the fighters. The text points out that some might just see themselves as wandering actors, while others have convinced themselves they’re actually good with swords and are going to get chumped in the beginning of their adventuring careers.
Stagefighters cost only 4 GP, get up to three weapon bonuses that get outclassed by their acrobatics skill, some other physical and social skills and a very basic selection of discounted feats. Their starting weapon is also explicitly blunt.
Fairground fighters are the guys at circuses and fairs who are beating up overconfident young people who think they can hold out for 3 rounds. They consider themselves purely entertainers rather than fighters and - unlike stagefighters - know their limits.
The text points out there are Fighters for every conceivable fighting style (expcept for the fantasy-capoeira, the most dangerous and lethal martial art in aventuria) but the profession only gives us WWE style wrestling and boxing.
Aside from those, the cheap 5 GP offers a good physical and social array of skills, high bonuses to both brawling and grappling and the first Feat of the dodge tree for free and the rest discounted, as well as several generally useful feats .
Spell selection
Aeolitus Roaring Wind lets the caster blow air with enough strength to snuff out torches, clear a room of smoke and generally make a mess. Throwing around people requires a variant though, as does adding a nauseating smell to the the puff of air.
The reversed spell reverses the flow by sucking in air instead, and it helpfully points out that the casters mouth will be filled with dust and bugs afterwards.
Aerofugo Vacuum creates a Vacuum. Aside from causing Stamina damage and mentioning some physics fuckery (air rushing in afterwards, breaking sealed containers) it mostly serves as damaging and disabling spell against air-elementals.
The availability theorizes the spell used to be part of demon-summoning rituals and points out there could be variants for other elements.
Aerogelo tortured breath is the opposite of the Aerofugo – the two spells reverse into each other – and compresses the air in an area into an almost viscous consistency that lowers combat and physical stats and causes Stamina damage for everyone exerting themselves into the zone.
The rules proper
Original SA post The Dark Eye 4.0The rules proper
The next pages recap how the Skill check works (Reminder: Succeed the three associated Stat checks, pay Skill ranks to lower rolls 1:1 and succeed if you have leftover Skillpoints .), what happens if your skill rank ends up negative due to penalties or starting values before the roll (apply the negative value as a penalty to ALL Stat tests) and how to deal with modifiers - penalties lower your skill rank, bonuses raise it. The fact that the notation for modifiers is inverted hits peak absurdity here when we are straight up told to Subtract +X from the skill rank and add -X.
Possible reasons for Modifiers are listed, which include injuries. We get referred to the basic rules for these despite those modifiers being right over there in With Flashing Blades.
Finally there is a table that suggests modifiers for relative difficulties (and examples of those difficulties for climbing). 0 is supposed to be routine work (Which, please note, you cannot succeed at routinely unless you have Stats and/or Skill ranks fit for High-Level heroes).
Bonuses go up to -7, Penalties go theoretically down all the way to +25.
There text also points out that not every action needs a roll, but the justification is that some things are too hard or too easy to meaningfully test, not if there are good reasons for the flow of the game. But, fine, these are purely rules.
So far for the basic rules, now we’re presented with optional ones - and start with half a missing sentence. Great Editing.
Open Checks are used when the binary pass/fail is not detailed enough. Instead the amount of SP* determine the quality of the check. Examples given are:
Determining the Quality of a crafted Item
Extended Checks where you roll multiple checks over a long time (with a very rough outline, details for these checks are usually given in the specific subsystems)
Using the quality to determine how far characters travel in a chase or on a map
If you’re not under time pressure and there are no consequences for failure, you can just take half your skill rank as quality without rolling. That’s neat, I didn’t know that.
Bonus modifiers, by the way, don’t count towards quality, only for changing the rolls.
The text actually mentions two more examples of open checks: One is voluntary penalty to Improve quality or save time - So you add a basic modifier to improve in quality/speed and then roll the check to determine SP* for a different axis, I suppose?.
The next example mentions comparing quality in a contest to determine a winner. Which is a reasonable mechanic, but, uh…
Compared Checks are next, and they don’t actually compare. Instead, the quality of one Check acts as modifier to an opposing basic check.
We then get a sidebar on how to decide if we use an open or a compared check. Compared checks are supposed to be for one skill countering the other (Perception for Sneaking, Read People vs persuasion etc.) while open checks are used to find out who did it better without confrontation (Song contest, higher quality Item), which is arbitrary as fuck.
You might think I’m nitpicking here (And I kind of am), but the sidebar mentions (yes, in german, too): If we want to compare two skills, we use the open check, if one skills counter the other, we use the compared check, and, I mean, come on!
The next optional rule are critical failures and successes on skill checks. If you roll two natural ones (0.71% chance, the book tells us), the skill checks succeeds automatically with all Skill points remaining, regardless of the actual math, double twenties are equally an automatic failure. You also get a special experience, another layer of complexity added to the advancement system that we’ll get to later.
Triple ones and twenties (0.0125%) are exceptionally spectacular successes and failures that also produce additional positive or uncomfortable side effects, details are up to the GM.
Triple ones also raise the skill immediately, no EXP necessary, while triple twenties are justification to put a character in a life threatening position (but should not be lethal on its own, we’re helpfully told)
The last rule points out that the associated Stats can be changed at the GMs discretion.
So those rules I just summarized take up three and a half pages. Now, TDE posits itself as beginner friendly game, so I understand you can’t just throw out a bunch of jargon without explanation, and a decent part of this length are examples on how to make those checks (wordy ones with attached narratives, but clear enough examples).
But there is no summary. No reference chart for quick overview, no TL;DRs at the end. Every time a newbie wants to clarify a ruling or just remind themselves on the procedure, they have to read the whole text, including rationalizations for rules, slightly flowery language and half-serious comments directed at the reader with a wink to make sure they don’t miss anything..
And that’s not that bad here, because these rules are actually kinda concise. It gets worse later.
Next Time: 21 pages of skills. Don’t worry, I’ll summarize... a bit.
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Culture Corner
The Foundland in the northeast of the continent gets described as a vast, harsh place with endless forests and long winters, only made bearable by copious amounts of Meskinnes brandy . The serfs are old-fashioned and superstitious, but good natured and treat their local Bronnjar (noble) with absolute, almost deifying respect, despite them being hinted to be cruel despots, even though some of them are just as poor as their serfs.
Bronnjars gather each 5 years to elect a Marshal, the de facto ruler of the foundland. They also use this occasion to have an enormous, several day long feast where many guests drink themselves to death.
Clothing wise, the serfs are only allowed to wear fur from cats, dogs and rats, while the Bronnjars like to wear ‘proper’ fur, including the obligatory bearskin cap.
Foundland names have strong eastern european/russian sound to them: Dunjascha, Salwinja, Bosjew, Pedder...
The culture costs 0 GP and gives a pretty nice selection of +1s all around. Some skills even get a +2 (including carousing, naturally). Variants are living on the coast, in smaller towns (for Festum we’re advised to take the Garetia culture), and of course the Rural noble, if you want play someone who is considered an utter asshole even by other nobles.
Profession Parade
Ensigns are (the lowest rank of) officers in the standing armies of the Middle Realm, Horasia, Al’anfa or Arania. Since they are expected to lead the troops, they aren’t actually great fighters but get a lot of social and knowledge skills in return.
Ensigns come predominantly from noble or rich families and are expected to serve for several years in the military after they finish their training, but PC Ensigns are expected to have buggered off in return for a generous donation - All Ensigns start with the In Debt disadvantage. The text points out we could also play honorable discharged veterans instead of paying the money, but doesn’t give any help in resolving the mechanical clusterfuck of replacing a disadvantage with an advantage.
There are three sample schools that get a full writeup and then 13 statblocks for other schools.
The Imperial Warkhome Academy for Strategy and Tactics trains staff officers for all possible military branches. It brings its cadets to their physical limits, teaches warcraft as well as Social skills and theory and drills their students in absolute discipline. A warkhomian doesn’t make embarrassing mistakes, indeed. Except, of course, for training Helme Haffax, the Aventurian Sun-Tzu that joined Borbarad’s demon invasion as his field marshal.
Mechanically, they are rather pricey (17 GP), get decent to good skill arrays in all skill groups except nature (but few characters will ever use the breadth of their weaponskills), armor proficiency for chainmail for free and several basic discounts for feats. Like all Ensigns, they start with a code of honor and a lot of debt.
The Horas-Imperial cadet institution for education and preparation of young officers belonging to the Fleet for preserving Order and civilization on the sea from Grangor has a name that is longer than the writeups of some of the more mundane professions later on and trains naval cadets. Aside from the general warfare and etiquette lessons, a large part of the education is naturally concerned with seafaring, before the cadets spend some years on a training ship. A lot of graduates leave the navy to work on merchant ships, instead.
Rules wise, graduates from this school cost 20 GP and are pretty similar to the others, save for all the naval skills and feats and being only trained in rapiers and siege weapons.
Keshal Hashinna ai Baburin (Fortress of the brave in Baburin) is an Aranian academy and trains cavalry officers to lead their troops and fight with sabers, lances and bows. It was created during the Mid-realm occupation, but leaned hard towards Tulamidian traditions when Arania became a sovereign state. This school is closely affiliated with the church of Rondra and one of the few places to teach the outdated art of chariot warfare, surprisingly without mentioning Rondras divine chariot even once.
Mechanically, they are a bit cheaper than most other cadets and there aren’t many surprises in what you’re getting.
The entry ends with the stat blocks (and the occasional very short description) of the other academies around the continent, none of whom have any novelties (aside from there not being a proper writeup for an infantry school).
Spell selection
Dread shape enchants a single person and makes them see the caster as a terrible creature summoned from their own subconscious, so any phobia disadvantage makes the spell easier to cast. It takes a weirdly long time to cast, though and has a very suspicious gesture (doing the “Frankenstein walk” toward the victim), so I’m not sure in what situation it’s useful? It also works a bit weird in that the victim is frozen in fear for a number of combat rounds dependant on the quality of success, and then has a chance to pass out afterwards. Definitely effective in locking someone down if you manage to land the spell though. And if you’re mean, you can give them lingering nightmares with this.
Analys Arcane structure is the identify spell that almost every wizard knows. It takes some time (At least 5 minutes, can be extended to several hours) and gives a scaling result based on the checks quality, starting with some vague guesses at 0 SP* and ends being able to identify the individual caster of the spell at 8 SP*. That’s actually pretty low for full information, but the book expects there to be penalties from unfamiliar Traditions or deception spells.
Identifying potions and magic Items is apparently more complex and we get referred to the respective chapters in With Knowledge and Will.
Soothe fears is a witch spell that - well, soothes fears and allows a character to re-roll a failed courage or successful fear check with bonuses. Can also be modified to counteract fear spells.
Other traditions are also decently familiar with the spell.
Skills
Original SA post The Dark Eye 4.0Skills
Before we actually get to the skill list there are some other rules (after the generous permission to alter, invent or toss skills if we think that’s necessary).
First off is the division of basic, special and professional skills. Basic skills are the ones every character has, either because they are natural or so widespread you’re almost guaranteed to know the basics. You can also roll a check on these if the skill rank is negative.
Special skills can only be used if you have at least one positive skill rank, and they need to taught by someone. Most skills in this game are special skills.
Professional skills can only be used if you have at least one positive skill rank and they need to be taught by someone. The difference between them and special skills supposedly boils down to them being really rare and esoteric knowledge, but the skills listed are incredible arbitrary. I mean, Agriculture is a professional skill. You know, what literal peasants are doing for a living. I’m going out on a limb and claim that is more widespread knowledge than cryptography…
The following optional rules teach us about requirements (some skills need other skills to be on a certain rank before we can learn them or improve beyond a certain rank - I can’t figure out if that’s a *realism* rule or to enforce more widespread skill picks.) skill specializations (buy up to two feats for each skill, add two to the rank when the specialization comes up.), encumbrance and effective encumbrance (each skill mentions if the encumbrance penalizes the roll, and if you have to modify the encumbrance first) and derived skills (You can use a different skill at a penalty).
Weird things here are that the text for specializations mentions that some combat professions pay half the cost for weapon skills, which is a rule that IIRC never comes up again - unless it is referring to discounted feats, but that specific mention for specializations feels out of place. Also, buying a specialization at character generation apparently costs 2.5 times as much as it does in play? WTF?
I also feel the need to point that the standard penalty for derived skills gets suggested as +10, which is almost half the maximum skill rank. Derived weapon skills get a much more manageable -2 to attacks and -3 to parries (shouldn’t those be +s?) but get limited use out of their combat feats.
Combat skills show up here strongly abbreviated, we’re referred to With Flashing Blades instead. We’ll just continue and I go over the combat skills when we get to that book.
An upper class woman from a garetian city.
Physical skills are more expensive to improve than the other skill groups. My take is that this Skill group has more ‘Adventure important’ skills than the other skill groups (Sneaking, Willpower, Perception, Physical control…) and this is an attempt to incentivize to spread the skill points around to create a more well rounded character with hobbies and fluff skills. In my experience, it just leads to more exp hoarding since - well, you still need physical skills, and now they’re so expensive…
It also creates some weird situations, like dancing, singing and juggling now having to share the higher costs with the ‘useful’ skills, and the fact that it is noticeably easier to learn all the musical instruments, a new language or higher mathematics than it is to imitate animal calls.
This skill group consists of everything you can imagine a fighter and/or a rogue being good at, plus some fluffier extra stuff. There some oddities though - Athletics, Acrobatics, Climbing and swimming have pretty narrow defined fields, but you also have Physical control, which is the catch-all skill for physical actions, including keeping balance and action hero rolls and jumps. (The writers were probably weary of getting rid of this specific skill because it was a mainstay in 3rd edition).
Flying is only used for witch brooms and flying carpets, and therefore useless for 99 % of available characters. You ride flying creatures instead.
Physical skills are also the the group that houses the most important skill of all: Carousing. It gets used to determine how drunk you are after downing that dwarven ale or thorwalian brandy (and how big your hangover will be), and nothing else. I love it. I mean, it’s a bit useless, and if I would be writing this game, I would fold things like ‘resist poison’ or ‘socializing in a tavern’ into this skill, but I wouldn’t want it to be subsumed into Willpower either. Just having this skill on the character sheet puts so much emphasis on the fact that TDE adventures aren’t supposed to be just about fighting orcs and delving dungeons. They are supposed to be just as much about getting roped into friendly drinking contest and unwinding in a tavern during downtime. It also adds some texture to the characters - sure, the Thorwalian Pirate and the Novadi Warrior Monk are both really tough guys, but only one of them can down half a bottle of brandy without passing out.
The racial modifiers also keep reminding us that overripe fruit is enough to get an aventurian Elf drunk, and that will never cease to amuse me.
One good thing I had forgotten is that the skill descriptions point out that you don’t actually need those skills for simple stuff (paddling back to the edge of a calm stream, sitting on a horse that is lead in a caravan etc.), but on the other hand it keeps pointing us toward the falling damage rules for the vertical skills, so I guess if you fail a roll you’re just supposed to fall down?
Social skills bring me to a screeching halt as I read the description of the seduce skill. I don’t mind the skill itself, a charming rake flirting with people to get what he wants is perfectly on-genre and the text specifically mentions the end result is just the target liking the character, but not necessarily doing everything they want. But after reminding us of the cultural modifiers* it points out that there is also a penalty for seducing the characters own gender. Come on game, I specifically praised your inclusiveness earlier…
* A weird thing, editing wise. At the beginning of the skill group, there is a sidebar that introduces the rule that every skill is calibrated to the characters native culture, and dealing with people from outside should involve a penalty. Fair enough, but they repeat this fact in every single skill.
4.1, incidentally expanded on that idea making understanding the subtleties of a specific culture a feat. (and giving each character his native culture for free).
Notable are Etiquette and Streetwise, skills that allow you to blend in and socialize with high society or the shady underworld respectively in an abstract way. There is no equivalent for general situations or common folk, though.
Read people and Disguise also fall under Social skills, as do outliers like acting (on a stage) and written expression (as well as gallantry, a skill for entertaining guests - also entertaining guests - and dressing fancy. A skill so niche - and overlapping with both etiquette and seducing - that it was removed in 4.1).
Somewhat noticeable is that there is really only two active social skills. One is seducing, the other is convincing, and that one stands for every conceivable interaction. From bluffing to haggling to intimidation to begging. Kind of weird for for a game with such a finely grained skill list.
(Okay, there is also converting, which reads just as vague as convincing, but gets used for actually changing a characters outlook instead of just fast-talking them)
The skill group gets bonus points for the snarky examples where you could apply encumbrance, though (Preaching in a closed helmet, playing a beggar in platemail, any armor for gallantries more intimate specializations.)
Nature Skills is the smallest group. Everything a proper ranger does can be found here: Tracking, Navigating, Survival etc. Use Rope is something I personally would have seen as physical or crafting skills, but whatever.
What is noticeably absent, though, are the animal- and plant lore skills, which count as knowledge skills. Since nature-focused professions usually get skill points in those regardless, that is only important in edge cases, like taking dis-/advantages that affect your competence at skill groups. Still, the simple person from the wilderness with no need for theoretical education is both a common archetype and a reasonable hook for a newbie to choose, and this messes with that concept
Expert rule: Meta-skills to hunting and food gathering.
Oh boy, I get to explain meta skills, already.
So the writers of TDE did understand that the fine granularity of the skill list meant that some actions that are better handled off screen have several applicable skills. Rather than demanding several rolls each time the characters want to hunt small game for their rations, we’re offered meta skills. That is, skills that aren’t bought or improved by themselves, but have a skill rank equal to the average of all the applicable skills. They are capped to twice the smallest skill rank, though because realism.
Of course now you have the option of writing down every all the possible meta skills you can up with on your sheet (and check them all if you’re improving skills) or have to reference them for the used skills and Attributes and calculate them every time you need one.
Also two of the examples are gathering Food and gathering herbs, which totally could have been a simple survival or plant lore check.
Knowledge skills. Yeah, basically all the skills you can improve without putting down a book. Aside from the usual ones like Religion, Magic and History you also get uncommon ones like Law, Philosophy and Metallurgy.
Clear favorite of mine is the Tales and Legends skills. It sits between History and Magic lore and encompasses all kinds of heroic myths, fairy tales and folk stories that may or may not have a kernel of truth in them.
By the way, the Mathematics skill mentions that characters with zero skill ranks cannot count, but make a difference between ‘more’ and ‘fewer’. It’s definitely possible to end up with a negative rank. Talk about a roleplaying challenge…
(Also the Law skill lists ‘Disrespect against worldly or clerical dignitaries’ as typical crime committed by player characters, so the writers do know their audience)
Languages and scripts work different from all other skills. Instead of using a check and being able to raise them to cap dependent on attributes, each language and script has a set max rank. They are also cheaper than other skills, for the most part.
We get a rule of thumb mixing absolute ranks and fractions of the cap to determine how well a character can communicate in that language and how well they can read (Aventuria emulating mainly the early renaissance means the majority of people are illiterate). Each character gets one native language, with the skill rank derived from their Cleverness, which should be enough reach the requisite half-cap marker to speak in a natural, everyday manner (Although the Average Cleverness of 10 actually ends you up slightly below that mark for the most common languages.
Garethi (German) and Tulamidiya (Arabic) are the two most common languages, if you are decent at both of them, you can get around most civilized places on the continent. If you can read their scripts (Kuslician Letters and Tulamidian) and know the precursor languages Bosparano (Latin), Aureliani (Old Greek) and Ur-Tulamidiya you can also read about every book not written in the Wizard-specific Language Zhayad.
Most other languages are used by small communities, tribal cultures or are secret languages you can weave into everyday conversation.
Most interesting ones are Isdira and Asdharia, the elven languages non-elves cannot perfect because they lack the necessary second set of vocal chords, the painfully simple Oloarkh and decently complex Ologhajian (because I didn’t expect high orcish to be a thing), Kobold, because you need to cast a haste spell to speak it and Troll, which is no more complex than most human languages but uses three-dimensional stone towers and their arrangement in a room as a script.
So, back in my overview I complained about the unnecessary skill list of this game. As mentioned back then, I was running the game (and the overview) from memory and bile, and I hadn’t taken a closer look at the skill list in years.
Turns out, the skill groups so far aren’t so bad about skill bloat. Oh, we’re far away from streamlined system, and some skills are too granular or specialized for my taste, but all things considered, it is a perfectly usable Skill list that mostly offers reasonable suggestions how to use the skills - either self evident, or mentioned in the skill description.
All this changes with the Crafting Skills. Now, 4.0 wants to be a game where you can play not just as heroes rescuing virgin dragons from evil princesses, it also wants to be the game where Alrike that tavern wench, Bogumil the fisherman and Cella the goat herder have some low-stakes adventure where nobody even draws their weapon. The writers attempt to picture those everyman characters is not just by making professions for all those regular people, but also giving almost everyone a fitting skill that they can point to when asked “What are you good in?”.
Does it have a skill dedicated solely for conducting orchestras, or driving dogsleds? Yep. Does it have a skill for making weapons and tools from flint, because that’s not an metal so you obviously can’t use smithing for it? Absolutely. Does it have different skills for brewing beer, distilling liquor and winemaking? You bet.
Now, the skill descriptions occasionally try to mention where you can use a skill outside of its specialization, and Adventure modules do tend to blindside their parties with an uncommon skill use for a bonus here and there. But none of those skill descriptions are interesting, and the book reiterates you can make up new skills if you need those right in the beginning of the skill group, so the game would have been better with a generic Craft (whatever) skill.
The way it’s written now, you look at the skill list and, if your eyes don’t slide right off it, notice skills here and there you feel compelled to take, because they kind of fit your character (and I guarantee that happened to the writers who build professions too), so now have a skill sitting on your character sheet that never gets used.
The funny thing is, all of those skills were present in 3rd edition as well - partitioned away in a ‘trained artisan’ special mechanic, which also meant each of the limited picks stood out more. Which was nice not only because it felt like an important part of the character (and the unspoken message to the GM that you want it to come up), but most of those actually gave concrete bonuses to your character.
Anyway, on to notable skills: Train Animal introduces the Expert Rule of Loyalty, which means you cannot neglect you animal companion when they’re not useful (and Dogs have a higher cap than all the other animals), Blacksmith and Bowyer refer us to a later chapter for crafting weapons and Healing Arts is split into four different Skills - Poison, Diseases, Soul and Wounds. Each healing skill requires multiple rolls for every action and carries the risk of making things worse if you fail one or more of them, so I just remembered why my group doesn’t bother with those. We’re also supposed to track the damage from each kind separately so we don’t accidentally heal poison damage with Healing Arts: Disease.
Feats
Following the skills, the game list all of it’s feats and…
The thing about the game wanting to be more than heroic adventures and fights?
There is half a page of full-write up general Feats, followed by two and a half pages of abbreviated combat feats. (Although those include unarmed techniques, which are actually a subsystem of the combat feats…) I’ll go over the latter in the combat book.
The general Feats are:
A repetition of Skill specialization, because it is actually a feat.
Master of improvisation and Nandusian Knowledge , which halve the penalties if you are using derived skills in the crafting and Knowledge Groups, respectively. You want something similar for the other skill groups? Too Bad!
Terrain knowledge. Pick a certain kind of environment, you get a bonus if you make nature check here. Also requires you to spend 12 Months in this environment, so I hope your table tracks ingame time.
Next time: Advancement
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Culture Corner
People form the Svellt valley come in two flavors: citizen from wealthy trading cities, who were allowed to retain their freedom when the orcs invaded, and hard bitten, simple folk from the wilderness who have arranged themselves with the orcish occupants (or became resistance fighters).
Even before the orcs invaded, the infrastructure carved out of the wilderness was only what was necessary to get trading goods to the coastal ports, so the defining word for this area is pioneers. The people in the country live in secluded farms where they can only rely on themselves to deal with hardships, and woodsman hunt and travel in the deep forests for days or weeks without (hopefully) meeting another soul. With only the orcs providing something like authority (which, while it has gotten more peaceful since the invasion, is still very tyrannical) most people rely on unwritten rules of civility to deal with each other.
The faith in the twelve gods produced a pretty distinct offshoot here: The dualists boil down the pantheon to good Praios and evil Boron, and seek their salvation in absolute obedience, stern and uncompromising faith and eschewing pleasures in favor of hard work.
Svelltlanders have the best names: They use the Garethi names, but shorten them to one or two syllables and add a typical characteristic. That way, we get people like Bear-Benja, Nine-Finger-Al and Ogre-Belly Fin.
Mechanically Svelltlanders are rather pricey, which seems like a ripoff for the array of +1s and discounted Terrain knowledges we're getting. They do get bonus hit and stsamina points, though
A Svelltlander. I do appreciate the page reference. "If you think this guy looks cool, here's how you can play him."
Profession Parade
Guards exist to be clowned on by roving bands of adventurers, sure, but you can also choose this profession as a background if you want to be a cheap trained fighter who is also proficient at diplomacy. There aren’t actually any suggestions why you’ve turned your back at your job, but you know: If you can’t beam them, join them.
You can be a rank-and-file City Guard, a Village Sheriff to be a big fish in a small pond, a more nature oriented Road warden, a jailer to get some additional brawling skills and a free fighting style, or an Elite/Honor Guard.
All Guards get decent training in Polearms and a side-weapon, a fair smattering of physical and social skills as well as some basic combat feats discounted. City- and Honor Guard get the option to train Staves instead of Polearms, presumably to depict the guards of one specific city.
The different variants vary wildly in cost, ranging from the 1 to 8 GP, but the general skill spread goes in the same direction. The City Guard is, curiously, the most expensive variant, despite the description making them sound the most basic. The Honor Guard especially, whose combat bonuses and lower all-rounder skills should offset each other seems pretty cheap in comparison, to the point where I’m doubting the costs were calculated correctly.
Spell selection
Animatio silent servant allows you to build your own self-sweeping broom. Pick up an object, do the same movement seven times and for the next few months the object will perform exactly the same motion whenever you trigger it.
There is a magic battleship whose inner workings are fueled by this spell, and graduates of one academy have to return regularly to perform bizarre movements with even more bizarre objects to keep it running.
Applicatus magic storage is a quick and dirty light-version of Create magic item. Cast it and a different spell on an object, and the spell gets triggered when that object gets touched or moved. It’s mostly used for traps and alarms, but with some modifications you can create a portable item that gets triggered on command, if you have the need for a healing baton or a fireball grenade.
It only lasts for day, though, and the variant to extend its duration requires a feat from a future supplement.
Arachnea crawling swarm is a pretty esoteric spell. It draws all the insects, spiders, worms etc. (including giant snails) to the casters position, and offers the casters no protection whatsoever against the crawlies. No one really teaches the spells and the it’s creator is implied to have gone mad from forbidden knowledge.
If you can reverse spells, you have a pretty potent magic circle against bugs, though.
Advancement
Original SA post The Dark Eye 4.0Advancement
The Dark Eye has no levels*. You straight up buy the improvement in your skill, your stat or your Hitpoints by spending experience points. Or rather, you spend Adventure points. They've been named that since first edition, but this works retroactively as a justification why your Adventurer improves so much faster than Alrik the carpenter. Name aside, they still are straight up experience points.
How much points do you have to pay to improve a skill by one point? The book helpfully provides us with a comprehensive table of advancement costs. Behold:
This magnificent beast.
I've already mentioned in the skills section that some skills are easier or harder to raise. To learn the cost of improvement you check the assigned difficulty of your skill for the column and pay the amount listed in the row equal to the new rank. It's a bit unwieldy since you absolutely need the table for every advancement (unless someone with a better head for numbers than me can find a pattern in there?), but it's ultimately pretty simple to raise a stat. So far, at least.
Which stat has which difficulty?
Column A houses most Languages and scripts. Column B houses the majority of skills.
Under Column C are Crossbow, Brawling, Throwing knives and Javelins, nothing else. Physical skills, as well as most Combat skills are under Column D. Column E has the *good* combat skills (which might not actually be better than some D skills) and Stamina. F Column does not have anything associated with it. Column G consists of Astral points and Gifts, special skills you have to buy as an advantage. Finally, Column H houses the Stats and Hitpoints.
Each spell has an individual difficulty which range all over the table, each Feat has an individual flat cost.
It is possible to shift the column through dis-/advantages and circumstances, so the F-Column actually gets used now and then.
There is also a theoretical A* column if you lower the difficulty past A, but it’s not mentioned in this chapter. I have no Idea where they put that explanation.
I saw a reference to that in the magic books, so at least I can be sure I’m not making it up, but it can definitely happen with mundane characters as well.
The book tells us to give out Adventure Points when the group reaches a mid-goal or finishes an Adventure, rather than giving it out for Combat or other encounters. They also instruct the GM to make sure to give them out sparingly, so the characters can grow slowly and realistically, which has a rather condescending tone. Good to know the tradition of making players feel like chumps is not something the community cultivated on its own, but is something that is presented in the books.
The guideline is 50 - 100 AP per five-hour session. As you can see that allows a character to raise a skill by one point easily (more, if they focus on low or non-combat skills), but if they want to buy a new feat or raise a stat there are going to be several sessions without advancement while they save up. We, uh, are getting back to that bit later, though.
I put an asterisk up there when I said the game doesn’t have levels, because, well, it does. You just don’t care about 99 % of the time. It gets determined by the amount of AP spent and requires 100 AP + the amount needed for last level (100 AP for Lvl 2, 300 AP for LVl 3, 600 for 4 etc) and since it is absolutely useless to determine the capabilities of a character, it has limited uses.
For one, you’re supposed to use it to determine it how well the character is known in the world. Hm. Secondly, you can check it like a Stat for ‘General Life experience’. That’s vague and I never saw a Level check in an official module.
Thirdly, you determine the costs of learning new skills with it. The cost of learning a new (Special or Professional) skill or raising a basic one with a negative value uses the row equal to your current level. The activation factor in the last row doesn’t factor into that cost at all, nor into anything else.
So instead of the desired naturalistic improvement based on your characters experience, you’re now incentivized to learn as many useful skills as possible as a fresh adventurer, while an experienced adventurer gets discouraged to pick up something new for flavor.
The amount isn’t a big deal in the long run, but why? I can’t think of a justification for that mechanic, and the book only offers the explanation that ‘Old Dogs don’t learn new tricks’. I guess every Adventurer is just bound to become a crabby bastard who ‘always did it this way’ when they get older?
Stats use the Column H as mentioned, and we also get taught that the starting Value of a Stat determines its maximum: You can only buy Stat points up to half your starting Value. I hope you thought long and hard about your dump stat.
Incidentally, Bonus points to stats, either from Race or advantage, factor neither in the maximum value nor into the advancement costs and just get added on top afterward, making them even more valuable.
Additional Hitpoints and Stamina have a limit on how much you can buy (Half your CON for HP, double the CON for ST) and are considered a separate pool when it comes to advancement costs, so you start at row 1 instead of row 25+. Obviously, that helps a lot.
Buying feats gets mentioned here, I find it interesting that the book instructs the GM be generous to players who want to learn combat feats when it comes to finding teachers.
Finally we can buy off disadvantages with AP. They cost 100 AP for each Generation Point the disadvantage was worth, which is the first of at least three exchange rates between those points.
Lowering Bad Attributes (not attributes we dumped, the disadvantage called Bad Attribute) instead uses the column G, it goes higher the lower we want our attribute to be.
Of course, we can do this at the tenth of the prize if we get counseled by someone with Healing Arts: Soul. But if they fail their roll, your problems become worse.
So much for Advancement. It uses that huge ass table, has a few kinks, but ultimately it’s very simple, right?
Hey, before we move on, let’s go over the optional rules I skipped over.
Special Experience adds another layer of complexity to the advancement system, but I love the Idea. If a character has a, well, special experience with a certain skill (because they rolled a critical success, because they learned some forgotten secret, because it was constantly important throughout the last adventure…), the GM can flag that skill. Raising a flagged skill lowers the costs by one column and doesn’t take any time to learn. You cannot stack flags on the same skill and the GM is instructed to have the flag expire after some sessions, so players are encouraged to just improve the skill when they get the opportunity.
This encourages exactly the organic skill growth the writers envision for TDE. Because the group investigated a forgotten magic ritual, even the bandit learned something about magic theory. The street urchin learned some wilderness survival because the hunt after the traitor led them through the orcish steppes. A dwarf that can swim got probably dragged into nautical adventures by his team. It is kinda fun to look at a high level characters sheet and see some out of character skills resulting from their adventuring life.
Adventure Modules usually give out a list of potential SE in the rewards section.
So the learning time I mentioned? The books also define the Time Unit here. It’s a fancy way of saying Two hours, and the game caps learning time at 4 TU each day, only 1 when you’re out adventuring.
The rest of the optional rules concern themselves with the way you are learning new skills: Learning with a Tutor, Teaching each other over the campfire and Self-taught.
Tutor and teaching each other is basically the same thing, I don’t know why the book considers them different when they even are put into the same entry. Difference is basically, one happens mostly in downtime, the other over the course of the game.
It’s considered the standard way to learn and uses the difficulty given to determine the cost. The learning time equals the cost of the advancement in TU. The teacher (or other adventurer) needs seven ranks in the skill he’s teaching and seven ranks in the Teaching Skill. More than 15 ranks lower the costs by one column.
The payment for professional teachers is multiplied by their Teaching skill, by the way, so be careful when choosing them, or you get one that is too good and charges you money for nothing.
Self taught allows you to raise the skill on your own, but the costs rise by one column. Two, even, when you want to raise the skill above 10 Skill ranks. The Learning time is the same, 1 TU for each Adventure point spent, but of course increases together with the costs.
So if you want to raise one of your skills (or buy a feat (⅕ of their cost in AP) or -heaven forbid - a Stat point without a Special experience), you better be prepared to do some bookkeeping.
Look at those costs again and calculate how many days you’re spending learning. The average TDE Adventure lasts several weeks in game time, so maybe you are squeezing in one two Skill points. More in the downtime between adventures, of course, but now the GM has to carefully plot out how long the time between the adventures is, so the players know exactly how far they progressed with their learning. In a system, I’d like to remind you, that expects you to follow the metaplot, usually with exact dates that advances 1:1 in earth time, so there probably at most a two or three weeks between adventures. If worst comes to worst, you have a wizard in your group that looks at the aventurian calender to know exactly when he can gain astrological bonuses to perform a ritual and now you have to track that too because you can’t handwave it anymore.
And remember you can only spend 4 TU on good day, so you can only learn 1 to 4 skills at the same time. You better plot the learning progress exactly, so you know when one of the skills gets raised and the learning of another one can start.
Hey, here are some questions: Can you recuperate from wounds and learn skills at the same time? If not, how sick do you have to be for it to cut into your learning time. If you get a Special Experience in the middle of learning the same skill, are the used TU wasted or can you put them towards the next advancement? Do the constant explanations of the elf about tracking an animal seriously bounce off the other characters completely because the elf has no ranks in Teaching? What if he does, but never explicitly announces that he is now ~*teaching*~ so the other characters don’t note the time. What happens if your teacher cannot finish raising that one skill point and you have to teach yourself the rest?
I don’t know, and the book doesn’t tell us either.
And this runs completely counter to the organic skill growth the book fawned about. I’m not learning about what I did in my adventures. I am learning what I can find a teacher for, or teach myself if absolutely necessary. Since my characters time is now at a premium, I sure as hell am focusing on the sweet, useful, adventure-y skills instead of some useless fluff.
You can’t even use a retroactive justification for raising a skill.
“Well, the fallout from the tavern brawl sure gave Moha-Te some interesting insight into the imperial justice system. I’m raising Law knowledge.”
“Did he really learn about it, though?”
“Well, he didn’t have much else to do in jail.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t note it. It doesn’t count. Next time Moha-Te meets a noble, he will still see nothing wrong in greeting them by spitting into their face.”
And yes, those are optional rules. But just as a reminder, the standard rules are assumed to be basic + optional. This is the intended playstyle for your average group, possibly including newbies. And yeah, there are definitely groups that use these rules.
It does, funnily enough, solve the problem I mentioned about having to save up several adventures to buy higher cost improvements. By the time you spend the 100 AP from your first adventure, you probably had other sessions and gained several other Adventure points, which take even longer to burn through and gives you more time to earn more AP in other Adventures. So this rule creates a game flow that prevents you from spending all of your AP at the same time and always have some banked to raise another thing. Or begin raising it, anyway.
I’m not willing to give the writers the benefit of doubt on this one though. I think they stumbled ass-backwards into this.
If you’re using teachers and learning time, you might as well use the expert rule that allows you to cut some costs and time by letting the teacher roll a check.
Honestly, this is the first time I am reading those rules properly, and I’m not regretting skipping them.
A Horasian, displaying his usual Armament: Rapier, Buckler, Smugness
Following Advancement is the Expert-only chapter Fire and Iron. It presents rules to craft weapons and armor. More specifically, to judge quality, patch up, repair a broken one, create and create Masterwork weapons and Armor.
The crafting takes long enough you really want to parcel them out to downtime and usually consists of several checks with penalties dependent on the average damage/Armor and take some calculating, but since you’re probably not bogging down the game with them, they’re decent enough.
Since magic Items are rare in The Dark Eye, a masterwork weapon is a nice improvement for a character to get. They never really feel necessary, though, as long as a character can get their hands on equipment that has at least average quality, their skills and feats are far more important than their equipment.
Oddities of the chapter include, though:
There are two kinds of special melee weapons, Masterwork (Damage and durability) and Personal weapons (Initiative and Attack/Parry rolls.) We only get rules for Masterwork weapons, though and get referred to With Flashing Blades for Personalized ones.
Repairing a spear or an axe uses woodworking instead of blacksmith skill. We still need the blacksmith skill to be allowed to repair them, though. For Armor, you generally need both the blacksmith and leatherwork skills.
Bowyer covers both crafting bows and crossbows, but we need a specialization to craft each? If we try to work on the other one, we get a penalty. No word on what happens if we buy specializations for both.
The rules for bow crafting give the impression the writer knows a about of real-life bowyering and is now showing off his knowledge about wood preparation and different draw strength in bow types, while melee weapons and crossbows use more standardized rules.
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Culture Corner
Yaquiria consists of two different places along the river Yaquir, both different flavors of swashbuckling movies. Both Almada, the rural, southernmost Part of the Middle Realm and the Lovely Plains, the strongly urbanized core province of the Horasian Empire have a warm and pleasant climate and fertile Grounds, so Wine is the usual drink around here. Both cultures put an emphasis on personal honor (or pride and vanity, if you want to uncharitable), so a lot of quarrels end with rapier or saber duels in the alleys behind the opera or in the hills past the vineyard. These honor duels are mostly a thing of nobility in Almada, but the waning importance of the noble class due to the rise of merchant patricians and common education make them also popular among the common people in Horasia.
Both places believe in the Pantheon of the Twelve, but give special appreciation for the gods Rahja (representing Joy) and Phex (Cleverness). While the Horasians also give a lot of reverence towards Hesinde, the goddess of Knowledge, the main temple of the orthodox Boron-church is located in the city of Punin in Almada, so the god of death enjoys lots of support in those lands as well.
The names in Yaquiria have a latinized bent, with some additional tulamidian influences in Almada.
Mechanically we get a decent selection of +1s across all skill groups except nature (including rapiers for combat, naturally), and apart from some general variants dependant on geography (Temple city, on the coast etc.) and the noble variants, we HAVE to choose the almadan or horasian variant of the culture. Almadans get some physical and Crafting skills, with +2 to riding being the most notable, while Horasians get some knowledge and social skills and is one of the few cultures to get automatic points in Read/Write, so even peasants and street urchins can read slowly.
An Almadan. Just hanging around smoldering, rapier in hand.
Profession Parade
Squires are actually quite rare. Proper Knights only exist in the more backwards places - Weiden, the Foundland, Nostria and Andergast. But yeah, choosing this profession makes you a squire, having been taught by a knight since adolescence in all the knightly arts - Fighting, Riding, Courting etc.
Mechanically they are very expensive, despite the baked in disadvantages of a code of honour and an Obligation to serve their family and/or liege. They get however very nice stat bonuses (Social standing included) a good training in knightly weapons, decent physical, social and knowledge skills (with excellent riding) and some basic combat feats discounted or for free, the important mounted combat feats included.
What if you want to start as a Knight proper instead of neglecting your squirely duties? You cannot. Well, the book points out you can use the veteran mechanic to start as a knight (And actually get a bonus point to social standing that is apparently not included in the cost calculation) but straight out admits that’s prohibitively expensive*. You can, of course raise the Generation points you’re allowed to spend by GM Fiat (which, to be fair, is presented as a legitimate dial in character creation), but I forgot how much the game insists you start as an absolute beginner in your job.
4.1 realized most people want to play proper knights though, so they renamed the profession to Knight and offered a cheaper variant as a squire.
*So you start with 110 Generation Points to build your character. The profession itself costs 21, which we have to pay again (+5) to become a veteran. So that’s 47 right off the bat. We spend 100 Points for our stats, buy the prerequisite social status for 7 GP, and save some points by being a standard Midlander (0 GP) from urban nobility (3 GP. That saves us the 7 GP to buy the noble lineage advantage, without which we cannot become a squire, but now we have to argue with the DM how a kid from the urban nobility becomes an old fashioned knight) That is a total of 157 GP to become a knight. So we can just make it if we buy the maximum of 50 Points worth of disadvantages. Not literally impossible to build, but yeah, you’re better off spending you early game impressing the local nobles to get properly knighted.
Spell selection
Arcanovi Artifact is the most widespread spell to create magic items. Takes several hours at least, permanently lowers spell points and allows us to use the subsystem in With Knowledge and Will. Going by how well it’s known among the different traditions Elves and Druids rarely create magic items.
Armaguard is a defensive spell that gives the caster additional armor in the form of an invisible, skintight shield. It doesn’t encumber like real armor and apparently (? It’s not entirely clear) applies to all hit locations equally, so an elf or battlemage can get armor that makes a fighter jealous.
The armor does apply against swarm attacks (which bypass armor) but doesn’t offer any help for the interaction with the Aimed Thrust and Killing Strike maneuvers which take a penalty in exchange for bypassing armor...
Shortness of breath not only induces exactly that in the victim (halves Stamina and gives several points of exhaustion), but also regenerates a good deal of stamina for a druid, making them very effective tavern brawlers, funnily enough. Lasts for a whole day.
Aventurian heroes
Original SA post The Dark Eye 4.0Aventurian heroes
The book begins with a preamble and a sidebar about creating the concept of your character (without putting that much emphasis on the concept, but demands a well thought out backstory...)
followed by the first of many page-long fiction interludes interspersed through the books. This one shows a sample background story for a rough and tumble Thorwalian pirate, who starts traveling to avenge the death of her clan (and her dog) by slavers. Pretty standard stuff.
(Start of a "Cannot-sleep-rant" several hours later)
Actually, no, let me get back to that fiction-piece. I won't go into as much detail for the others, but after thinking about it some, I want to look over this one.
"Background" is always a part of character creation where you get six answers from five different people. To get properly into the role of a character, of course you need to have an idea what your character was up to before you picked up the dice, but I personally think the best way is to have a rough sketch of the most salient points and then – if it becomes important or interesting – fill in the blanks in the game, adding slowly to it as long as it relates to the game everybody is involved in (although I have a tendency to keep developing a backstory I like with unimportant stuff when I am on a worldbuilding roll, but I don't force that on the other players).
I realize some will find that sketching and making up on the fly method soulless or just not enough info to create a character in the first place and doesn't give the GM hooks, but the stereotypical joke opposite to "My parents got killed, I want gold, so I travel and take jobs" is the fifty-page backstory full of meaningless drivel, and that does'nt help anyone either. But I think both sides can agree that ideally, everything you put into the backstory should be able to be used in the game somehow.
Why am I digressing like that? Because "That requires a really good backstory" used to be the battlecry of GMs in the TDE community, valiantly attempting to dissuade a player from creating a character that didn't fit 100% into the setting. And the longer and more meandering that backstory was, the better chances it had to be "good."
How, then, does the book deliver an example to the new player on how they should build their backstory that was presented as so important in the preamble?
So, the first eighth of the story concerns itself with the question how the character got her name: By having her parents beat the shit out of each other and have the winner choose the name they want. That's cute (and proper Thorwalian), but happens in a time when the character can't even keep her own head up, so it's not really about her.
Then we got a paragraph that shows the Akja (the character) to be a serious tomboy, beating up a kid two years older when she is six and stealing some brandy and getting drunk when she is eight years old. She is also the first of the group that wakes up from the drunk coma, that's how tough she is. Ok, I like that.
The next paragraph is about Thorwalian culture, with children playing rough and not being too concerned with injuries and having stupid dares. That doesn't say anything about Akja. At the end there is a bit where she loses part of her finger in a dare and "still vividly remembers" the beating her parents give her for taking part in it. The finger seems to be more of a justification for low dexterity and that's just not needed. It can maybe provide some texture if the question comes up, but that's it. And the memory of the punishment? Could be a hint for lingering trauma (not as far as I can tell) or be used as a contrast at how she changed from her earlier, carefree days – nope, next paragraph she's again in the middle of another stupid game, that – as the text tells us – is important for Thorwalians.
That stupid game has Akja almost drowning, and the other children can't help her, but thankfully a dog jumps in the water and pulls her out, and the two become the best friends afterward. Well at least we introduced the dog she's going to avenge, right?
No we didn't. The dog that will die later is actually a puppy of the one that saved her, and Akja starts raising it because... uh, puppies! I guess. And that's all we learn about that specific dog. We're replacing the one dog we would actually have an emotional connection to with one that's no more than a token of revenge – one that we don't really need, because we also have a dead family. Even John Wick had nobody but the dog left.
We follow with the rite of initiation for Thorwalians. It should have been led by her grandmother, but she died – with honor, so Akja is not even sad about it – so her aunt (that wasn't mentioned before) takes over. Akja fulfills the trials and there is a huge party where everybody gets piss drunk. There is nothing about how well Akja managed the trials, or what she felt before starting them, and nothing about the relationship with the just introduced character and why we should even care about her.
Then follows a short description of her pirate-life and a setup of the one Al'Anfanian ship that leads to her clans doom.
Then - drama – the mark is not as easy as it seemed, they have been lured into a trap – but by whom? The Owner of the boarded ship doesn't get set up, there is no betrayal among the people she trusted, no face among the enemies she personally takes umbrage to. It seems the Ship they boarded just baited the next best raider, and fate led Akjas ship there. Fuck, even then Akja could rail against cruel fate and vow to not be bound by mystical forces. As it is, there is no one to take revenge against, except other faceless Al'Anfanians.
And it's not like the entire world conspired against her and her clan – they were pirates, they chose the wrong ship to board, they paid the price. Why did that have to be a trap?
Anyway she awakes wounded on a beach, buries all the dead (including that stupid dog) takes up her mothers axe (aha) and vows to kill the countrymen of the ship they boarded.
What did we learn about our character here? She was a tough badass as a six-year old, she is missing part of one finger, the axe she uses belonged to her mother. Three facts of varying usefulness, delivered in nine lines out of a whole page.
The rest is meaningless fluff, nothing about the character this purportedly about.
We learn some things about Thorwalian culture, but all those things fit into their stereotype – and you use stereotypes so you don't need to explain them.
And this is what someone who never played an RPG before gets as an example. How to write a backstory.
I'm not expecting high literature here, and honestly, the story is decently written and on its own it's an inoffensive little fluff piece, especially as an introduction to Thorwalians.
But, by intent or accident, this is presented as something to emulate for new players. A backstory.
Fuck, I'm probably overthinking the whole issue. More than the layouter in any case. But I'm honestly a little pissed.
(End of a "Cannot-sleep-rant" several hours later)
Directly afterwards we move go straight into character creation. I'm dedicating next post to that, so for the rest of this one I'm going to talk the Social Status mechanic, whose two pages are plopped into the middle of the creation rules.
Social Status (abbreviated SO) is a numerical stat that represents the place of the character in the pecking order of society. That is explicitly not fame – the baron of Stilljustsjepenpickle* does have an Social Status fit for a noble while an famous outlaw isn't considered better than a beggar.
The regular range from 1 to 12 is calibrated for play in the Middle realm and neighboring places, an isolated tribe from the jungle only runs in the range from 1 to 6 (for the village chief). That always has to be looked at in context, of course. A rich Artisan with a status of 7 doesn't impress the tribal people much.
The effects in play are mostly a narrative matter. Lowborn Characters are ignored by wealthier merchants, have to struggle to get help from the authorities and occasionally get arrested purely on the basis of convenience for the guards (That sure is fun to play.). Noble characters on the other hand, can bullshit goodies out of the common folk, easily get appointments with the local Lord and Priests and are generally treated with respect. The just shouldn't go into a dive bar alone or chum it up with a street gang, that's probably not going to end well. Mixed groups are often considered "The One with highest Status and their servants."
There are actually rules associated with Social Status, but those are considered optional. Basically, if you try to influence a person outside of your comfortable range or try to make Streetwise or Etiquette checks in a foreign milieu, you get a penalty equal to the difference of your and the opposites (average) Social status.
Changing the status works outside the advancement rules and has to be make narrative Sense (Having a grievous crime publicized, joining the church, being knighted etc). It's therefore up to the GM. There is a suggestion the Status shouldn't change by more than one point per 1000 AP.
Social status is not considered purely matter of official standing, but also of habits, expressions and posture, so you can't just dress differently and hide your upbringing. The text mentions some appropriate skills to fake your status, but doesn't provide any proper rules.
Finally there is a table with examples, and while the player status ranges from 1 (Criminals, Vagabonds) to 12 (rich Merchants, low-ranked nobles), the table actually goes up to 21 (The Empress of the Middle Realm, notably the Popes of the different churches are one or two points lower).
* The Barony to the north of Sjepenpickle, right on the edge of the wilderness in the foundland.
A Foundlandic... Noblewoman I suppose? The fur looks way to fancy for housecat, at least. So, a SO of 10+, easily
(I am actually skipping the last chapter in With Fleet Fingers. It consists of general Roleplaying tips and is mostly decent advice - especially the behaviour around the table with other players - but doesn’t add anything out of the ordinary.)
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Culture Corner
The Humans from the Cyclops Isles (we can’t play cyclopes in Aventuria, sorry) live on an archipelago of rocky Islands off the horasian coast that used to be a popular place to exile nobles. Despite that, most people outside the two cities live rather simple lives as goat herders or fishermen. Boats are commonplace, constantly ferrying people across the islands and around the coasts, which is considered being faster than trying to navigate the broken coastline. There are a lot of active volcanoes scattered across the Isles. The few (actual) cyclopes still around tend to live around those, descending into the magma to forge their weapons.
The (human) inhabitants speak both Garethi and the local Cyclopean, derived from the Old Greek - like Aureliani. People are rarely hurrying their lives and rather spend relaxed days full of wine and philosophy between work. They prefer light clothing, usually wearing only tunics without pants, and it is not out of the ordinary to meet people walking around bare chested.
The cyclopean (humans) believe in the Twelve Gods, but are rather relaxed about their usual dogma, which often turned them to a refuge for sects of the twelve churches, but also for cults of the Nameless One using other religions as cover. The fairy realm is supposedly easier to reach here than in any other place in Aventuria.
The culture is rather pricey in character generation for the usual +1s in several skills, including every single boat- or ship related skill there is and the feat for Terrain knowledge (sea). The noble variant replaces the sling skill with bows and adds some social and knowledge skills and comes up slightly cheaper than the Nobility advantage it gives for free.
Profession Parade
Warriors are the typical pseudo historical, low fantasy cliche of a Fighter who went to an officially sponsored Warrior College, learns all about fighting in the following years on campus and graduates, warrior diploma in hand, to be a roaming adventurer and fight (hopefully) Bad Guys for no other reasons than fighting is is what he does best.
… So the early editions had simply classes, which included, of course, it’s own brand of the Fighting Man. Good Weapon skills and health, the only one allowed to use two-handed swords and heavy armor, dumping Intelligence and Charisma, the usual.
As the editions added more and more classes, the fluff of the Warrior became more focused. In 3rd edition, they were a choice alongside other fighters like the mercenary, the swashbuckler and some cultural or religious archetypes, which defined them nicely as highborn warriors seeking honorable battle, used to heavy Arms and Armor as well as mounted combat, together with a good selection of non-skulduggery social skills. Their fluff already mentioned academies who would train them as officers of the army or personal bodyguards for nobles, but knights training their squires or swordmasters teaching their hand-picked students and military service on the frontline were considered equivalent to those academies, as long as they resulted in the presented Archetype.
Now that 4th Edition gave us Ensigns, Honor Guards, Squires, Soldiers and Students of the blade as separate professions, what the hell is a Warrior?
They’re someone who learned how to fight at an academy (with a diploma to prove it, even) and now wanders around fighting, and being a hero. They are professional knight errants. And that’s great from a game perspective, but doesn’t fit at all in the (phantasical) realistic world where everybody has a certain place in society, until fate unroots them and makes them take up adventuring.
Warriors used to be an iconic class, yes, and as individual characters would be fine, but with the level of organization and how widely accepted the academies are, they are stick out like a sore thumb.
All of this griping is on the fluff side, mind, because mechanically they are awesome.
All of them are pretty pricey (and come with a build in Code of Honor disadvantage), but the standard Warrior (who is actually only a 4.1 thing, but it’s a good example) gets a nice boost to hit points and stamina, an expected array of physical and knowledge skills (very few social ones, though) with very good riding, self-control, and warfare skills, two decent to good weapon skills as well as some basic knowledge in a more diverse group as well as the some basic combat feats. Most importantly, though, they get the Academic training (Warrior) advantage, which allows them to buy weapon skills at half cost during generation (up to skill rank 10) and buy combat feats at three fourths of their costs for their whole adventuring career. Weapon skills and feats are the most expensive advancements for non-wizards, so this adds up over time, which makes warriors one of the few characters that can realistically focus on more than one weapon type.
Unlike most other Advantages, you cannot buy Academic training freely, it can only be acquired as an automatic advantage of a profession.
There are six Academies with a full write up and ten more with stat blocks. The costs and skills vary somewhat, changing mostly the kind of weapon skills and the automatic and discounted feats. Otherwise the academies mostly distinguish themselves by their hook. This one focuses more on mounted combat, that one on naval combat. This one is teaches politics and intrigue, that one emulates barbarians. Those four give a different set of weapons so you don’t clash with the aesthetics of your culture. (And the one from the slaveholding Black Alliance gets points in whips. Subtle.) There is one that allows you to basically play a knight, if you don’t like the Squire.
The most distinct academy is the School of Dragonslaying in the dwarven city of Xorlosch.
Dwarves have a deep-seated cultural hatred of dragons (and everything else scaly), so the school trains the most fanatically devoted Dwarves to fight them with hammers, siege weapons and the traditional four-handed halberd used by two warriors.
Spell Selection
Attributo does indeed raise a characters attribute (requiring you to recalculate several derived stats, yay. Not Stamina, hit points and spell points, though. I guess to avoid re-recalculating when the spell ends). You only have to learn the spell once, then can freely choose which attribute to raise.
The spell is calibrated for humans, so a large part of the description is dedicated for weird interactions with animals and certain stats. We can raise a plants Cleverness, for example.
It’s usually a pretty tame increase for an hour, a variant (as well as the minor caster variant) increases the gains to amazing levels for about the duration of a fight, to the point it’s not too difficult to exceed the bounds characters are supposed to operate in.
(Especially if you combine this spell with a certain type of magic item shenanigan, things can become very ridiculous. I mean, using a warship as a bludgeoning weapon is fun and all, but I don’t think that’s the intent in this low-fantasy world)
Hot air and blowhards lets the Jokester blow a raspberry at their target, who then puff out their cheeks and start to gently rise in the air, where they are carried and blown around by the wind like a stray balloon. Or, you know, clumsily bump against the ceiling like a balloon. They safely descend to the ground when the spell ends several turns (easily up to an hour) later.
I’m only noticing now that the spell name is a pun on arrogant persons, so I spend the last ten minutes finding an adequate translation.
Character Creation
Original SA post The Dark Eye 4.0Character Creation
Character Creation in TDE is an 11-step Process.
TDE likes to call itself a free (classless) character generation, so we get a certain amount of Generation Points that we use to buy our characters basic building blocks (Race, Culture and Profession), our stats, advantages and feats.
The standard amount of Generation Points we get are 110 GP. This amount represents a character that is above the average NPC of the setting.
An Expert Rule allows the GM to decide on a different amount of GP to represent heroic or more experienced characters (up to 140) or lower the amount down to 90 to represent rookie heroes or adolescents. Those changes come with altered stat caps.
Obviously, all characters in group should be built with the same amount of GP.
So, those 110 GP? Are perfectly fine if the race/culture/profession/social status combo comes out around 20 GP or lower. Anything above that (including popular classes like professional fighters, wizards, priests and everything dwarvish and elvish) risk ending up with either crippled stats or are drowning in a sea of disadvantages that are used to pay off the negative GP. I personally like to start with 130 GP so those evergreens can be played normally while the cheaper characters get to take some of the more impactful advantages.
Anyway, the first step is the character concept. Some praise right up front, there are tables listing the building blocks, dis-/advantages, feats and abbreviated advancement table scattered around the character generation section, including GP costs and page references, so if you already have an Idea of what you want to play you don’t need to flip through the whole book.
And it’s the first step and we’re already referred to the ‘You can play that (but please don’t)’ chapter if we want to play a character out of the aventurian ordinary.
(That’s not what the chapter is actually called, but it kinda feels that way. It’s basically an essay about the difficulties some characters face in the official, phantastic realistic Aventuria)
Second step, there’s race. Pick one of the eight mechanically distinct human races, Dwarves, (Half-)Orcs, Goblins or Achaz (Lizardmen).
(Half-)Elves are options as well, but it turns out due to their innate magic they have been shuffled off to the magic box. I did not realize that (the elven sample character on the books cover is even called a huntress. Huh.). (Half-)Orcs, Goblins and Achaz refer us to the ‘You can play that (but please don’t)’ chapter.
Races are most likely to provide stat changes and include pretty significant modifiers for Hitpoints, Stamina and Magic resistance.
Choosing a culture the character grew up in is the Third step.
I legit like the culture step. I give the writers props for not making the races monocultural and recognizing some cultures as melting pots of different heritages.
Still, every Race has an list for usual and possible cultures, but the text allows us to diverge from those if we are experienced roleplayers and the GM allows us to. Because it’s incredible difficult to play a guy named Khalid when he’s blonde and a bit larger than his peers.
Mechanically, cultures contribute not as much to a character as race and profession do, but serve as a good guide for our characters outlook.
As the fourth step, we choose our profession, to represent what our character has learned so far in his life. Professions give out the most skill points and are a big part of the characters starting makeup.
They are also the point where the games classless claim wobbles a bit. GP are not granular enough to raise skills, so you cannot build a character completely from scratch, and leaving out a professions big (discounted) skill package would leave a starting character with a pitifully low skill array.
So if you have a certain character concept in mind that doesn’t really fit with the existing professions, you need to pick the one closest to your concept and work from there or straight up build a custom profession with the expert rules later.
Also, some character defining advantages (Academic Warrior, Academic Sage, Full Casters and Demi Casters) are technically hardcoded into professions and cannot be taken on their own, but that is easy enough to houserule.
Fifth step: Buying stats. The characters eight Stats (Courage, Cleverness, Charisma, Intuition, COnstitution, Agility, Fleetness (Manual Dex), and Physical Power (Strength)) can be bought 1:1 with GP. They all have to end up between 8 and 14 before modifiers.
We spend 100 GP on our stats - well, up to 100 GP, but since stats are incredible expensive to raise in play and the starting values determine the stat caps, we really want to spend all possible points here.
We also buy our SOcial status 1:1. Every profession has a SO requirement, and we have to buy the minimum for our job, which can be quite painful if you forgot to add that cost to the more prestigious professions when planning the character.
4.1, incidentally, gave every profession it’s minimum SO for free and folded those into the professions cost. Due to the way a professions cost get calculated, that made the highborn professions quite a bit cheaper.
Sixth step: Dis-/Advantages. You know the drill, buy merits and flaws until your GP amount to 0. You can earn a maximum of 50 GP with disadvantages, 30 of which can come from Bad Attributes (Character flaws running on a 5-12 scale that can get checked just like the normal stats can, like Violent Temper, Fear of heights or Curiousity). The automatic dis-/advantages baked into some professions do not count toward that limit.
If a combination would give an advantage twice, it either increases the advantage to the next step, or recoups half the cost of the advantage in GP. This can lead to some shenanigans if you’re a serious optimizer.
Finally there is an appeal to the players sense of narrative to not go overboard with disadvantages, because a character riddled with physical and mental flaws becomes somewhat silly and hard to play. But again, some of the higher cost characters kinda have to or they’re not even being able to buy their basics.
Step 6a: After the two pages Social Status rules we resume to buy feats, just like we would buy Advantages. All feats are listed here with their GP costs, which turns out to be 1 GP for 50 AP. This is the second of at least three exchange rates between AP and GP…
Seventh step: Skills. We add all the skill bonuses from our race, our culture and our profession(s) together to get the skill array of our character. After that, we get some Skill Generation Points (which might as well just be AP…) to raise our skills further or buy new ones (And yes, we’re ignoring the optional rules about learning methods here.) We have an amount of (CL+IN)*20 SGP to spend at once using the non-intuitive advancement table. I suggest a spreadsheet.
If the character has spells, they are raised here as well, using the same Pool of SGP.
Step 7a: Starting Age. Haha, I had completely forgotten about this.
So, we can pick or roll the starting age of our character, but the ranges are pretty low. Half of the human characters start between ages 16 to 18, the others even between 15 to 17.
Some Professions take longer and can push the age potentially up to the ancient age of 27, past that we’re referred to the ‘You can play that (but please don’t)’ chapter (Although I think that’s actually about old characters).
Sure you can Rule zero that, but it’s not explicitly called out as optional, so by RAW, I guess your character is a teenager.
Picture actually unrelated, as we are advised against even younger Heroes.
... You know, there used be a TDE hack specifically for playing as children and tweens. The rules were, of course overcomplicated and clunky, but the art and writing were adorable.
Step 8: Derived Stats. Calculate Hit points, Stamina, Basic Attack, Basic Parry, Basic Ranged Attack and Magic Resistance. Each stat is calculated by 3 Stats, divided by X, and has modifiers added.
Step 9 : Combat Stats. We have our combat skills and know our Basic Attack and Basic Parry, so we can distribute our combat stats.
Pick a combat skill, split the rank into two numbers, difference no greater than 5, and add one to the Basic Attack, the other to the Basic Parry to calculate our Attack and Parry values with this weapon class. This decision is final, we only add additional points when we raise our combat skill.
Repeat for all other combat skills we have at least one rank in.
Step 10: Shopping! Every Profession has a short equipment list our character gets, that usually involves the most important items (Clothing, travel pack, simple weapon…). Still, we get (SO*SO*SO) Copper pieces and are encouraged to spend half of it on additional equipment. The difference between a lowborn and a noble character is immense, but even High-SO characters have trouble affording armor or another weapon let alone anything magical, so I guess it’s balanced?
If we bought the Special Possession advantage we now can add our horse/masterwork weapon/portable writing desk to the character sheet as well.
Step 11: Last touches. Name the hero, Imagine his personality, answer the 20 Questions. We’re done.
Step 12: Go play! Now! That’s why I said there were only 11 Steps.
So, creating a character in TDE is not complicated, but it is busywork. Keeping track of your GP as you choose the building blocks, write down all the skill bonuses, stat changes, feats and dis-/advantages, balance all your Stats within limit of 100 points, juggle the flaws and merits. Then generate your AP Skill GP and buy up your skills with the advancement table. Pull out a calculator to determine your derived stats. And just when you think you’re done, you’re going over the item list to spend the half of the starting money.
And I guarantee, you forgot to buy or raise a skill that was important for your characters personality, so go back and recalculate!
Creating a character takes time, a lot of notes, and is best done outside of the actual gaming session. And for a system that sees itself as newbie friendly, it it definitely not something you can teach easily, or do without books.
And if you didn’t write out a proper backstory, the GM will be very disappointed and start to question your commitment to the hobby
(And no, there aren’t any Fate-points or a similar mechanic to avoid a certain death anywhere in the box, so after some unlucky rolls you’re all over this again. At the least the book is upfront that you can just give a Character X AP to have them catch up to the other characters).
I have created a character by hand exactly once, when I started the game back in 2002. Since then, my group and I have made regular use of the various character creators that popped up around the net. In fact, I’m going out on a limb here and claim people creating TDE 4.X Characters by hand are a huge minority, no matter how groggy their groups might be otherwise.
But for this review, I’m going to create a sample character by hand, for old times sake.
Does anyone have a character concept they want to see? Don’t feel limited by the cultures and professions I brought up so far, I’m kind of curious how resilient the system is when somebody just comes up with a concept without having the Aventurian baggage in their mind.
Besides, having to decide if you try to hammer a square peg into a round hole or tell the bright-eyed newbie that his concept just doesn’t fit into Aventuria is part of the TDE experience, really.
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Culture Corner
The Amazon Castle culture is pretty small and consists only of the inhabitants of the last two remaining castles hidden away in the mountains. The castles resemble half a religious order, half the barracks of a cavalry unit, as they are devout followers of Rondra, seeing themselves as her chosen people. Their entire culture revolves around proving themselves worthy to the honorable and undaunted goddess of war.
The Amazons are women only, men are not welcome on the castles and any son born to an Amazon is given away to be raised by a nearby peasant or traveller as soon as possible.
Every girl raised in the castles gets taught the basics of fighting and riding, and most end up serving in the cavalry armies or as craftswomen in direct support of the warriors. The the traveling (read: PC) Amazon is an exception.
Travelers are either exiles, seeking to regain their honor and being allowed back, one of the survivors of the castles conquered or destroyed in Borbarads Invasion, or on the quest to find a men that is acceptable enough in the eyes of the goddess to (hopefully) sire a daughter. Even when traveling, they are easily recognizable by their distinctive armor (that’s a pretty good choice for a mobile fighter, rules wise).
Amazons are a rather pricey culture, but they get a free point in Constitution, counterbalanced by the automatic Bad Attributes Arrogance and Prejudice against men. They also get a very good bonus to the Bows or Javelins skills, as well as Physical control, Self Control and Riding, as well as several +2s in other combat skills, but a penalty to Streetwise.
Notably, most cultures until now allowed all or almost all Professions, but Amazons have limited choices: Amazon warriors, Priests of Rondra, Healers, Animal Tamers specialized on Horses, Blacksmiths, Carpenters and Leatherworkers.
No two Artists can agree on how revealing the Amazon armor actually is. The one seen here, with the gorget giving at least some protection above the bustline seems to be the most common interpretation, though.
Profession Parade
Members of a military Order aren’t actually in this book. This entry is just here to tell us that they exist and direct us to the not-yet-published Aventurian servants of the gods.
Most churches have their own military orders, and so most priests presented in the Gods and Demons Box have an unordained, martial variant we can choose, ranging from Praios’ Knights of the Banishing Ray (BURN THE WITCH!!!), to Borons Golgarites (grim undead hunters who fight their prey in total silence), to the Goose Knights (protecting the sacred hospitality of roadside Inns, helpful peasants and Travias Temples).
Personally I would have given a generic Profession focused on a combat and the Gods and Cults skill, but whatever.
Weirdly, Path of Heroes, the 4.1 character generation hardcover, compiled all published professions, including the clerical professions, yet they still included the little military order blurb in the combat professions. I guess they didn’t want to waste the picture…?
Spell selection
Eye of Limbo opens up swirling maelstrom that acts as a one way portal to the featureless connective tissue between the planes. Everything at the center gets hurled into the limbo right away, people outside of the center have to make a compared check of Physical Power to not get drawn to the center. The maelstroms PP depends on the Astral points the caster spent casting the spell, which is random. Well, 3d6 random, plus 3 points/meter for each increase of the centers diameter, but there’s no mention of how big the center ends up being. I guess the caster can choose it freely, but its not clear.
Anyway, floating around in limbo is very deadly very quickly for non-casters, and casters are safe for some time but probably don’t have a way to go back, so this isn’t really a spell you want to use on your players. The variant that hurls it’s victims straight into the Nether Hells is probably more playable. At least there’s stuff to do there.
The spell is incredible rare to begin with, and doesn’t get taught anymore after several ‘very regrettable accidents’.
Auroleus Golden sheen is an illusion spell that makes an object appear to be golden for a few hours. That’s it. It’s mostly used by court wizards to spruce up their lords audience hall or fairground illusionists showing off, although it is possible to run a con with your new golden figurine.
Sample Character
Original SA post The Dark Eye 4.0Sample Character
Leraika posted:
I like the idea of a wizard con artist.
I admit I am chickening out here a bit and go for the character actually intended by the rules.
The other ones triggered a ‘Not possible’ reflex in me. I think I can build them anyway, but the actual creation process would probably drown in a mess of footnotes, creative rules lawyering and aggressive refluffing.
Inarés Cankuna Ramirez grew up in the slums of Al’anfa. As a Fanas, her family is free but poor, and every single day of her life was a struggle for her parents to bring home enough food for all her brothers and sisters, let alone some coins to save.
It’s little wonder then, that Inarés followed the lure of the less reputable professions, promising plenty of silver (or even gold) for easy work, if you are bold and witty enough to grab the opportunities presenting themselves. And while plenty of rivals and danger lurked in the seedy underbelly of the Black Alliances capital, Inarés always had an edge keeping her safe.
By pure chance (no one else in the family has it) she was born with the magic spark. Freedom and pride were all she had, so she refused to beg a Grande house to pay her tuition for the Magic University of the city, only to become the houses slave indentured servant later. Thankfully, an old, washed up fairground illusionist regularly visited the the tavern in her stomping grounds, who taught her the basics of the Charlatan tradition, the Wizard-light teachings cobbled together by failed Academy students.
Inarés successfully combined the magic with her charm and wits to run cons in the city for decent payouts and the occasional satisfaction of ruining some moneybags scheme, especially if it helps out some poor sap.
Maybe she messed up and had a con revealed, maybe she fears she’s becoming to infamous in the city, or she believed the stories of the gullible northern princelings. Either way, she left the city to travel the continent, always on the lookout for a promising opportunity to make bank and with a soft spot for an underdog story.
As a race, we are choosing the Forest people, the native inhabitants of the southern Aventurian jungles. Their stat block looks like this:
code:
Forest people
Cost: 3GP
Hair color: 1 - 5 Black, 6-19 Blue-black, 20 Dark brown
Eye color: 1-3 Light brown, 4-10 Dark brown, 11-20 black
Height: 152+3D6 centimeters
Weight: Height - 110 kg
Stat modifications: CH +1, AG +1, CO +1, PP -1
HP: +8, Stamina: +12, Magic Resistance -6
Automatic Dis-/Advantages: None
Suggested Dis-/Advantages: Good Stamina, Balance, Danger Sense, Luck, Beautiful, Heat resistance, Poison resistance, Double jointed, Beautiful voice; Superstition, Curious.
Unlikely Dis-/Advantages: Iron skin, Exceptional Balance, High Magic resistance, Cold resistance, Hard to enchant, “Dwarven” Sense; Colorblind, Brittle bones
Usual Cultures: Jungle tribes, Lost tribes, Miniwatu, Tocamuyac, South Aventuria, Buccaneers
Other possible Cultures: Yaquiria, Arania, Tulamidian City States:
Skills: Climbing +2, Physical Control +2, Sneaking +2, Perception +3, Dancing +1, Navigation +1Ahem, anyway: The Charisma Bonus is great for a con woman, Agility and Constitution are generally useful, the penalty for physical power hurts combat, which will (hopefully) not be an issue for Inarés. Hit points are a bit on the frail side, extra Stamina we could take or leave, that MR is pretty bad (but the Average is -4, so not catastrophically bad).
Suggested and unlikely Dis-/Advantages are just that: A suggestion. No mechanical effects if we take them.
I’m going to roll for our looks and get: Black hair, black eyes, 162 cm tall, 52 kg
For the culture, we already established we’re from South Aventuria, I’m additionally springing some points to get the City state, Al’anfa variant. The Stat block looks like this:
code:
South Aventuria:
Cost 5 GP
Stat Mods: None
Social Maximum: None
Automatic Dis-/Advantages: Social Adaptability
Suggested Dis-/Advantages: Heat resistant, Connections; Superstition, Arrogance, Vanity, Greed, Violent Temper, Curious, Debt, Restricted Diet (Cultural), Duty, Prejudices
Unlikely Dis-/Advantages: Fae friend, Cold Resistant, Kobold friend, Fear of Crowds, Fear of tight spaces.
Combat Professions: All except Amazon, Squire, Tribal Warrior
Traveling, Social and Crafting Professions: All
Magic Professions: Druids (Rare), Witches (No Toads), Wizards, Charlatans, Jokesters, Sharisad
Clerical Professions: Novice (All Twelve Gods except Firun, All Demigods except Swafnir and Ifirn, no Angrosch or Ingra Cult)
Skills: Combat Bow or Crossbow +1, Daggers +2, Brawling +1, Grappling +1, Sabers +1; Physical Swimming +1, Hiding +1,Social Streetwise +1, Disguise +1, Fast talking +1; Knowledge History +1, Gods/Cults +1, Tales/Legends +1, Appraise +1; Languages Native Language Garethi (Brabaci or Gatamo dialect), Speak Tulamidya +4,Speak Mohic +4, Craft Small Boats +1, Woodworking +1, Leather working +1
Variant: City State (Al’Anfa): +2 GP Streetwise +2; Sea Fishing or Seafaring +1; Gods/Cults +2As a Profession, we could choose a rogue-ish mundane one and buy the Minor Caster Advantage to get some nice goodies, but I think this is not magic enough for our Magic Con woman.
I considered making her a Witch (Silent Sisterhood, Beauties of the Night and Traveling Fellowship are all good covens for our line of work), but ultimately, we’re taking the Profession that has a con-woman variant: The Charlartan.
code:
Charlatan
Cost: Depending on Variant:
Requirements: CL13 or IN 13, the other 11; CH 12, FF 12
Modifications: MR +1 AsP +6
Automatic Advantage: Demi-Caster
Skills: Combat Daggers +1, Brawling +2, Physical Physical Control +1, Self Control +2, Imitate Voices +2, Social Seducing +1, Streetwise +1, Read People +4, Disguise +4, Fast Talk +2, Convince +1, Knowledge Geography +1; Gods/Cults +3, Magic Lore +1; Mathematics +2, Law +1; Tales/Legends +2, Languages Speak Bosparano or Ur-Tulamidya +2, one foreign language of our choice +4, the appropriate Script +3,
Feats: Tradition/Ritual knowledge Charlartan, Training for the Illusion-School, Regeneration I (For Astral Points),
Discounted Feats: Nandusian Knowledge, Regeneration II
Suggested Dis-/Advantages: Beautiful, Social Adaptability, Beautiful voice; Vanity, Curious, Easy to distract
Unlikely Dis-/Advantages: Noble Heritage; Fear of Crowds, Colorblind, Fear of open Spaces, Speech Disorder
Equipment: Fancy, but cheap clothing for a Show including Shoes and Hat, decorated but mundane Magic Staff, Simple traveling clothes with sturdy boots, Dagger, Simple pack with bowl and cutlery
Special Possesion (if bought with Advantage): Simple Horse with Saddle and Bags, Crystal ball with binding ritual completed, for Court Illusionists: Connections up to 20 GP, allowed to ignore the SO differences:
Variant: Con Woman (12 GP, Time Intensive, additional Requirements FF 13, SO 3-8)
Additional Suggested Dis-/Advantages: Lucky Gambler, Wanted
Additional Skills: Dagger +1, Brawling +1, Performance Tricks +5, Sneaking +1, Hiding +2, Pick Pockets +3, Carousing +2, Streetwise +2, Read People +2, Fast Talking +4, Mathematics +1, Appraisal +4, Speak Atak +4, raft Cheating (Gambling) +4, Pick Locks +1,
Specialization Spells: Attributo +6, Harmless Figure +6, Ignorantia or Impersona +6, Penetrizzel +7, Sensibar +7
Spells: Applicatus +4, Auroleus +4, Claudibus +3, Foramen +3, Cloud Scrying +4, Ignorantia or Impersona +3, Pectetondo +4, Aversion +3So as you can see, the Profession entries in TDE have a lot going on in them. Another small Gripe: That Bonuses to MR and Astral Points Charlatans get are apparently the result of the Demi Caster Advantage, but I can’t find any place where that is clearly written down.
Anyway, we’re at 88 GP left, let me just write all the stuff we’ve gotten down…
A Forest person
Next up are the stats. I’m setting the Social Status to 5 before I forget that. That counts as lower class. Inarés has never been a beggar, and that should be enough to allow us to walk around in public places.
After spending the minimum requirements for stats we still have 19 Points until we hit the 100 GP Limit. I raise Intuition, Charisma, and Fleetness to the Generation Cap, give some additional Points to Cleverness and Courage (it takes guts to pull off a con. Research also helps) and set her Physical Power to at least average, we already have a penalty deal with. That leaves 3 points each for Agility and Constitution, and we’re done with this step. The currents Stats are (including Modifiers):
code:
CR 13 AG 12
CH 15 FF 14
CL 13 CO 12
IN 14 PP 9
So technically I am skipping the Dis-/Advantages and take a look at the feats first.
CH 15 actually unlocks only a single feat, and we cannot take that as a Demi Caster. Still, I found some Interesting feats, but all together they would 20 GP. We are already 17 GP over our budget without having bought any advantages, and none of the feats are essential, so we’re putting those on the backburner.
Let’s see what Disadvantages we can use to balance our GPs.
First off, we’re mercilessly exploiting our skillset: We’re taking Backfire, which reflects any spell we fail back onto us at its lowest possible strength. Since most of our spells are cast on ourselves in the first place and the others aren’t particularly dangerous, we’re willing to take that gamble. Hey, that’s our justification, too. Inarés is just not used to aiming spells. We get 10 GP for that.
(Don’t look at us like that, imaginary GM. We could learn attack spells from a wizard (at a horrendous AP cost) and we do have access to some disabling spells.)
A second one is Curse of Darkness - uh, Curse of Honesty, I guess. Inarés always considered her magic gift a natural extension of her cunning and trickery, so using it without deceiving someone feels wrong somehow.
Curse of Darkness is the sample for a template that gives out penalties if certain conditions are (not) met. The original penalizes casting spells at night and gives out the rough guideline that a character should be affected roughly half the time. We need explicit GM approval for our version, but it’s flavorful and unless the GM is planning an Heist-style campaign, I feel just helping people will come up often enough to make a difference. 2 GP for each point of penalty, we grab the maximum of 3 for 6 GP
Next, we’re going to take a Bad Attribute. Let’s say, one attempt to swindle an art collector went spectacularly wrong, leading to him releasing the hounds. This not only left some nasty marks, but also a Fear of Dogs with a value of 6. No matter how good the boy, when Inarés is around anything canine, she either has to roll on her fear (being paralyzed in terror when we roll lower than 7) or will have a penalty of 6 to all of her skill checks.
The exact cost needs to be determined according to rarity, but we already tested our imaginary GMs patience, so we’re taking the low option for 1 GP per point of the Bad Attribute
Now, we’re back to 5GP that we can spend however. I am considering Strong Matrix, lowering the chance of a critical failure when rolling for a spell, or possibly increasing the Fear of Dogs by 3 points to buy improved regeneration of astral points, but I’m feeling cute.
We increase Fear of Dogs to 7 and use the 6 GP to buy
Other Dis-/Advantages I considered were Bad Regeneration (The nightly regeneration sinks to 1D6-1, there should be enough ways to improve healing), Greed (Inarés really likes Gold, possibly enough to push a con or sneak back into a dragons hoard…), Body-bound Power (Part of the Astral Points pool is stored in her hair, so if she cuts it too short…) and Good Memory (Halves all costs to raise spells. This would be amazing in the long run)
All GP spent, we skip the Feats and go on to the Skills.
First off, we’re adding all bonus points from race, culture and profession together. Then, we get to spend (CL+IN)*20 SGP: 540 SGP. We’re raising the skills and spells according to the Table from an earlier update.
First off, I’m buying the Flash spell, giving her panic button when it comes to combat. See, dear imaginary GM, Backfire is meaningful. If she fails the spell, she’ll be blinded herself (for half a round).
Otherwise I’m just raising what looks useful, improving strengths and shoring glaring weaknesses etc.
Right, Starting Age. As a Forest person, Inarés starts Adventuring at 14 + 1D3 years, the time-intensive Charlatan adds 3 years. I roll a 1. Inarés is 18 years old.
Next, we determine the derived Stats:
Hitpoints are (CO+CO+PP)/2 + Modifiers: 25 HP. Oof, that’s low.
Stamina: (CR+CO+AG)/2 + Modifiers: 31
Astral Points: (CR+IN+CH)/2+Modifiers: 27
Basic Attack: (CR+AG+PP)/5 : 7
Basic Parry: (IN+AG+PP)/5: 7
Basic Ranged: (IN+FF+PP)/5: 7
Initiative: (CR+CR+IN+AG)/5: 10
Magic resistance: (CR+CL+CO)/5 + Modifiers : 3
Finally we distribute The Attack and Parry Values(Not that these have much meaning for a fighter like Inarés) :
Daggers 2/2 (Probably our “main” weapon)
Brawling: 0/4 (We’re not going to use it really, so we just want to keep ourselves safe when we have to)
Sabers: 0/3 (Daggers actually have a limited list of weapons they can parry, so we’re getting sabers too and use them purely on the defense)
Grappling: 0/1 (Some Attacks need to be parried with the grappling skill. When you don’t plan to grapple yourself, throw all your skill points onto the parry.)
To buy equipment we get to spend SO*SO*SO Copper pieces, so 5*5*5=125, or 1 Gold Piece, 2 Silver and 5 Copper.
…
…
…
It turns out, I don’t have an equipment list. I guess there was something else in the Basic Book. Let’s just cut Inarés budget in half and say she has everything she needs.
And finally, we’re supposed to put the finishing touches on the roleplaying. Only thing I feel I can add is that Inarés probably regularly prays to Phex, has soft spots for Travia or Rahja and has never voluntarily listened to the sermon of a priest of Praios or Rondra.
And finally, a complete character in TDE, Magic sheet included:
code:
Name: Inarés Cankuna Ramirez
Race: Forest People Culture: South Aventuria, City State Al’anfa Profession: Charlartan, Con Woman
Stats (Maximum)
CR 13 (20) FF 14 (21) SO 5
CL 13 (20) AG 12 (18)
CH 15 (22) CO 12 (18)
IN 14 (21) PP 9 (14)
Speed: 8 Hit Points: 25 (31) Stamina: 31 (43) Astral Points: 27 (42)
Magic Resistance: 3 Ini: 10 AT: 7 PA: 7 Ranged AT: 7
Advantages: Social adaptability, Demi-Caster, Creature of Deceit 3
Disadvantages: Fear of Dogs: 7, Curse of Honesty 3, Backfire
Skills:
Combat:
Crossbows 1 Daggers 4 Impact Weapons 0
Brawling 4 Grappling 1 Sabers 3
Throwing Knives 0
Physical:
Performance Trick: 5 Climbing 2 Phys. Control 3
Sneaking 4 Swimming 1 Self Control 2
Hiding 3 Singing 0 Perception 3
Imitate Voices 2 Dancing 1 Carousing 2
Pick Pockets 4
Social:
Seducing 3 Streetwise 9 Read People 9
Disguise 9 Fast Talk 10 Convince 5
Nature:
Tracking 0 Navigation 1 Survival 0
Knowledge:
Geography 1 History 1 Gods/Cults 6
Magic Lore 1 Mathematics 3 Law 1
Tales/legends 3 Appraise 6
Languages:
Native Tongue: Garethi (Gatamo) 11
Tulamidya 4 Mohic 6 Atak 4
Bosparano 2 Another Foreign Language +4, Script +3
Craft:
Small Boats 1 Cheating 6 Healing Arts (Wounds): 0
Woodworking 1 Cooking 0 Leatherworking 1
Paint/Draw 0 Pick Locks 4 Tailoring 0
Seafaring 1
Feats: Tradition: Charlatan; Regeneration 1; Illusion-Training
Discounted Feats: Nandusian Knowledge, Regeneration 2
Combat Stats:
Wound Threshold: 12
Injury Thresholds: 25/12/8/6
Stamina Thresholds: 31/15/10/7
Dodge 7
Armor:
Reinforced coat: Armor 1/ Encumbrance 1
Weapon:
Brawling: 1d6 Damage AT/PA 7/11
Shortsword (As Dagger) 1D6+2 Damage AT/PA Mod 0/-1 AT/PA 9/8, Shatter value 1
Shortsword (As Saber) AT/PA 9 (other Stats like Dagger)
Magic:
Ritual Knowledge 3
(No Rituals yet)
Spells:
Applicatus 4 Attributo* 9 Auroleus 7
Claudibus 3 Foramen 4 Flash 6
Harmless Figure* 6 Cloud Scrying 4 Ignorantio* 6
Impersona 3 Pectodondo 4 Penetrizzel* 7
Sensibar* 8 Aversion 3
Equipment:
Fancy, but cheap clothing for Cons in high Society,
Jewelry made from Glass baubles and gilded Brass
Simple traveling clothes with sturdy boots and reinforced Doublet,
Simple pack with bowl and cutlery
Utility Knife
Flas filled with brandy
Inrah-Cards, Dice
Several cheap trinkets and jewelry.Theoretically I could have saved time by writing all the stats directly into a character sheet, but a sketch sheet to quickly change and correct your choices is highly recommended.
The skills are distributed among race, culture and Profession (and it’s variants), so you have to choose between taking extra time to organize your handwritten Skill list or risk making mistakes due to the lack of any order (I actually doubled up on a skill and raised it both times. Whoops).
… I also completely forgot our basic skills when spending SGP, but I don’t think we have any glaring omission that will bite us in the ass in play…
So, what can Inarés actually do in the game.
She is smart, headstrong and likeable and her fingers are deft like a hummingbird. The rest of her physical stats are mediocre, but the modifiers of the the Forest people make her still decently agile and tough. Just don’t ask her to carry anything heavy.
Her main role in combat will be to cower in a corner and beg for mercy, although she can at least support the martial characters with her Flash spell, unreliable as it is at this point.
We could buy her a proper shield and leather armour, so she can at least stay alive for some combat rounds. If we also set aside some AP per adventure (let’s say around a third) to raise her combat skills, she can even stop being dead weight after the first 400 AP or so, but being a competent fighter is a long way off and requires us to focus on combat skills.
She is not exceptional at anything physical, but has enough points spread around to not embarrass herself. The decent Performance tricks can be used for juggling, fire eating, and - more to the point - shell games. For card and dice tricks, she is using her equally well Cheating skill. She has a good base in other rogue-y skills (Pick locks, Pick pockets, Sneak), but her true strength as a con woman are, of course, the social skills.
Her excellent Fast talk makes her quite good at lying (and haggling, and intimidating, and begging, and…), and Disguise and Read People are helpful to set up some cons as well. With a decent Convincing skill, she has a shot at using a long con, as well.
There is no forgery skill - we’re supposed to use an appropriate crafting skill - but with her good Streetwise she should be able to find someone who can help her with that and other not-quite-legal tasks - or to find shelter when things go south.
She is also surprisingly good at debating Theology. Growing up in a theocracy paid off.
Her languages are sufficient. Garethi is her native tongue, and with a smattering of Tulamidya she should be able to get through most civilized places, her good Mohic won’t do her much good outside of the jungle, though. The additional language confuses me a bit. If I choose one without a script, what happens with the 3 points for writing? Can I use these on my native tongue, then?
Atak is sign language used by thieves.
Of, course, we spent a lot of GP to get those sweet spells. What do they give us?
Attributo is a good allrounder that raises our stats for the next hour.
Sensibar lets us read the mood and emotions of someone (which doesn’t have a mechanical effect).
Penetrizzel allows us to look through walls. Handy, and if we keep on building that we can use it to cheat at cards.
Flash blinds a target for a short while, Auroleus enchants something to look like gold.
Ignorantio allows us to effectively vanish in a crowd. Aversion does the same with objects by making them too disturbing to look at.
Harmless figure puts an illusion on us that makes us seem completely nonthreatening, but we cannot control that. We need Impersona to create a specific disguise.
Cloud Scrying hinders all divination spells.
Foramen and Claudibus are the Knock and Hold Portal spells of TDE. Pectodondo is fluff spells that allows us to change the length and color of our hair.
Finally, Applicatus allows us to pin a spell on an object and have it trigger when touch. There aren’t much obvious applications with our spell list (unless you want to mess with people by having it trigger Aversion).
So not much that helps us actually tricking people, but plenty of panic buttons when things go wrong.
Charlartans generally don’t have a great spell list, focusing mostly on Illusions (and most of them too flashy for Inarés job), but we can learn Wizards spells for a lowered cost.
Her Astral pool is pretty small right now, though (that’s Demi-Casters for you), so she has to think carefully when to use a spell, and most actions will be resolved with a mundane skill roll.
And that’s our character, focused pretty strongly on urban and social situations, with some neat tricks to pull out of her sleeve, but struggles with a lot of other situations.
Of course, depending on how we’ll spend AP she can look pretty different in a few thousand AP.
When building a character, there aren’t really traps that will ruin your character. You can definitely come out weaker than other characters by spreading your skills around to thin or pay too much for an overpriced building block (which we kinda did. Witches aren’t much more expensive than charlatans but much better spellcasters), but basic competency in skills can be gained pretty quickly - unless your campaign has a tight schedule and your group is using learning times.
Just remember to spend all your 100 GP on stats, especially in the ones you really want.
(Oh, and generation is the only point where you can make the choice to become a spellcaster. No upgrading from Minor/Demi-Casters either, so magic characters need more planning.)
What is worse is that there is no guideline how high you can raise skills in character generation. I took a reasonable, diverse approach here, but nothing is stopping us from raising our Fast Talk skill to our current cap of 18 and pick up or other skills in play. Both approaches kinda work, but the group really should find a common guideline everybody is following, but there is no discussion of that in the generation rules.
The only vague hint is that WFF calls 7 the end of apprenticeship, so obviously a good rule of thumb for beginner right? A single bad or two below average rolls in skill check can ruin that attempt, so this feels pitifully low.
Worse, not all skills are equal at the same level. Let’s take the commonly accepted fresh character cap of 12 (that is so widespread I actually thought that was a rule from the book. Whoops)
Is Fast Talking 12 good? Definitely. It will work most of the time and leave us with a decent quality.
Is Climbing 12 good? That strongly depends on the encumbrance, and therefore mostly on the expected armor of the group and therefore on how combat heavy the campaign is.
Is a weapon skill of 12 good? At this point you can just barely start to engage with the combat system properly.
Is a spell of 12 good? That strongly depends on the spell in question and how big the characters AsP pool is.
So yeah, not many outright traps, but also a total lack of guidance on how exactly a beginning character should look.
----------------
Culture Corner
Arania, an tulamidian province, used to be annexed by the Middle realm for several centuries. It’s a fertile land with very few large cities that used to be the empires breadbasket. Most people live in villages and hamlets on the land and are governed by a feudal system that shows clear influence from the european styled empire, but instead of Barons, Counts, Dukes and Kings Aranians are reigned by Beyrouns, Emirs, Sultans and Shah. The influence is obvious in the clothing as well - 1001 Night style clothing of Kaftan, loose pants, Fez and Turban are mixed with Doublets, skirts and heavy boots.
While Aranians are generally pretty social and have big families, they aren’t overly concerned with bloodlines. The wealth of a family, rather than their ancestors, determine it’s social standing, and the heir to a matriarchs fortune position is usually an adopted or in-law daughter that show the greatest promise. Women are considered the leaders of families and businesses, while men are seen as free spirits whose company is enjoyed, but who are otherwise better left to their own hobbies - which, mind, include warfare.
The wizard guilds never really managed to leverage their power in Arania and Witches are just as respected in magical matters, if not more so.
The most interesting mechanical aspects are that every Aranian knows potentially the basics of magic, and they get both Tulamidiya and Garethi as native Languages, as well as decent literacy in one of those. Variants are city, coast or noble family, as well as a mandatory choice between genders. Men cost more (6 to 5 GP) which is the result of a quirk of the profession building rules more than any reasonable trade-off.
An Aranian noblewoman
Profession Parade
Journeymen/women of the Sword* are pretty new, both to the rules and the background. The JotS represents a noble and/or rich fighter who learned fighting for fightings sake. They don’t learn combat at the frontlines or at an academy, but are the handpicked students of a single, distinguished and often famous sword master. Unlike Warriors, they don’t have the official backing of state and church, but are generally accepted as dependable and honorable warriors by sheer reputation.
Despite being pretty foppish, JotS aren’t easy going swashbucklers, but seriously dedicated to their craft. Some settle for becoming professional duellists or teach sword fighting to some nobles child, but most start to travel around Aventuria to hone their skills and refine their swordplay by learning from other masters, until they develop their own fighting style and can become sword masters themselves.
(There is no explanation how to become a sword master, or if it requires an official trial or having other masters vouch for you or anything. My personal interpretation has always been that a character becomes a sword master as soon as they call themselves one and stop being a sword master when someone tells them “You’re not.” after kicking their asses.)
Most JotS have a european aesthetic (The spreading knowledge of HEMA fencing manuals in the late 90s is a clear inspiration), but they work pretty well for a classic Kung-Fu movie setup as well.
Mechanically, they obviously get good combat skills in a single weapon, good physical, social and knowledge skills (including literacy), an unarmed fighting style and feats. Feats are the bread and butter of the JotS, and their big draw. Where other Professions give or discount some basic feats that maybe suggest a fighting style and academic Warriors can buy whatever they want, JotS provides a complete set of feats tailored to their specific weapon for free and discount a lot of ones that weapon is built around.
That makes them pretty expensive. The basic chassis that every JotS uses already has several flaws baked in: The Bad Attributes Arrogance and Vanity (see: foppish), Debt of over a 1000 Gold pieces and a code of honor, and the cheapest JotS still costs 19 GP. Add in the high requirements for Attributes and Social status, and JotS usually drown in Disadvantages.
The 4.0 book presents us with four different styles, but encourages the reader to create their own Style, with the unspoken implication that their old characters become the swordmasters.
The Garetian style of the brothers Adersin uses uncharacteristically heavy arms, wielding a hand-and-a-half sword with a light set of plate armor.
The Adersin family were the first ones to distribute fencing manuals about sword-and-boarding and are seen as the first formal sword masters. The Brothers that inherited the school developed their own fighting style based on the hand-and-half-sword (which they call the King of all weapons) and teach their style to noble students only.
The fighting style capitalizes on the hand-and-a-half swords feat selection of Yes! and provides their students with a feat for every occasion, be it counterattacks, disarming strikes and parries or a withering offense.
The Albernian Brawling style of ni Uinin was created when a student of the original Adersin adapted their fighting style to naval combat and boarding actions.
Ni Uinins fight close up with short swords and bucklers, goading the enemy to attack and binding their blade. And of course, they brawl, the fluff text tells us. (Despite the fact that their unarmed style is only discounted, just like the other styles. Also, I don’t think the combination of armed and unarmed styles existed already in 4.0).
Their feats are built around parrying weapons, increasing defense and using the Bind Blade feat to set up an attack, even if they are pretty light on the offensive.
The Vagrant style of Fedorino is the classical swashbuckling style. Their Rapier and Parrying dagger style have dominated the street brawls and duels in Horasia for the last two decades.
Fedorinos usually goad an enemy to attack and counter after binding their blade. If that sounds familiar, yeah, turns out they almost the same feat selection as the Uinins, mostly trading out the Combat in Water feat against the equally niche Improvised weapons one and fighting with a worse weapon and wearing worse armor.
As an added insult, they don’t even get Aimed Thrust and Killing Thrust, the poster feats of rapiers.
Also, the fluff points out they are traveling in caravans between cities, but they get the Incompetence: Nature disadvantage hard baked in. I guess the fluff and the rules were written by different persons.
The Rastullah-pleasing Blades style of al-Halan is the brainchild of a former cavalry officer that converted to the faith of Rastullah. Only male Rastullah believers can ever complete the apprenticeship.
The style focuses on sabers and shields, but also bows, and while the actual feat list is pretty short, it includes the mounted combat feats, making al-Halanis a bit more flexible.
JotS have some weird non-standard Rules attached. Not only do they start into their adventuring lives with less money than the standard calculation, the less armored styles also suffer additional encumbrance from armor. Which, I think, is supposed to disincentivize putting you nimble swashbucklers into heavier (read: more effective) armors beyond the standard encumbrance rules, bit it means our master duelists drafted into a militia and handed chainmail and a spear is now a worse fighter than the completely inexperienced seamstress or scribe at their sides…
Worse, since those aren’t proper disadvantages, they have no attached GP cost, which makes me doubt they are properly factored into the profession costs. To top it off, the harshest penalty of those (the Fedorinos can’t even wear a padded Gambeson…) doesn’t even get an equally handwavey bonus in exchange, so they give less an impression of well considered balancing and more some slapdash extra rules that are supposed to enforce the fluff envisioned by the writers.
These traits have been removed in 4.1, strengthening my suspicion that they weren’t part of the cost calculations.
Speaking of 4.1, Path of Heroes consolidated all Professions in one book, and it turns out most new Professions were new JotS variants. There are now also the Brillant Dwarven Swordsmen (Sword and shield), the Balayanim of Marwan Sahib (Dual wielding shortswords/daggers), the Aranian Balayanim (Saber and Iron Fan), the Khunchomion/Rashdulian Saber fencers (Sabers and medium Armor, both used to be Warrior academies in 4.0), Almadanian Caballeri (Al-Halanis, but believing in the Twelve Gods) and the Maraskanian Buskur (Samurai concentrating on Hand-and-Half Swords). Sadly, they never actually created the suggested Pollaxe style.
* Because they learned from a sword master and are no longer apprentices, get it?
The german name for them sounds credible even if it’s not a real word, but sword journeyman sounds awkward. I don’t know what a good translation would be. Students of the blade sounds overwrought, Fencers doesn’t reflect the diversity of fighting styles, just swordswomen sounds so pedestrian...
Spell Selection
Auris Nasus Oculus is the most important workhorse for any illusionist. (Well, Wizard or Charlatan)
Create a picture of decent size, a sound or a smell (or any combination) that has a potential to fool people. Masters also create moving pictures or even create taste and tactile illusions.
Axxeleratus Lightning Speed hastes a target character. No additional actions, but good combat bonuses, doubled speed and speed-based athletic checks. Also a pretty vague instructions to demand AGI checks from the character to avoid running into walls with their unfamiliar movement speed.
A variant of this spell is needed to speak kobold, otherwise a human tongue can’t keep up.