Dungeons & Delvers: Armor & Defense Playtest

I mentioned in this post that we were considering changing adventurer Defenses to static values and giving monsters Attack Pools, and today we finally got around to running three playtests back-to-back to see how it (plus armor-as-Wounds) worked in actual play.

The short answer is great. The game ran just as quickly and smoothly as before. Even better, since we already have the math and numbers largely figured out from numerous playtest sessions and even a long-term campaign, we didn't have to tweak anything much.

In every instance Melissa's fighter was dropped during the last encounter, though in her defense she was on the front line getting hammered by numerous monsters at once, and I was pretty much eyeballing encounters (going with a ratio of something like one monster per character as a baseline).

We only used armor-as-Wounds in the third playtest (wanted to see if static Defenses was any good, first), but we really liked it as it provided the adventurers with a handful of "buffer " Wounds, that could be recovered without relying on magical healing, Reserve Wounds, and/or a short-term healing rate. You get 1-3 depending on what type of armor you're wearing (magic/masterwork armor could have more), and when you're not in combat you can mark off uses from an armorer kit to replenish them.

We'll playtest both changes a few more times, but all signs are pointing to keeping them both: it makes sense, gives adventurers something to spend their cash on, and still keeps things simple.

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Announcements

If you're curious about FrankenFourth and/or Dungeons & Delvers, you can find public alpha documents here and here respectively.

Throughout the month of May, everything in our DriveThruRPG store is 13% off. If you want something and don't use DriveThru, hit us up and we can work something out. We've also added most of our stuff to Tabletop Library and Payhip.

A Sundered World is out (and also available in dead-tree format)! If you for some reason don't want the entire setting, you can just snag the races and classes.

The Beastmaster is also out, and we're working on a cleric and paladin class next. If there's anything you want/don't want to see in those classes, let us know!

By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book, making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print (which you can now do).