Thursday, February 25, 2016

Dungeon Saga Racial Rebalance






Time to try to make some Lemonade out of the Dungeon Saga Fiasco again.  Peoples reprinted Adventurer's Companions are starting to arrive.  Now this reprint fixes some issues but the book was clearly never tested in a beta form.

Previously I posted a quick start guide for making your own heroes.  One of the first things I noticed in making it was that the races did not seem to be very balanced.  The Salamander race jumped out as instantly better than all the others since it essentially trades a point of movement for a combat die.  Now an additional combat die is a huge boost for any character.  Combat dice are ofcourse used in fight attacks but also used in all defense rolls regardless of the attack being fight, shooting, or spell.  So this die is great for all classes.  Now the Ogre villain race gets the same bonus but they are also large which is limiting in adventures as narrow passages can be used to limit the ogres movement substantially.

I have decided that a better change would be a point of Armor instead of a combat die.  No race has this advantage so it is still unique but not obvious unbalanced as it is only a defensive bonus.  Now a Salamander Fighter can then start with the max 5 armor but there are already abilities/spells that reduce armor.
 
Another race that catches ones attention is the Halfling who start with just -1 Movement.  They get nothing for this penalty so that does not see right.  I decided that Halflings should therefore start with Nimble.  Nimble does not appear on their Racial Advancement Table so no other changes need to be made.

I have added these suggestions to my quickstart guide.

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