House Rules PDF
Transcript
That’s what I said <snap> back in that video, so now we’re gonna do it. We’re going homebrewing!
INTRO
Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we just go and make up our own freaking rules! And we thank our patrons for their oblivious support of such rampant hubris!
All right, a few videos ago, we played our second chapter in the Les Chasseur de Cauchemars Silver Bayonet skirmish saga and during that game, as you saw, I mentioned a couple of spots where I was inspired to brew up some house rules for three specific things in the game. So today we’re gonna do that and at the end you can tell me how many grave errors I’ve made.
Because I’ve never home-brewed skirmish rules before. Don’t act surprised, you know your host is like.
So we are coming up with rules specifically for Silver Bayonet solo play, these really aren’t gonna apply to PVP – although they might apply to co-op games. But hey, whenever you play whatever you play, it’s your game and you can play it the way you want to, right?
All right, so the biggest rule I wanted to come up with is simply called Stealth. Even as I am just now thinking about it, some form of this could possibly be used in a PVP game, I guess it would kind of be like implementing something like the convoluted obscured concealed order mechanics in Warhammer 40k Kill Team.
But the number one things we have to consider, in my opinion, is the elegant simplicity and flavor of Mr. McCullough’s game design. I have to admit that my initial tendency is to make things over powered. Because I want my war band to survive, duh!
The whole reason I want a stealth mechanic is almost purely for narrative story reasons. But also because I don’t think my soldiers would always just start out with full on attacks. At least in solo play.
So with Stealth in mind, I first just started listing things that popped in my head, just notes.
Like in line of sight vs no line of sight.
What stat? Speed stat, Courage stat? Defense? Out of those only Courage would function like offering a bonus to a die roll.
Stealth movement is probably half speed, but can a figure Sprint at half speed or not? Maybe movement is at minus 2 inches. And probably Sprint shouldn’t be allowed, to keep it simple and kinda “realistic”.
Figure activates, declares stealth, rolls for success. May shoot after movement? Now, X that. May not shoot or attack.
Success removes figure from “line of sight”, meaning it may not be targeted.
Is there an ability a monster could have that defeats or negates stealth?
Success must simply equate to “non-targetable”.
Failure equals targetable.
Success costs two actions – figure can only move, can’t do anything else.
Figure has to have some kind of cover to activate stealth? Yes.
Should there be a melee attack bonus for stealth?
You can see from my notes I just jotted down whatever came to mind.
The main thing I came away from this list with – keeping in mind the game’s simplicity – was that the result of a stealth check has gotta be simply deciding whether or not a figure is targetable. Because we also have to keep in mind that during solo play, enemy models are following a very simple AI flow chart to determine their actions. And targetable means not just of attacks but of movement, as monsters can simply move toward a nearest figure if it’s in line of sight.
The next thing to lock down is whether or not this check is tied to a particular stat for some kind of bonus. But going over the Silver Bayonet stat line, I don’t think any of these really correlate. So it’s just gonna be a simple check, meaning roll and beat a target number.
Now what’s the target number gonna be, that is probably the most important thing to figure out. I think for now I’m just gonna go with a 50/50 chance, so target number 10? Maybe 11? One of those, cause the numerical spread on 2d10 is 2 to 20, not 1 to 20. Oh, if we look at the Sprint rule, it has a very similar check mechanic, so we’ll use that as the basis for our target number, which will be 11 or higher.
Now one cool thing I like in D&D is how a player can roll a check but not know if they’ve succeeded until something happens to let them know. Now this is solo skirmish, so we can’t do that exactly, but we can kind of re-create the effect by making the Stealth action a forced action. This also keeps it from being too powerful, I think. So what I mean by forced action is that in order to use Stealth, a figure declares they are going to attempt to go stealthy, and then, regardless of the result of the dice role, they are bound to the Stealth action rules.
Which are: moving up to a specific distance and not being able to take any other actions, like Melee or Move To Attack or Shooting. At first I thought maybe a stealthy figure would move at 1/2 speed and still be able to Sprint, again at half speed. But then I thought maybe I am again being a little too generous, so how about a Stealth action means the following:
A figure attempting to be Stealthy can move up to 4 inches, which is slightly more than half the typical base soldier movement, but after that, the figure can’t do anything else, which in game rule parlance would be saying: once a Stealth movement is made, that figure’s activation immediately ends. And the kicker is that a figure is bound to these rules regardless of whether or not their check succeeded.
So that’s pretty limiting – a figure can’t Stealth and make an attack or investigate a clue marker, or anything else – they are busy trying to stay hidden.
The last relevant question might be, are there any abilities a monster might have that would logically negate a figure’s attempt at being Stealthy? I think there is only one, at least in the core rule book: Ethereal, which states that a figure with this attribute can see and move through terrain as if it were not there.
So, we got to add a tidbit about how monsters with the Ethereal attribute are immune to Stealthing figures, or something like that. Figures can never successfully Stealth against a monster with the Ethereal attribute. There.
Which brings us to adding a single prerequisite for figures trying to be Stealthy: in order to make a Stealth check, a figure must have a piece of terrain taller than 1/2 inch between it and all enemy models.
All right, I think that covers it. It seems pretty straightforward and easy to parse out, at least on paper. We’ll play test it in the next scenario.
Okay, for the second house rule, I want to address this issue of “discovered items “. Now this is probably not in line with Joe’s design overall or he probably would have included it in some fashion. But he also clearly wants players to have fun from the get-go, so, you know that’s what I’m doing – I’m having fun.
And remember, I’m kind of doing these homebrew rules to basically let me service the narrative aspects of solo play.
So this second house rule is all about allowing figures to hand off items to each other. But we’re not going to break Joe’s core rule for soldiers, the one that says they’re stuck with the items chosen at the point of recruitment. We’re going to limit this special rule to only items and artifacts discovered during a scenario by investigating clue markers and drawing cards.
Because, like in the last battle report, both warband members who investigated clues and turned over cards, found items they either already had or couldn’t use. And I think special items should maybe have a better chance of helping the unit that found them. And I don’t think it’s too unbelievable that if a figure can pick up a clue or an item or something, that they could easily toss or drop, say, a bag of silver shot or a silver dagger they found on the ground or to another soldier in the warband.
So this one I think is pretty simple:
Item Hand-off
A figure can use a free action to “hand off” an item or artifact discovered via scenario special rules (i.e. via clue markers and drawing cards).
A figure can choose to hand off an item to another friendly figure up to 3” away OR may drop or toss a discovered item to the ground up to 3” away.
Super simple, moving on.
Now this third house rule I want to write up has to do with the monster expert ability, which can be chosen for any soldier in a warband during recruitment. As written, this ability only functions during a PVP game, because it affects only the monster die in a player’s Fate Pool. And in that capacity, it functions perfectly well. But in solo play, as written, it doesn’t function at all. But I still want to use it, because I think it’s a cool character attribute.
Like in the Nightmare Hunters, Vermont Escoffier, the supernatural investigator, for example, it’s just cool to think he’s had to study up on these fairytale monsters they tangle with, while he was at University, which is part of his backstory. So, let’s make it work for solo play.
The first thing we should declare is that using this attribute must affect the figure with the attribute – or if not affect, it must at least involve the figure in some way.
See, this attribute is meant to cause a monster to increase its damage against or target your opponent in PVP. But for a solo players, it will allow an attempt at making a monster decrease its damage against the figure with the attribute only.
So the figure can use its Monster Fate Pool die to re-roll a monster’s Power or Skill die, and the lower result takes precedent. But this can only be used during a monster’s attack that is targeting the figure with this attribute.
Alternatively, a figure may use their Monster die to modify a monster’s action. They can force a monster to target the figure themselves during a shooting attack or become the target of a move or move to attack that would have originally been made against or toward another figure.
You know, this is kinda like they know how to bait a monster into targeting them. Basically spamming aggro, right?
There is a third option, which would be similar to the first, but the figure could re-roll a Power or Skill die in their own attack against a monster. But we’re kind of getting into the normal Fate pool stuff here. So another thing we could say is …
A figure can burn their Monster die to gain a +2 to their Melee stat in a single attack action against a monster. Now, I am not sure what’s over powered without play testing, so … I don’t know.
All of this is easily justifiable from a narrative perspective. A figure with this attribute has either studied monsters in some way or learned through encounters and thus they know some monster’s weak points or eccentricities or whatever.
So I’m gonna go with the plus two for now, I don’t think that’s too OP at least on the surface. One attack getting a plus two, doesn’t seem like much.
All right, let’s take a look at our brand new sheet of house rules for solo play. Because, you know, design makes everything better, right?
I can link this document as a PDF in case any of you wanna download it and use it in your solo games or, you know, you can print it and roll it up and use it to start a fire in your Christmas fire place!
So, go brew up some house rules! You could make a whole new game that way, if you wanted to. And let me know what you think of these.
See ya!