Gary Con is soon here again, and I’m going to run a game again this year, part of my Greyhawk campaign and set in Shield Lands in the first week of 599 CY. The party is a group of seasoned veterans of Shield Lands led by Onzek a 10 level tough half-orc. This will be the first mid to high level playtest using the 2nd Alpha version of my Hawk Tales rules. I’ve run two previous in-person sessions with lower level characters. They went reasonably well but now it’s up for the real test, higher level play. The new version of Hawk Tales has lower numbers for a more streamlined play with less number crunching. Instead of damage reaching into a hundred or more and major monsters having many hundreds of hit points, the totals are reined in considerably. Less hit points, less damage, but very similar mechanics.  

You can download the zip file with character sheets, backgrounds and spells here (9.5MB): https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/rules/Gary%20Con%202026%20-%20Characters%20%26%20Spells.zip  

When you compare the characters in this party to D&D (of any edition) there are some things that stand out as obviously different, and a lot of details that function differently.

No Class

Hawk Tales FRP rules don’t use classes but use levels. This means that characters are usually more versatile and less “iconic”, but they can be. If you want to play a very specialized character who concentrate on a few key things, that is one way you can play, but more generalist characters are equally viable. This party has Onzek who is sneaky combat generalist. Ertin is a holy warrior who packs a punch and can take a lot of punishment and still stand, like a paladin who sacrificed some of his powers to be a better fighter. Bruenor is a war-priest who is used to serve and survive on the frontlines.  Bramor is a skillful Tritherion faithful who can both fight well and use divine magic. Aru is an Arcane caster used to serve in battle. Omilla is an old-faith warrior-druid.

The idea behind the no-class concept is that character’s capabilities would be guided by the players and story as things unfold, so characters’ focus can evolve and change as the campaign progresses way more than most class-based systems allow for. Your characters have in-game jobs, titles and accomplishments that chapes mechanics, not the other way around. Setting and story before rules, mechanics are a supporting feature, not the prime part of the game.

Nine Abilities

Next obvious change in HTFRP are the three extra abilities, Comeliness, Presence and Corruption, the metaphysical abilities. They guide and shape the fortunes of a character throughout their career, and functions differently depending on what kind of creature you play. Humans, and in this party a Half-Orc all have Souls so they use Presence for Death Saves, a failed Death Save can mean a permanent loss of Pre, and when you run out your character enters the afterlife. You gain Pre when leveling up, so it’s resource and risk management throughout a character’s adventuring life. Loss of Pre is one of several ways you can “gain” Cor, which makes it harder in some ways but opens new possibilities as well. Comeliness is less important for humans but can hide high Cor, for Elves Com is a key ability shaping them and other similar creatures in various ways.

Essence

This is what type of force that powers the existence of a creature, and in this party, they are all Soul-based. This gives them benefits like flexibility, natural healing and resistance to summoning magic for example. Drawbacks are limited senses, need to rest and sleep, and aging away towards death much faster than some other types of creatures. There are 18 different Essences in the game so far, from Soul, Spirit (fey, elves and such) to Thrall, Spawn, Dark Soul, Dark Anima, Simulacra and the really scary Residuun that powers ghosts and similar nasties.

Essences are a way to differentiate how monsters and npc’s functions mechanically and provide both bigger challenges and thematically aid worldbuilding and storytelling. Undead creatures can become dangerous by using their opponents’ suffering to fuel their existence, giving them a huge advantage in encounters. On the other hand, they don’t heal and regain strength by rest and healing magic.

Skills & Saves

Skills are kind of “multi-step” and become increasingly important as you level up. First at low level it’s only Ability Modifiers you need worry about; your Proficiency Bonus are low or even 0 so no help to boost your check results. As you level up and your Proficiency Bonus increases you should consider which of the four base skills you want to become Proficient in, meaning add your Proficiency Bonus to your roll.

The four base skills are Athletics (for all physical activities), Influence (for all attempts to get other creatures to do what you want), Insight (to discover and understand your surroundings), and Tinker (to manipulate things). Each of these skills can be combined with different Abilities for various types of checks. Athletics Dex is used for balancing, Athletics Str for climbing and Athletics Con for endurance for example. Influence Wis can be used to persuade a stubborn mount, Influence Cha to charm someone to tell you secrets, Influence Str to intimidate an enemy to flee.

Two other aspects of skills can be used to give you increased chance to succeed on difficult checks. Expertise and Lore. Expertise are more narrow fields of knowledge, like Evasion, Animal Handling, Swim, Grappling, Tracking and a lot of other things. Expertise comes in +2 increments and can be learned during downtime as well as adventuring. Some Expertise like Arcana or Religion are key for spellcasting.

Lore are general knowledge and experience like about a city, country or a faction you have delt with and comes in +1 increments, and characters gain it as free benefit from adventuring or through their background.

Skill checks are written like this: Athletics (Evasion) Dex DC 16

A check made to avoid falling for example, using Dex trying to beat 16 on a d20, and if you are proficient in Athletics you get to add your Proficiency Bonus, and if you are an Evasion expert you can add that bonus as well. This means that everyone can try everything, but as the DC increases more in the form of Proficiency and expertise is needed to succeed. This system is simple in the beginning, and flexible as the game progresses.

Saving throws use skills mechanics as well. Avoiding a firewall use the example above, avoid getting poisoned could use Con instead of Dex for example. Frighten someone could be Influence (Deception) Wis DC 15 as a Saving Throw. A more magical version might use Cha instead of Wis, lots of possibilities.

Prowess

Works as a way to measure the Marchal capabilities of a creature, meaning how good it performs in battle. It improves Initiative modifier, how many attacks you can do and your Defensive ability both in how good your Defense rolls are and how many enemies you can effectively face at the same time. A hapless villager with Prowess 1 can reasonably duel with one opponent, a seasoned fighter with Prowess 5 can face five of them and still actively defend himself. Some monsters have even higher Prowess and can be formidable opponents in ways beyond mere mortal men.

This mechanic forces a bit more tactical thinking and decision making compared to normal D&D. Fight out in the open against a superior number of enemies can be dangerous regardless of individual strength.

Armor & Shields

Protection is a key bit of the needs to survive in battle. Armor doesn’t normally make you harder to hit (magical and natural exceptions exist), it reduces damage using tow mechanics Hardness and Minimum that works in tandem but can be a bit confusing at first. Hardness is as it sounds, it reduces damage a certain amount like Ring Mail with a Hardness of 20 and Minimum of 3. This means that attacks that hits but don’t inflict more than 20 still inflict 3 points of damage, and make most combat risky even against less skilled enemies, especially in large numbers.

Crits are more common in HTFRP, skilled combatants can crit on NAT15 on higher making them potentially very dangerous. This is where Beatings comes into play, Armor and Shields have a certain amount of Beatings, which means you can let your armor or shield take the Crit and convert it to a normal hit. When your beatings are used up your armor will be less useful doubling its minimum and render shields useless. They can be repaired during downtime or using mending magic, but it takes time and can expose you.  

Attacks

Your Prowess and Proficiency both plays into how well you can use weapons. Proficiency and Specialization set your To Hit Bonus. Specialization also increases the damage die your weapon uses making a thug skilled in daggers as deadly (or way worse) than the man at arms wielding a greatsword. Prowess dictates how many attacks you can do each round, from 1 to 5 depending on Prowess (for humans and other with a max Prowess of 5). To simplify things you only roll To Hit once per opponent you trying to hit, and the more attacks you have the more damage you can inflicts.  Damage is determined by how many “Damage Dice” you want to allocate to each enemy, if you have higher Prowess.

Example of an attack: Longsword reach 5 To Hit: +4, Damage: 6 slashing Crit: 20 +dx8

 A shortsword +2 that can reach 5 feet, your To Hit Bonus is +4 and Damage on a normal hit is 6 slashing, and Crits are made on a NAT20 and inflicting an exploding d8 for extra damage. This means that unskilled attackers using Daggers do little damage but have a higher chance to explode, which is by design, they can get lucky more often, skilled thugs know how to reliably dole out more damage.

This is not the whole story when it comes to damage though, attacks that don’t crit are listed to only do average damage (no roll needed) plus Str and magic bonuses. This is to speed up the game not having to roll lots of damage dice that needs to be added together. Instead, I’m trying out an “Overflow” mechanic, meaning you can use what you rolled above what you needed to hit to do damage. Half of the overflow on a normal hit and all the overflow on a crit. This combination means that damage is a combination of weapon type, skill, luck and how good your opponent is using a single roll.  It has worked well when I have tested it, but I’m not completely sold on it yet, the streamlining might have gone a bit too far. Rolling dice might be more fun than what the efficiency gains are. This will be first full session to test it on higher level play. It speeds up the game significantly and it is something I can handle, and the numbers stay within 20 or less most of the time, with the potential to reach into the high 40’s in the most extreme cases. The good is that the numbers are low when the enemies are well matched regardless of their level.

Another aspect I use is that players roll most rolls, especially in combat. Instead of enemies rolling to hit, players roll Defense Rolls which makes a GM’s job much easier, and keeps players busy much more of the time.

When you roll a NAT20 in combat (or other form of duress) you get a boon that you can use later to keep going or boost a roll. When you roll a NAT1 you gain extra XP from 50 - 100 depending on. Which means roll 1’s often and you level up faster. Characters learn from their mistakes and get energized by their successes.

These were a few notes on characters and their features. I’ll post more leading up to Gary Con, like Actions, spellcasting and more.

The session at Gary Con will feature the party getting a mission to scout on the fringes flanking the main force that are going on the offensive into Iuzian territory. It will be a session with exploration, some mystery components, history and setting lore, and of course combat. There have been reports of Bonehearts, and a previous patrol haven’t reported back…

The party consists of experienced characters who are well equipped, skilled and capable. The Shield Lands awaits!!