I'm leaving for Gen Con next week and when I get home it is time to start prepping for gaming season. I will run playtest session at Gamehole Con and some online before then. This will be the first real battle tests for my Alpha 2 version of Hawk Tales. I tried to learn from the previous round of playtests and make improve the rules.
This is by no means a full list of concepts and changes, but it covers some essentials. I will present deep dives into each of the sections below with rules samples in the coming months. I will also use https://questlinevtt.com as my VTT and create a Hawk Tales rule set for it. With a new generation of Shield Land maps to go with it I think it can be a lot of fun. Invitations and schedule will be coming in late August.
The six abilities we know from D&D and its sibling systems, physical abilities: Strength, Dexterity and Constitution are all in my rules. The mental abilities: Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma as well no changes there. The difference In Hawk Tales is that I’ve added three more metaphysical abilities. They cover things beyond the mortal realm of the prime and give every character a place, standing a trajectory in the multiverse. A character’s deeds; decisions and luck can change these things as its adventuring career progresses. Service, magic, brushes with death and more will impact a character’s place in the larger existence of things. Please, anger or ignore the powers of the world, it all comes with rewards and dangers.
Presence (Pre)
Measures how strong its life force is. It dictates how often a creature can escape death, survive brutal conditions beyond the natural, stand up to certain forms of damage, and planar travel. It has no hard upper limit, certain deities and other exceptional creatures can have very high presence.
Presence affects how well a creature can sustain certain aspects of planar travel, escape death, withstand magic forces and is one way to gain Divine Rank. Presence grows as a character gains experience, and it is lost facing death, and circumstances that would have killed a weaker creature. Failed Death Saves might require a sacrifice of Presence to stay among the living.
Comeliness (Com)
Takes hold where Charisma alone would fail. It symbolizes how well a creature can handle its standing, fate and destiny. A young character can have the beauty and innocence of youth on its side, spend it to gain favors and standing revealing another side of itself in the process. It is powerful, useful but also risky and deceiving. A high score can boost your Charisma and influence, but it can also bring attention, both wanted and unwanted.
Comeliness is the ability of hags to look young a full of vitality, hiding their gruesome true appearance from those who cannot properly sense such things.
Com can be used to hide Corruption, maybe save you from Death but condemn you in the process. It’s a resource humans lose growing old, or even faster by spending it on vanity or foul and nefarious pursuits. Once it is lost your true character will be plain and visible to all, which might not be an issue or the end of it all.
Curruption (Cor)
The record of how close a character is to death and the lower realms of existence. Fail a Death Save, use foul magic, venture into the worst places in the world and you will be more Corrupt. A fate worse than death itself or a resource to be carefully harness to gain power over others, Corruption can be a fast way to extinction or a way to the greatest of power. It is up to your character’s morals, luck and your determination as a player.
Corruption makes you come closer to death and if you must make a Death Save, make you more prone to fail. On the other hand, a high corruption ability might shield you from having to make that Death Save in the first place.
AC
My first iteration of Hawk Tales alpha playtest rules used hardness as well as Armor Class, which was more than a bit clunky to first roll damage and deduct some due to the targets armor. I had a two tier hardness system that gave the attacker a chance to do a small amount damage on almost every hit and lots of damage on good hits. Now I have re-designed the rules to keep the same ideas and similar outcome but without deducting damage after rolling it, simplifying the whole process.
Armor Class comes in three steps, Minimum, Limited and Full. Minimum is a targets AC without any armor bonus included, if your attack clears this AC, you inflict Minimum damage. How much damage that is depends on the armors Minimum Rating, which sets the max limit, and your attacks base damage whichever is the lowest. Limited means that you managed to score a better hit and you inflict your attacks base damage in full. Full means you roll full damage. Crits means that you increase your result to the next category, and if you already made a Full it, your attack might inflict injuries as well as extra hit point damage. This depends on your weapon, spell or other form of attack.
This means fewer rolls and no extra calculations; the base damage of the attack is listed on character sheets and on stat blocks so minimum and limited hits requires no damage rolls in most cases. Full hits and Crits on the other hand can get really nasty and end combat quickly. Armor makes it much harder for enemies to inflict large amount of damage, but it will still let some damage through so every encounter is dangerous, especially if you face multiple opponents. Armor also provides Death Save Bonus which is a key protection that can save your characters life even after it has taken a lot of damage.
Armor and shields also come with a beatings rating, which means you can let your armor or shield take a beating which means Crits will be normal hits. When your shield runs out of beatings it needs to be repaired before it can be useful. Armor that runs out of beatings lets more damage trough doubling is minimum damage.
Hit Points
Hit Points are handled a bit differently in Hawk Tales compared to D&D. They represent a creature’s ability and determination to absorb hits without getting injured. Hardened adventurers can take a beating before succumbing to most attacks. This means Hit Points can be lost or won quite fast in various ways not covered in normal D&D. For example fear is thing that causes physic damage, fail a save vs. Fear and you need to flee or take damage. This way of treating hit points also means you can gain them back easier, a full rest brings you back to full, and a great deed on the battlefield can give you inspiration and regain hit points. This is how Rage works, it keeps your spirits high!
Recover hit points is a reasonably trivial thing that bards, most deities, primal, and even some arcane magic can accomplish.
Injuries
Sometimes things gets bad enough that hit points is not enough, and you get injured. It might be down to stamina and the fact that you run out of hit points, or it can be fatal blows that cause injuries. Some weapons and other attacks are especially dangerous and might cause injuries right away, like a vorpal or slaying weapon, falling off a cliff or failing a poison save.
Hit Points and Injuries works in parallel, you can sustain injuries while still having hit points left. When this happens, you can stay in the fight, but injuries can get worse fast and you can die from your injuries even with hit points left. Injuries give a character penalties on Death Saves, and when your injuries are so high you cannot succeed on a Death Save you die. On the positive side is that when you have Hit Points and/or Exertion left you can sacrifice them to get an extra Death Save fail that doesn’t use up your Presence. This gives you up to two extra chances to fend off death a day with no long term effects, but to the price of sacrificing some of what your character can accomplish before resting.
This is a recurring theme in Hawk Tales, decide the risk level, choose short or long impact, it is too a large degree a player choice, with a bit of luck of the dice determining if the risk taken pays off or not. Push hard when the situation demands it, do more and push beyond what your character can normally do, failure can mean fewer chances to escape death in the future even if you survive, but you might manage to slay that dragon, or pull off some other heroic deed.
Magic healing can overcome injuries but that is costly in the form of actions needed to preform, and spell slots sacrificed, and will usually only be provided by benevolent deities.
Hawk Tales rules make low level characters usually have low Hit Points and low Presence, but good Death Saves which means they can survive even a tough encounter due to a youngsters’ ability to fend of death. High level characters have loads more Hit Points but might have had many close calls so their Death Saves are much lower and Presence mostly used up. This gives them more stamina in encounters but might make them more vulnerable when their Hit Points run out, or to some types of foul magic. No one is immune in Hawk Tales, but there is hope and agency most of the time.
Another very important thing with Death Saves is that they give your character vital experience, therefore it provides a decent XP reward, regardless of success or failure. If you live long enough afterwards to have use for the XP is another matter..
Exertion
Represents a character’s ability to execute and perform special abilities, magic and other things that require effort. It can be traded for more hit points as a last resort to stay in the fight. Rage, Smite and use innate magic are all example of things that use Exertion. If you run out of Hit Points you can use Exertion as a Hit Point substitute.
Damage
There are lots of ways a character can meet its demise in Hawk Tales, the latest playtest rules come with 22 types of damage and drains. From the common kinetic (bludgeoning, piercing and slashing) normal weapons inflict, elemental (acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder and poison). Ethereal damage in the form of force and vorpal, Cerebral with Epistemic Drain (Int damage) and psychic. The planar ones with the Fiendish ability drain, despair, energy drain, life drain, necrotic and vile. The Celestials have their special forms of damage too: disruption, radiant and void damage.
Magic, undead and fiends can be very tough opponents indeed, and weapons can be enchanted to be particularly nasty. Sharp and vorpal weapons can injure you regardless of how many hit points you have left. Vile damage brings you closer to death period. Even the foulest undead or fiend should fear the disruption or void smite of a powerful champion of Heironeous.
Some of these damage types only cause hit point loss, most of them inflict hit point and thereafter injuries. Other go after abilities, exertion, lifespan and other things your character hold dear.
Essence and Manifestation
Essence represents the way a creature maintains its existence, what keeps it going. Most characters will have a soul, others might be spirits, later they might succumb to the lure of a powerful creature and become a thrall, have the misfortune to meet a vampire and become a spawn or even worse, an unminded skeleton. Essences dictate how a creature functions, how it lives, takes damage, heals, rests recovers and how it can cease to exist. 18 essences all in all covering everything from souls of animals, simulacra of magical constructs, to metaphysical essences like dark anima, residuum and umbral.
This means that some creatures can be really nasty to encounter, regaining spells and exertion by gaining Corruption. Which means that a lich can gain more spells by casting them if the situation is right. Its existence relies on committing foul acts, so a prolonged fight can make it stronger not weaker. Careful planning and the right circumstances is needed to defeat it.
Manifestation is the way a creature exist in the world, it can be of flesh and blood, like most characters. Other creatures can be more exotic, like shadow, elemental, undead, ethereal and transcendent manifestations. To be able to preserve the carcass of that demon you just killed might require some special tricks or it might be quickly lost.
Essence and manifestation rules are the base mechanics for how different types of creatures function during play. Players only need to get into some of it that concerns their character, for the most part. As their characters adventure and become more experienced, more of the wonders of the multiverse will make the game more complex. This is by design, low level adventuring is made to be simple and straight forward, high level play will be more complex. Not in the number of math or dice rolls needed, but in different things influencing the outcome and possibly causing complications. My goal is to make things flavorful and varied, not mechanically difficult.
This was a short look at some of the concepts for Hawk Tales. Some of it is very familiar for D&D players, other aspects are less familiar. I'm happy with how well it has played so far, now it is time to try and bring it up from reasonably good to something really playable.
Thank you so much for all your interest and support!
