So you want to play Dragonbane RPG by Free League and prefer having someone go over the
rules with you quickly and clearly, this video is for you.
Let's go.
This game has a roll-under system for determining skill checks, combat attacks, and spell casting.
It's a simple combination of your characters base attribute making a target number
you have to roll below using a twenty-sided
die to succeed, Or a related skill, the skills you select when you start the game are double your base attribute number
Skills that you select as you play, have to be increased as you play. so a critical success, called a Dragon, is a One, while a natural twenty is very bad and is called rolling a Demon.
This game system also includes Boon and Bane, which is the same as Advantage and Disadvantage
from Dungeons & Dragons, pretty much, you roll two twenty-sided dice and pick the highest
for Boons or pick the lowest for Banes.
Notice I didn't say Attribute bonus, I said Base Attribute, what is a Base Attribute?
Depending on what your total attribute score is, instead of giving a bonus to dice rolls
to beat a target difficulty number, you are given a base target number for the attribute
itself, all the skills, like in Dungeons and Dragons, are associated with an attribute.
If you roll under that base attribute or Skill number, you succeed
We have the attributes of strength, constitution, agility, intelligence, willpower, and charisma.
To determine those, we roll 4d6 and drop the lowest die for a range of 3 to 18; these scores
can be further modified by the Kin of your character (which is their heritage, species,
race or whatever) and their age, be aware that the constitution score is your hit point
score, the only way to increase that is by the Robust heroic ability, which is like the
Toughness feat from Dungeons & Dragons, and all the heroic abilities your character gets
from their profession use your willpower points determined by you willpower attribute number,
which can only be increased with the Focused heroic ability.
Heroic abilities are like feats, but in this game, you have a willpower attribute and that
number of points is what you spend to activate and use those heroic abilities, as you level
up in the game, you get more ranks in skills and more heroic abilities, skills and heroic
abilities are closely linked to each other, but more on leveling up later.
The Strength of your character is used for how much they can carry and the damage bonus
for hand-to-hand weapons, plus some weapons and armor have minimum strength requirements.
High agility gives a bonus to the character's movement rate per round of combat, low agility
gives a penalty, and some kin move faster or slower than others also; the age of your
character is divided into three categories, young characters get a bonus to strength and
agility but only eight skills to select at the start of play, adult characters get no
attribute modifiers and ten skills, an old character gets -2 to strength, agility, and
constitution, but they get +1 to Intelligence and Willpower and a total of twelve skills
to start with.
Your kin selections are Human, elf, dwarf, halfling, these duck people called Mallards,
and canine people called Wolfkin, they all have a unique kin ability that costs 3 willpower
points to use, although the elf and mallard have free innate special abilities.
Other than movement rate, the rest is just thematic stuff, there are no other rules about
kin attributes and such unless you add them to the game yourself, such as gear or magic
restrictions or whatever.
In a nutshell, Humans can adapt one skill to roll in place of another for a situation
if it makes sense, halflings can dodge out of the way very well, dwarves are really good
at taking revenge on their enemies, elves heal extra well when resting, mallards can
basically rage to do better at a skill roll, and wolfkin can track prey by their sense
of smell.
Wolfkin are the fastest runners, and mallards are natural swimmers, as you would expect
for duck people.
Professions are basically your character class, you must assign six of your skill choices
to skills listed in your profession, and all characters get a Heroic ability from their
profession; plus, they get to choose another one, except for mages, who just get to cast
spells.
Your profession also provides your starting gear and tells you your character's key attribute.
Artisans can fix and make gear, Bards can play music which influences others, Fighters
have a trick with initiative order in combat, Hunters have animal companions, Knights can
take hits to protect others, Mages cast spells, Mariners are good with water, Merchants can
sense the direction to treasure, Scholars can ask the game master a question, Thieves
can backstab.
Dice rolls for skills, special abilities, spells and combat are all pretty much the
same, your characters attribute number gives you a base chance instead of a dice roll bonus,
if your character doesn't have a trained skill, they can always roll the base chance for an
appropriate attribute.
There are thirty core skills, these don't cost any willpower points to use, many of
the heroic abilities require minimum levels in certain skills and they usually require
one to three willpower points to use, I'll say this again because it's important, like
hit points, your willpower attribute is your willpower point total, unless you increase
it by picking the Focused Heroic ability, you can take the Robust and Focused heroic
abilities multiple times, but leveling up is quite different in Dragonbane.
At the end of the game session, according to the base rules, you figure out how many
skills you qualify to try advancing, but the rules say to be permissive, so... for each
skill you roll a 20 sided die and try to roll over your skill total, if you do, you increase
that skill by one point to a maximum of 18.
You can get an additional skill point chance by training with a teacher in a skill for
a while.
Each time you advance a skill to 18, you can pick an additional Heroic ability, or the
GM can grant you one for performing particularly heroic and cool deeds with your character
during the game.
Simple, but as you can see, the increasing skill total gets more difficult to roll over
as it gets higher.
You level up fast to begin with, but it slows down as your character becomes an expert adventurer,
as you would expect.
Time is divided up into combat rounds, which are about ten seconds, you can move and attack
during a round, you determine initiative order by drawing from a stack of numbered cards,
once your turn that round is done, you flip over the card, you can also use reactions,
which are actions you can take before your initiative has been used in the round, say
for example an opponent is swinging a sword at your character and you decide to try a
parry with your shield, that's a reaction.
More on that later.
A round can also be spent having a micro-rest, catching your breath, this restores 1d6 willpower
points, no hit points, no conditions, and can only be done once per shift of six hours,
in between those two we have the Stretch, which is 15 minutes, long enough for more
detailed tasks or taking a short rest, this restores 1d6 hit points, or 2d6 if someone
is using their healing skill on another peron.
A full shift of six hours is basically a good night's sleep, you need one of these a bare
minimum once every three days or you are going to get sleep deprivation which basically removes
your ability to recover willpower points or recover from negative conditions.
A full shift rest will restore all your willpower and hit points and remove all negative conditions,
but you can only do this in a safe, comfortable place with no monsters around.
Most importantly, you can only have One short stretch rest between full Shift rests, and
anyone using healing on another gives up their stretch rest benefits, as you can not be doing
any other task other than resting during those times.. they can take a rest later if they
get the chance, sooner or later some other character does something that takes fifteen
minutes in a safe location and the healer can have a quick knap.
There are six Negative conditions, one for each attribute, Strength becomes Exhausted,
Constitution becomes Sickly, Agility becomes Dazed, Intelligence becomes Angry, Willpower
becomes Scared and Charisma becomes Disheartened.
These can be inflicted by things in the game, but you can also inflict them on your own
character by what is called Pushing your rolls.
All a condition means is that you suffer Bane on all checks involving that attribute, including
any skill checks, attacks or whatever associated with it, so, rolling two twenty-sided dice
and taking the higher, and worse, result until that condition is removed.
Poisons usually inflict a condition and extra nasty effects on top of it if your character
suffers the full effect, rather than a limited effect of the poison, from failing an ability
roll to resist it.
Pushing a roll's can be attempted whenever a player character fails a skill or attribute
roll.
They get to make another attempt, unless they rolled a natural 20 Demon result the first
time, which is a critical fail.
Pushing a roll will always cause the character to suffer from a condition afterwards, you
can't stack one condition on top of another on the same attribute and it has to be an
attribute related directly to what the character is attempting to do, so a character is not
likely to be doing this very often.
It is possible to have a condition for every attribute at the same time and still remain
standing, but the character is pretty messed up.
Opposed skill or attribute checks are also simple, you roll under your base attribute
or skill total, if the opponent, object or whatever resisting it also succedes on their
roll, it's whoever rolls the lowest number, in case of an exact tie, the player character
always wins.
If the player character fails their skill or attribute roll, the opponent always win,
even if they also failed their roll, because... well, nothing happened.
In combat, there are lots of little tricks you can learn as you go, such as using your
characters Persuade skill to encourage a fellow player character in the group to keep on fighting,
even if they have no hit points left.
That's called Rally.
Getting reduced to zero hit points is a fairly bad thing, you have to make a base Constitution
check or suffer a severe injury, such as a broken leg or amnesia, which can cause problems
that can last longer than a shift rest to recover from.
The most important thing with combat is that you are not rolling to beat the target's armor
class, you are rolling to use your weapons correctly, if you don't mess up your weapon
skills, you will hit your target, the armor they might be wearing just reduces the damage
they take and generally makes them less agile.
Some armor types are better at reducing certain damage types.
Also, shields and weapons can get broken by being hit and damaged, which is why having
an artisan along with the group is a great idea, they are like your gear healer.
You can also choose to Parry or Dodge.
There are some rules.
A parry or dodge can only be attempted before a character has spent their action for the
round.
This is a reaction, which is what you call any action that your character takes outside
of their turn during the round, and of course, you can't use a reaction after you have used
your action already.
With dodge, you get out of the way of the attack entirely so you don't need to be using
a weapon or shield, you are making an Evade skill check, if you succeed you leap one square
on the battlemat in your chosen direction without triggering any free attacks from anyone.
A parry is when you use your weapon or shield to block an attack, ranged attacks can only
be parried by a shield, and monster attacks can't be parried.
If you succeed against the skill level you have with your characters weapon, they have
blocked the attack and you can not only move them one square in any direction but also
their opponent they are adjacent to.
Shields and weapons have a durability rating which is how much damage they can safely deflect
in one attack without getting damaged and becoming unusable until they are repaired,
either way a successful parry blocks all of that damage from the attack.
Armor doesn't worry about durability.
If you roll a Dragon success on your weapon skill to parry, you get to make an immediate
counterattack, which is why parrying is excellent, despite the risk of breaking your gear.
As a rule, big gnarly monster attacks can't be parried.
Casting Spells is just a matter of rolling your spell skill check and spending the willpower
points, there are no spell slots or anything, your mage has a spellbook called a Grimoire,
each mage will know a bunch of spells and a bunch of free to use tricks, basically cantrips
from D&D.
So, a much smoother and easier to run system, certainly very fast paced and it can be quite
deadly.
There are lots more little quirks and features to the game system, but you've now heard the
core rules and the rest will fall into place very quickly once you dive into playing it.
If you would like a follow up video on some of those details, adventure tools and the
monsters found in the book, let me know down in the comments and remember to hit that like
button and refresh your notification bell for the channel, my name is AJ Pickett, thanks
for listening and I will be back with more for you, very soon.