kensanata/halberdsnhelmets

The sources for Halberds & Helmets, an old school RPG variant

Halberds & Helmets

This repository contains the source files for the English copy of my house rules for the role playing games at my table.

The generated PDF files are hosted on my website: Player Handbook and the Referee Guide.

The subdirectories contain adventures.

Note that there is an online character generator.

If you want to report bugs, provide feedback, fix typos or collaborate in any other way, feel free to contact me.

halberdsnhelmets's Issues

Control character in Ref-Guide

Regarding Github considering Halberds-and-Helmets-Ref-Guide.ltx to be a binary file (see #24), so does the unix file tool:

Halberds-and-Helmets-Ref-Guide.ltx: data

Investigating it turns out you have a control character in a comment on line 158. After removing/replacing that character file is much happier:

Halberds-and-Helmets-Ref-Guide.ltx: LaTeX 2e document text, UTF-8 Unicode text

I believe Github is happier too.

Elementals

Dimension Door (4th circle) allows you to send yourself or another up to 360 ft away in any direction. You do not need to see or know the target area. If the target area is occupied, the spell fails without any adverse effects

I assume that strictly speaking is is a volume and not an area? Perhaps area is the more common nomenclature? Feel free to ignore and close. :)

First or third person?

In most of Basic Rules you speak to the player (and player character interchangeably, which is a style I quite like) in first person (“you”). But in the Retainers you switch to talking about “the player character” in third person. I would propose rephrasing to first person, e.g.:

Retainers: Unlike mercenaries, retainers are loyal. The number of retainers you can have is limited, however, to 4 + your charisma bonus.

XP (key terms)

Page 10:

Experience Points (xp): Tricking and defeating opponents grants experience points. Spending money nets you one experience point per gold piece spent. Examples: donations to a temple, erecting a statue, organizing a party, building a manor house, hiring servants, and so on. With enough experience points characters gain new levels.

The first sentence is not really true, is it? The significance of tricking and defeating opponents is that the reward is generally money, which in turn is spent for xp.

Saving throws (key terms)

Page 10:

Saving Throw: Targets of spells are sometimes granted a saving throw in order to avoid negative effects or to reduce damage taken by half. The spell descriptions will explicitly mention any saving throws granted. Saving throws depend on your level. To make it, roll a d20 and add your wisdom bonus. You must get number indicated or higher.

This text addresses only saving against spells, but the class descriptions (page 3+) show saving throws for many categories (to most of which, I understand, the wisdom bonus does not apply).

Change the repository description

Right now it says:

A character generator for Halberds & Helmets; a character sheet generator for some role-playing games. http://campaignwiki.org/halberdsnhelmets

Death & Dismemberment links to wrong page

For some reason the link to “death and dismemberment” in the helmet notes on page 7 takes me to page 12 instead of page 13 where the table of Death & Dismemberment is found.

That’s when you get to research new spells.

Margin note on page 1. Is this still relevant? Anyway there is a nonexistent key:

LaTeX Warning: Hyper reference `key:Research' on page 1 undefined on input line

Wight image overlaps margin note

The wight image on page 56 overlaps with the margin note. Can probably be fixed by attaching the margin note (line 4811) to the stat block instead?

Conflagration

Conflagration (3rd circle) weakens the boundaries to the planes of eternal fire anywhere within 180 ft and causes the floors and walls in a circle with a diameter of 40 ft to erupt in flames dealing 1d6 damage per level and destroying building any flammable material.

Something is not right there at the end.

Smaller charisma bonus for 2d6

Reaction Bonus: This bonus is a bit smaller than the charisma bonus because the reaction roll uses 2d6 instead of a d20.

I am nit-picking, but I understand that this reasoning does not apply to the morale check (which also uses 2d6).

Is it worth special casing for the Reaction Roll? Will charisma having greater impact on reaction make play worse? Or will it make charisma more interesting? (Hypothetical questions; you are the one with experience to judge.)

Elaborate on Earth blood?

This may be considered a blog/wiki article request rather than an HH issue (or both if you prefer). But I am writing here as I am not sure what would otherwise be the most a suitable way to reach you.

In the Monsters section you have several references to Earth blood. They are very evocative but also quite vague. In My Goblins you write “my vision of earth blood being responsible for magic” and elsewhere you write about poisoned Earth blood. I would love to learn more about your concept/vision of Earth blood… why it rises to the surface.

There is an Earthblood product on DTRPG (which I have yet to read) with the following blurb, but I really want to hear your vision!

Far below the surface world lie the veins through which the earth’s own blood flows. Earthblood makes possible life in the Underdark. Its mystic energies sustain many of the strange plants and fungi that grow there in the same way that the sun gives life to all flora of the sunlit world.

Thanks and happy holiday season!

Nitpick: Apostrophe or 'RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK' (U+2019)?

While hunting down the control character in #25 I noticed that sometimes you have used a 'RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK' (U+2019) as sometimes an apostrophe. As far as I can tell they render identically in the PDF, but for consistency (and searchability) you may want to pick one?

This seems relevant: https://tedclancy.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/which-unicode-character-should-represent-the-english-apostrophe-and-why-the-unicode-committee-is-very-wrong/

AC 0 isn't shown correctly

Confusion on Living World

Living World: Keep a list of a handful in addition to your list of contacts.

The above sentence is confusing. What handful should I be keeping

See

halberdsnhelmets/Halberds and Helmets/Halberds-and-Helmets-Ref-Guide.ltx

Line 420 in 0146056

\textbf{Living World}: Keep a list of a handful in addition to your

Mass combat and NPCs?

Ref guide page 9:

Player characters can “hide” within a unit, granting them their charisma bonus for morale checks. When the unit takes damage, the player and non-player characters are the last ones to actually take damage. All these characters attack as usual, with separate attack rolls and separate spell casting actions.

Not sure what you mean with “non-player characters“ here; isn't everyone in the unit (except the PC) an NPC, or do you have another term for the faceless nameless extras? Did you mean "retainers"?

PDF missing from repo

The link on https://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/Halberds_and_Helmets to the PDF for the Player Handbook leads to a 404 now. I'm guessing that, since your last update to the .ltx, the generated PDF didn't get re-added.

Morale or morale score?

Use either "morale" or "morale score" consistently in the below.

Page 2:

Charisma determines how well others react to you, how many retainers and pets will follow you (4 + your bonus) and their morale score (7 + your bonus).

Page 8 (table header):

Category ______ Wage _______ Morale

Page 10:

If 2d6 exceed the morale score, morale breaks and opponents flee.

Page 11:

Their morale is determined by the player character: 7 + charisma bonus (4–10). If they roll higher than their morale, these retainers retire.

Do we need Movement Rates?

Do we need MV in the player facing rules at all? I got a question about movement rates being 120ft while fighting where as B/X and LL just use a third of that. And I started wondering.

I guess at one point I decided that it wasn't important anyway. Perhaps I should just remove "or fighting" from the text and write something about movement in general since the actual movement rates never quite come up in my game.

• On rare occasions I care about who's faster but usually that comes up in situations where one side wants to flee and fleeing is handled by the parting shot, not by comparing movement speeds (or group size, like in B/X and LL).

• Overland travel is 1 hex/day.

• Underground, the only thing that's important regarding the passage of time in my game is the frequency of random encounters, and those happen when players are stalling at the table or when they move into an empty room or in similar situations, without checking the actual distance covered.

• In combat, all participants can be reached unless they're being covered by an ally, so movement rate never affects your ability to attack somebody.

Does it ever come up in your game? Do you use a battlemap?

Confusing numbers

Page 11:

Retainers: Unlike mercenaries, retainers are loyal. Their number is limited, however: 4 + charisma bonus (1–7). After disastrous adventures, they’ll need to make a Morale Check. Their morale is determined by the player character: 7 + charisma bonus (4–10). If they roll higher than their morale, these retainers retire.

I think those numbers in parentheses are more confusing than helpful. I think it is clear enough without them. I am pretty sure that if I hadn't listened to that podcast episode where you discuss them before reading this I would have been confused and wondering why they were there and what they meant. If you really want to keep them perhaps rewrite the parens as "(i.e., between 4 and 10)".

Ghostscript destroys hyperlinks

You are probably aware already that the gs post-processing destroys the links/refs, which is a shame. :(

Skills

The big table of d6:

Skill	1d6
Default	1
Kick in doors, add your strength bonus	1–2

When written like this I would normally assume that the strength bonus is added to the die roll, but in this case then intent must be to add the bonus to the “1–2” range. Should it be made more clear?

Also the table in general doesn't get much explanation. For example that the right column is the required result to succeed. If I hadn't listened to your podcast on skills before reading I would have been a bit puzzled.