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house rules
After you choose your Kin and Profession, but before allocating your Attribute points, roll a d4 to choose one Attribute at random, and increase its maximum by one. This increase stacks with any due to Kin and Profession.
Then after the rest of your Attribute points have been allocated, roll another d4 to pick one more random Attribute, and add +1 to it. This +1 may increase an Attribute beyond the previous maximum.
For each Attribute, roll that many d6s.
Each success (i.e. 6) gives you a level of psionic Talent related to that Attribute. As this represents a wild mutation, the psionic Talent is chosen at random, for example by rolling a d3 per success.
Eg a character with Strength 4 would roll 4x d6 for Strength. If the result is two successes, the player would roll 2x d3 to select levels in Psychometabolism, Mineralurgy or Transmogrification. If the same Talent is selected twice, the character would end up with the second level of the chosen Talent.
If a Talent would be chosen more than three times in this way, roll again until one of the other Talents is chosen.
In addition to the methods of gaining XP described on p39, you also gain one XP for each skill that you Push at least once. These bonus XP must only be used on the skill that was Pushed.
We will use Agility + Wits + 2d6 to determine Initiative.
Rather than tracking individual spell components, a Druid or Sorcerer can carry a Spell Component Pouch. This is a consumable item similar to Food, Water and Arrows.
A Druid or Sorcerer is assumed to begin with a D10 Spell Component Pouch instead of their normal choice of Trade Good.
A Druid or Sorcerer may use the Forage action while on a journey to refill a Spell Component Pouch to D12.
One water ration will purchase a unit of spell components.
The following ideas are still WIP.
- Whenever a sorcerer faces a magical mishap, they may choose defilement instead.
- Defilement can also fuel a spell with the equivalent of higher willpower.
- Mishaps just do attribute damage, not roll on a table to see if you get instakilled by a gateway to hell. Or a "safe-casting" talent line that reduces the risk.
- Druids may access the Path of Stone talent and Elemental Magic.
Adventuring under the Crimson Sun is thirsty work. You must make an Endurance check whenever you experience any of the following during daylight hours:
- Spend any part of a Quarter Day working, travelling or fighting.
- Push any roll during daylight hours and it causes you damage.
- Engage in combat wearing anything heavier than Light armor.
These can stack, eg three checks will be called for if you push a roll during a fight while wearing heavy armor during the daytime. The following modifiers apply:
- Armor imposes a penalty equal to half its value, rounded down, even if it is Light armor.
- If the check is called for during the noon Quarter Day, there is a -1 penalty if you are in the shade or -2 if directly exposed to the sun.
- If the check is called for during the dawn or evening Quarter Days, it is at +2 if you are in the shade or +1 if directly exposed to the sun.
If you fail the Endurance check you immediately become Thirsty (so can't recover any attributes). If you fail any additional Endurance checks before drinking water, they will inflict points of Strength and Agility damage.
Note that although the desert can feel chilly during the midnight Quarter Day, it usually isn't quite frozen enough for the Cold effects in Forbidden Lands to be relevant.
The Darkness rules (p147) are a little "softer" on Athas.
- The rules-as-written only apply during the midnight Quarter Day.
- During the morning and evening Quarter Days, before dawn and after sunset, the pathfinder penalty is only -1, and everyone gets +1 to their Scouting rolls to avoid tripping.
- If the pathfinder gets more than one success, the extra successes provide a bonus to everyone's Scout rolls to avoid tripping.
These are basically self-recharging consumable banks. Eg, an oasis might have the equivalent of 20 water "items", and each item gains a unit for every 24 hours when it isn't used. Such an oasis might support about ten people fairly reliably; any more, and the levels will slowly drain out faster than they can be replenished.
Although simple, the standard rules on p113 are both unrealistic and inflexible. We want characters to be able to roll Move to ameliorate falling damage; and size should be a factor so halflings can fall further while half-giants are at much greater risk if they fall even one meter. It would also be nice to simulate gravity, so damage increases quadratically with distance fallen.
For many drops, the character isn't just doing a head-first dive off the edge. It is more accurate to say that they climb down; even if it's a sheer drop, a character can still lower themselves off the edge to reduce the distance to the bottom. Thus, Falling damage should only be checked in certain circumstances:
- They are thrown off (or jump off) a ledge without any purchase on the way down.
- They fail a climb check for a more difficult climb down.
And the Fall damage should be based on the actual height of the fall, not the height of the drop.
All that requires some situational calls, but as rules of thumb:
- Halflings are assumed to fall half as far as other characters, and half-giants are assumed to fall twice as far. This is calculated before all the following steps.
- If a check doesn't automatically succeed due to ease, a character who isn't tied up can still attempt to land as gracefully as possible by making a Move roll. The number of successes on the move roll reduces the meters of the falling distance.
- Now the character is attacked by the square of the meters fallen, so one meter is an attack with one dice, two meters is four dice, and so on.
Thus if a giant falls one meter, it counts as two meters, which may result in an attack with 4 base dice unless the distance is reduced by a Move roll. Whereas, a halfling with agility 6 and some points in the Move skill could perhaps fall four meters before beginning to worry about damage.