More zine numbers

Time to break this dry patch with everyone's favourite thing: spreadsheets!

(the extra April bit is post financial year stuff I tacked on)

Specialists suck, scoundrels rule, everyone else dies

The specialist was sitting there looking a bit poorly ever since wizards and fighters got a fresh coat of paint, so now it's their turn.

Very simple. A specialist may spend 2 skill points at creation or on levelling up to gain +1 attack bonus or 1 spell "slot", i.e. you may memorise a single spell and cast it without blowing everyone up or turning them into piles of eyeballs.

Yes, you could get a better attack bonus than a fighter. Just remember you have no HP, no skills, and why on earth would you pick a specialist to do this? Sort it out.

Since the specialist is now anything but, and there is a long tradition of arbitrarily renaming the sneaky-guy, I will now call them Scoundrels. It is not restrictive in scope, somewhat adorable, and suggestive of being a vagabond, a happy-go-lucky rapscallion, or a downright shitbag.


This seemingly small change will allow the scoundrels to be whatever the players want them to be without slapping a huge and alien system on top.




Save vs. Death

And another thing: sometimes I don't know what save to have people roll, but I know that there definitely should be dying going on here. For those situations, for the times when it's just bare faced luck resulting in certain death, have a Save vs. Death.

	Fighter	Magic-User	Scoundrel
0	15	17	12
1-4	13	15	10
5-8	9	11	8
9-12	7	9	6
13-16	5	7	4
17+	3	5	2

Saves tell you a lot about how the characters are perceived. Go look at the lists now, they're a little bit interesting.

Anyway, this table tells you that scoundrels are lucky, fighters stare death in the face, and magic-users had it coming.

Symmetry Between Stabber and Stabee

We can all agree that symmetry is objectively the best thing, in all things, and anything that isn't symmetrical is only interesting because of its refusal to admit that it's wrong.

With that out of the way, rolling for armour.

It comes in three tiers for simplicity and parity with Lamentation's own ideas of how weapons work. When struck by an assailant one need only roll the number of d6 associated with the armour worn and reduce incoming damage by that amount, as follows:

Light - Great coats, gambesons - 1d6

Medium - Chain armour, brigandines - 1d8

Heavy, fully articulated, rigid nonsense - 1d10

To compensate for the addition, a subtraction must be made (symmetry must be done). Therefore, armour no longer changes AC. Now AC represents something more akin to good footwork and parrying, rather than taking it on the chin. Rename it to "defence" if it makes you feel better.

Shields work by allowing the wielder to add 1d4 vs. any one blow. This may be chosen at the time of rolling, but before the dice are thrown. 

Anyone in defensive stance can add a shield's 1d4 against all strikes in addition to the usual bonus. Parrying also gains this benefit.

Reasons that this is The Best Thing: Other than forming a fearful symmetry, it allows a shade of active participation in blocking and a touch of randomness. Also, high ACs are incredibly boring and create long periods of not much happening. Rolling for armour will allow there to be little victories scattered along the winding road to popping that tin can open.

How to die properly

Which is to say, in pieces.

Every PC has HP equal to their constitution. Fighters have double. NPCs have whatever the GM decides.

If HP drop below 0, compare the damage to the table below. From then on you may sit at 0 with no adverse effects.


1-3 - Flesh wound
4-5 - Serious injury
6+ - Mortal blow


Every flesh wound imparts a -1 to all physically based rolls.

A serious injury rolls on the following chart:

D6

1. Staggered, lose your next action as you recover
2. Random arm incapacitated, drop anything held
3. Random leg incapacitated, save vs. something or fall over unable to get up unassisted. Otherwise you can still limp about, but you are easier to hit (+4 to hit you)
4. Disembowelment. If you don't commit one hand to holding it in, save vs. death each turn to suffer a protracted and unpleasant death on the ground.
5. Internal injury. Treat as a flesh wound until that evening or dramatically appropriate "go on without me" moment. If it has not been healed by said time, save vs. death; if successful it is just a flesh wound, if unsuccessful it was worse than it looked and you die.
6. Mortal blow, roll below

Mortal blows are rolled on the following table:

D6 and lose...
1 ... D3 fingers (permanent -1 to hit with that hand after 1 finger is lost, useless for fighting after 3)
2 ... an eye (-1 to hit)
3 ... an arm/hand
4 ... a leg/foot
5-6 ... your life (heart or head probably)


Healing

All HP are restored at the end of a fight, -1 per flesh wound. Magical healing can remove all flesh wounds or a single serious injury. An evening's rest will remove all flesh wounds. Serious injuries require a week


NPCs

Instead of the above, NPCs rolls on the following table unless they have their own monster critical table or doing otherwise would be fun:

D6
1 Staggered (as above)
2-3 Incapacitated (if being conscious or unconscious is important, roll for it)
4-6 Dead







All this has the potential to end fights very quickly, or have them turn into blood soaked hackathons. Both are far more entertaining that watching those numbers decay.

Complements Do Not Help

Weird is easy. Art is easy. Horror and comedy are easy. All the same.
When a thing stops being alive it falls prey to ridicule.
The mechanical encrusted upon the living.

He falls over, laugh.
He kills, fear him.
He is rendered, nod.
He hides the gills with high collars, how odd.

Repetition:
Iterate.

Oscillating humour. It comes and goes with time.
Kill once and you're a murderer, kill many and you're exciting.
Paint him again, capture him.
Erode the security of knowledge.

And if it fails, if you cannot manage that, dazzle them with finely wrought chaff.

Mudmen Addendum

The collective's image of mudmen is created by the potters to both sanitise and barbarise.

"Aren't they silly!"
"Look how primitive they are, wearing sticks and mud!"

Truly, every day we take their soil is another step closer to civilisation. They even come to the city sometimes to offer tribute of clay, to ceremoniously kowtow and offer the rites of their lands. But they're just actors, wandering troubadours covered in cheap imitation mud then sent on their way with a mouth full of silver. Just gypsum and ashes, not the good stuff, too valuable to waste on a ruse. We need neat and tidy masks fast, strong enough to last a day of parades and bowing. Make them look primitive, make them look safe.

The real mudmen are out there. The last survivors of their apocalypse, fighting back the ghosts from their shore.

I opened a gate across time and space, what did I find?


1
The other side is under water

1. In a river. It flows steadily through.
2. In an exotic sorcerers aquarium. The prized beast that lived in it will follow through in d3 turns.
3. In a trench at the darkest corner of the deepest ocean. The water is ice cold and bursts out at a speed capable of stripping flesh from bone. 2d8 damage. Also prepare for a new glacial river to form on the spot.

2

The belly of a colossal beast.

1. The only sign of its terminus is a dripping of clear goo. It is a universal solvent.
2. The belly of a star whale as it dives into the corona of the sun. Its meal passes through, filling up a vast area. Save vs. plasma or die. The portal will collapse in d6 turns.
3. Again, the belly of a star whale (they all have otherworldly portals, it's how they defecate). However this one was gliding through the void. Showered with gore as it is sucked through.
4. The ancient rectum of a world worm, it's long rotten remains forming a twisting labyrinth under the earth.

3

An alternative dimension. You step through as your exact duplicate does the same. The party is as it was before, standing in front of the gate. Nothing has changed, aparently. You might even assume you just got spat right out, but this is untrue. Roll a die. Odd, you continue the game with the original party and the duplicate, even you continue with the alternate dimension. Do not tell anyone which.

4

High above the ground

1. Fall to your death
2. 
   

Language map

I have trouble applying the Lamentations language rules to the growing stable of languages. Since most of these were invented, or at least stolen, on the fly it's rather hard to figure out their relationships to one another.


So, to simplify:

• Everyone has a 1 in 6 chance of knowing any language, modified by intelligence bonus and language skill.
• Every character has a mother tongue.
• When you roll to see if you know a language, count the jumps between your mother tongue and the new language. That is your penalty to the language roll.
• If there is no connection, it is a dead or totally alien language and you get minus 6 to the roll.

The connections represent logical connections rather than common linguistic roots. Sokone isn't closely related to Yongardy or Calipygeon, but they interact a lot and would be commonly shared. Kairn has no relation to any of the other languages, but they live right in the middle of everyone so some cultural exchange has to happen.