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sword_and_swarm

A skirmish miniatures wargame with roleplaying elements.

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Adventuring

Proficiencies

Some of the sections in this chapter are marked with “Proficiency” tags, which indicates that your character can increase their rank in particular adventuring action. Characters are assumed to start with 0 ranks in any Proficiency. Upon gaining a level, a character gains Advancement Points based on their class. These can be used to raise a Proficiency’s rank, and the player is free to distribute them across many Proficiencies or put them all in just one Proficiency. A Proficiency cannot be raised to higher than 5 ranks.

The following amounts of Advancement Points are awarded each class upon gaining a level:

Proficiencies List

The following Proficiencies are used in Sword & Swarm:

Proficiency Attribute Description
Architecture Runes Used to determine properties about buildings.
Breaking Mallet Used to breach through weak walls, doors or open chests.
Climbing Mallet Used when the character climbs or descends difficult terrain obstacles.
Languages Runes Used to check whether a character knows a language or not.
Searching Coronet Used to find hidden items and features.
Sleight of Hand Key Conceal or baffle others.
Stealth Key Used to hide behind cover or in difficult terrain.
Tinkering Key Used to activate or deactivate mechanical objects such as locks, traps and machines.

Proficiencies from Traits

Some Traits allow characters to raise ranks in Proficiencies not found in this document. Picking one such Trait automatically grants Rank 1 in the Proficiency it holds.

Adventuring Rules

Architecture

Proficiency - Runes

Characters knowledgeable about architecture can reveal all kinds of features, provided they are actively searching for them. Using this Proficiency may reveal if the given structure is safe to travel across, if there are secret doors or if they are even in the right place.

Breaking

Proficiency - Mallet

Characters might be faced with objects structures, such as chests, doors or weak walls, that are possible to break . For example, destroying wooden bridge could prevent enemies from advancing on you and your allies. Similarly, breaking stuck or locked doors allows access to new areas of a building.

Breaking a stuck or locked wooden door has a Difficulty of 9 and requires 2 action points per attempt.

Climbing

Proficiency - Mallet

To climb, the player must declare that a character is going to climb or descend from one perch or flat surface to another. If a rope or ladder is available from the point the character is to climb, then no Proficiency test is needed. With few or no obvious hand holds, the character’s player must roll a Proficiency test, where the Difficulty is twice the distance the character is supposed to climb.

A character must spend 2 action points to climb and climbs/descends at a rate of half their Boots attribute in inches.

If the distance is longer than what the character can climb or decscend in one turn, the Difficulty increases by +1 for each turn needed.

Failing a Climbing Proficiency is dangerous on a serious or disastrous. On a serious failure, the character falls and loses 1 Star for every 2 inches the character is above the surface below. On a disastrous failure, the character simply dies, leaving a loot token behind if it happened in an encounter.

Example: Håkon wants to climb onto the roof of a building that is 4 inches tall on the table. Håkon has a Boots value of 6, so he can only climb 3 inches per turn. This means that the Difficulty is 9, as the Difficulty is twice the distance (4 inches) and +1 Difficulty because Håkon requires one extra turn to climb all the way. Håkon’s player rolls 2d6 + Mallet Modifier (+0) + 3 Ranks. The dice show 3 and 4, with +3 from his ranks, yields a result of 10, which means Håkon is able to climb onto the roof successfully after on the second turn.

Digging

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Experience Points

You can advance your characters by gaining levels. To gain a level, you must gather an amount of XP. The actual amount you must gather depends on your current level. Below is a table which shows how much XP you must gather per level.

Level XP Required
0 10
1 40
2 160
3 360
4 640
5 1000
6 1440
7 1960
8 2560
9 3240
10 4000

Characters gain XP by recovering treasures in scenarios. One XP is awarded per gold piece or gold piece value of the treasure item recovered. Sum together the value of all treasure recovered in a scenario and convert it into an XP amount afterwards. The XP sum is then divided evenly across all characters in the group.

Retainers progress slower than player characters - these only gain 1 XP per two gold pieces.

Things that count as treasure are:

Items that are magical or useful, such as armor or a wand, despite being valuable, do not count as treasure for these purposes.

Levelling Up

For every level you gain, you can pick one level up perk. It can be one of the following:

For every even level you gain, your Star attribute increases by +1.

Languages

Proficiency - Runes

Characters are assumed to be able to speak the native tongue of the country they are born in. If a character starts with 3 or higher in Runes, or has Rank 1 in Languages, they are also literate and can write in that language. Language is important to reveal information from notes found in scenarios, or understand spell scrolls, to name some examples.

When a character encounters a language, the character can make a Proficiency test against a Difficulty on the following list:

Failing the test means the character does not know the language and will have to learn it to be able to comprehend it.

Learning a language requires either tutelage or living among people who speak said language. For every 3 consecutive months the character spends doing one of those things, he or she may attempt a Proficiency test to learn the language.

Light and Vision

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Losing Direction

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Mapping

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N.B: Mapping in the North is considerably different from “fantasy era” mapping.

One could go about getting vellum and ink, but it is very expensive. Another solution is to write runesticks with a useful room-notation.

In large scale travel, this would have to be done in riddles, identifying landmarks and their relations between.

Movement and Encumbrance

There are limits as to how much a single character can carry, thus players have to weigh their options when it comes to what they want to bring. Discovering treasure introduces the pain of having to carry it back, as hundreds of coins take up space and weigh a lot. Players are not expected to track the exact weight of all things they carry, but rather keep a tally of how many things they carry in the form of Encumbrance Points.

Things that do not count towards this tally are clothing, worn containers such as backpacks and pouches, as well as scabbards. A sack full of things counts as an oversized item. Multiples of small items, such as nails, arrows, rations and the likes count as 1 item. A 100 coins (gold, silver etc) counts as 1 item.

The following is a list of circumstances that add Encumbrance Points:

If the total Encumbrance Points is higher than Mallet, your character reduces Shield and Boots by -1 for every 2 Encumbrance Points above Mallet.

Resting & Healing

A character’s Star value represents a combination of morale and vigor, meaning a character can recover by both resting and healing. If a character is reduced to half or less of their original Star value, they count as being bloodied. A bloodied character recovers Star points at a slower rate. Characters cannot rest or heal in dangerous environments such as dungeons, freezing mountains or scorching deserts without the appropriate shelter or clothing.

Short Rest

A short rest lasts at least 1 hour, where the characters do nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading and tending to wounds. During a short rest, an unbloodied character can test Mallet to recover 1 Star.

Long Rest

A long rest last at least 8 hours, where the characters do nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading and tending to wounds. During a long rest, an unbloodied character recovers 1 Star.

Bed Rest

A bed rest lasts at least 7 days, where the characters do nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading and tending to wounds, but preferably stay in bed if possible. At the end of a bed rest, a bloodied character can recover d3 Star points.

Comfortable Accommodations

If a character rests in comfortable accommodations such as an inn, a Jarl’s household or an estate bedroom, it recovers more Star points per long rest. The following points grant extra Star points:

Attribute damage

If a character’s attribute is damaged, the character can regain 1 Attribute Point in addition to any Star points recovery by finishing a bed rest.

Sleight of hand

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Stealth

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Swimming

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Time

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Tinkering

Proficiency - Key

When characters deal with fine mechanical objects such as locks, machines and traps, this proficiency becomes relevant. Characters usually test against Obstacles of 5 for simple locks, with Obstacles 6 and higher for increasingly advanced devices.

Failing a proficiency test with Tinkering means the character must perform a long rest to try again.

Traps

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