The Black Houserules : Armor

One the greatest parts of being involved with the 'Hack movement is seeing what interesting things people can do with simple moving parts. Shout out to +Jeff Call for some inspiration on this.

Armor Hack
Im not  a huge fan of the Usage die being used for everything, but in additional things im already bringing in UD mechanics to Armor points and that solution isn't really doin git for me. So. Fuck it. Im thinking armor. There are two types of Armor. Light (d6) and Heavy (d8) When you take damage roll the Amor die, reduce the amount of damage taken by that amount. Additionally if you roll a natural 1-2 then the die downgrades in the normal Usage Die manner.Small shields +1 to the roll, and Large shields +2.

Note: You could do Light (d4) Medium (d6) Heavy (d8) - this fits with the 3 range band thing TBH has going on? Dunno, I like the simplicity of two options for amor, Heavy or Light. Binary sooths the soul.

The Black Hack : The Beserker Class

Here's an alternative to the current Warrior class (and Knight class from The Vertex of Hate). This is WIP and needs play-testing, and will likely make an appearance in an official capacity at some stage. Please lend me your collective brains and help me smooth off the rough edges.

Beserker
Starting HP : 4 + d10
HP Per Level/Resting : 1d10
Weapons & Armor : Anything that can be swung or thrown & All armor.
Attack Damage : *See special features

Special Features
For each level a character has, gain a damage dice (d8) kept in a dice pool, when you make your action to attack - assign your damage dice to all the creatures you want to damage. These can be Close, Nearby or Far-away. They do not have to be next to each other. Then for every target roll a corresponding Attribute test to confirm they take damage. The player must be able to, through narration and description, play out the attack. This pool resets at the start of the Berserker's turn.

A Beserker may go into a rage for the duration of a combat, giving them Advantage on all tests to deal damage, and Disadvantage on all tests to avoid damage. They may go Berserk once per day at level 1, twice per day and level 3, three times at level 6 and four times at level 9.

A Beserker gains an additional AP per level, on top of whatever armor they are wearing.

- DB

This is what TBH Mass Combat would look like

So Mass Combat, I've seen a few ways of doing it - some do away with the wargame, some embrace it whole. My version sits in the middle somewhere - still using the d&d trappings but adding weird story game style descriptive tags to units and adopting a GW inspired combat resolution. I dunno. Might change after a bit of testing, but this is fresh out the mind oven.

We take a monster and make them a unit. We don't need to know specific numbers, although to the nearest 10 or so is good. Goblins have 1HD. Lets say its a pack of goblins, that's? 20? So the unit of Goblins has 1 HD and we can make a few other bits of fiction or assumption. They have poor weapons, armor and training. Now lets take a squad of honor guards, there's 5 of them. Specific numbers still aint no problem though'. They have excellent weapons, Armor Training Morale etc. You get the idea. They also have 2HD.

So the two units face off, and roll a d6. They add their HD to the roll. You also get +1 for each of the following if they apply to your unit.

• 
  
• Larger Force than the foe.
• Be better equipped than the foe.
• Have more battle experience than the foe.
• Being led by/is a champion.
• Faster than the foe.
• Battlefield advantage. (such as a water elemental troop fighting in the sea)

Players compare scores and whoever wins deals that difference in damage. This damage is taken away from the HD. When HD = 0 the unit is Out of the Battle (1d4).

1. No survivors, all dead, including champion.
2. Champion Out of Action and unit destroyed.
3. Champion and handful of the unit remain fighting, rest dead.
4. Champion remains fighting, rest broken and fleeing.

Players should have all their units selected in an order on the table in front of them. Perhaps cards would be a good way to do this. The everyone takes turns to activate a unit. Move and attack or Double move move. Standard TBH. Close, Nearby, Far. Scale is just fractal. (Don't tell FATE). resolve spells normally? I dunno. A unit of wizards? Really? I like warhammer battle wizards so maybe i'll have work on some sort of magic system that uses existing spells. Another night perhaps

Spelling and grammar, i regret nothing.

DB