Welf VIII.
Member
Last weekend me and a friend of mine decided to give the new dungeoncrawl rules by the name Trapdoor (available printed and as pdf) a try. Before we had used our own D10-based set of rules (created by Green Knight) for dungeoncrawls, which often ended in backstabbing as we just love our "Intrigantenstadel".
But one should always be open to new things so here we go. The system is based on a D10 and each character or monster has six stats. If you want to hit someone you roll a D10 and add your attack value, while the defender adds his defense score to his very own D10. Afterwards the number of the defender is substracted from that of the attacker. Zero or less mean a miss while every number above that means a hit (the higher the number and the greater the weapon used the more damage is scored). Spells have a difficult rating making the easier or more difficult to cast. And there are a lot of skills to spice up the dire stats. You get xps for scoring damage, casting spells and completing quest, so your characters gain levels, new stats and skills.
We played the short adventure within the rulebook to get familiar with the rules, so we went into Harrak's Hold to kill all the Orcs and Goblins.
We had the four vanilla adventurers from the old D&D. If you charge an enemy you get an additional attack dice and are able to choose which one to use. The knight is an expert defender and gets an additional defense dice. The thief has a low attack score but gains an additional dice if he makes a stealth attack with a dagger, which meant - if our interpretation of the rules was not wrong - that his first melee attack was with three dices (base + charging + stealth). The first two goblins were killed with ease. The wizard seemed incompetent to cast any spells during the whole game. Bad luck!
Orcs and goblins combined proved to be a tougher challange.
But eventually they were brought down one after another.
The red blip was used to mark a figure, which is shaken, so an attacker gains another attack roll.
The cleric was given a healing spell, that - at least in my humble opinion - is far too powerful compared to the other spells. The cleric was able to cast a lot of healing spells which meant that the party was able to enter the last room completely unharmed. Although only allowed to try to use a spell four times each phase between fights, it was enough heal everybody every time any was hurt only a slight bit. A 1 meant a misfire and thus two goblins appeared as wandering monsters.
Small challenges like this only helped the party to recover as in combats the cleric was allowed to cast a spell each turn, while the rest of the party kills the hapless monsters.
The last room proved tougher as here the adventurers faced the or chieftain, his guards and a shaman.
After a few unlucky dice rolls for the adventurers the wizard was killed - I need to paint the killed the slain adventurers.
An orgy of dice-rolling followed, but we could not break the stabd-off and after an hour (!) of dice-rolling a truce was declared.
So what about the rules?
I think there are some great ideas, but also some things I don't like:
The healing spell is too powerful, healing 1-5 points normally and total recovery with maximum succes is too much. Make it a bit easier and only allow 1 point and 1-5 with maximum effect!
One should be allowed to leave the melee with a single opponent, but at high price: Give the opponent one attack of oportunity with an additional dice.
Sometimes we had the situation of an attack with three dices against two. Here the one with more dices should be able to give up one of his dices and take away one from the defender making it two against one. Another option is give one dice in favour of a bonus of +2.
Just one attack for each creature, even a five-headed hydra? Solve it with a rare skill allowing certain dreatures more than one attack.
May be we made a lot of mistakes, but at the moment I would rather dust of my old AHQ-rules or wait for Otherworld's dungeoncrawl system. Sorry!
But one should always be open to new things so here we go. The system is based on a D10 and each character or monster has six stats. If you want to hit someone you roll a D10 and add your attack value, while the defender adds his defense score to his very own D10. Afterwards the number of the defender is substracted from that of the attacker. Zero or less mean a miss while every number above that means a hit (the higher the number and the greater the weapon used the more damage is scored). Spells have a difficult rating making the easier or more difficult to cast. And there are a lot of skills to spice up the dire stats. You get xps for scoring damage, casting spells and completing quest, so your characters gain levels, new stats and skills.
We played the short adventure within the rulebook to get familiar with the rules, so we went into Harrak's Hold to kill all the Orcs and Goblins.
We had the four vanilla adventurers from the old D&D. If you charge an enemy you get an additional attack dice and are able to choose which one to use. The knight is an expert defender and gets an additional defense dice. The thief has a low attack score but gains an additional dice if he makes a stealth attack with a dagger, which meant - if our interpretation of the rules was not wrong - that his first melee attack was with three dices (base + charging + stealth). The first two goblins were killed with ease. The wizard seemed incompetent to cast any spells during the whole game. Bad luck!
Orcs and goblins combined proved to be a tougher challange.
But eventually they were brought down one after another.
The red blip was used to mark a figure, which is shaken, so an attacker gains another attack roll.
The cleric was given a healing spell, that - at least in my humble opinion - is far too powerful compared to the other spells. The cleric was able to cast a lot of healing spells which meant that the party was able to enter the last room completely unharmed. Although only allowed to try to use a spell four times each phase between fights, it was enough heal everybody every time any was hurt only a slight bit. A 1 meant a misfire and thus two goblins appeared as wandering monsters.
Small challenges like this only helped the party to recover as in combats the cleric was allowed to cast a spell each turn, while the rest of the party kills the hapless monsters.
The last room proved tougher as here the adventurers faced the or chieftain, his guards and a shaman.
After a few unlucky dice rolls for the adventurers the wizard was killed - I need to paint the killed the slain adventurers.
An orgy of dice-rolling followed, but we could not break the stabd-off and after an hour (!) of dice-rolling a truce was declared.
So what about the rules?
I think there are some great ideas, but also some things I don't like:
The healing spell is too powerful, healing 1-5 points normally and total recovery with maximum succes is too much. Make it a bit easier and only allow 1 point and 1-5 with maximum effect!
One should be allowed to leave the melee with a single opponent, but at high price: Give the opponent one attack of oportunity with an additional dice.
Sometimes we had the situation of an attack with three dices against two. Here the one with more dices should be able to give up one of his dices and take away one from the defender making it two against one. Another option is give one dice in favour of a bonus of +2.
Just one attack for each creature, even a five-headed hydra? Solve it with a rare skill allowing certain dreatures more than one attack.
May be we made a lot of mistakes, but at the moment I would rather dust of my old AHQ-rules or wait for Otherworld's dungeoncrawl system. Sorry!