Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Frostgrave => Topic started by: punkrabbitt on September 28, 2020, 03:14:46 AM
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I apologize if this has been asked before, but I have been searching for an answer on a variety of fora and my search-fu must be very weak.
What are the essential differences between Frostgrave's 1st and 2nd editions? What are the advantages of buying the 2nd edition if I am invested in a few years' worth of games using the 1st edition?
Thank you
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In practical terms, and I've only played a couple of games the changes are:
- different treasure placing
- different war band make up, you get standard grunts for free, but have a limited number of specialists
- cheaper apprentice, but less money to buy
- lots of new scenarios
- pretty much compatible with all the existing supplements
- much greater chance of random monsters
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There are also changes to the spell list, some rewritten, some dropped, others added, loads of casting numbers revised.
2nd edition also takes most of the rule additions from later supplements and bundles them all into the core rulebook. Overall, 2nd edition is a great rounded rule set, 1st editon had a few elements here and there that were unbalanced or needed a simple tweak, 2nd edition made wise changes based on 5 years of being played by the community.
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Agree with both the other posters. Mechanically the game is identical but the 2e rules incorporates the errata and rules changes from the expansions. It also incorporates another ten new scenarios not included in the original book that are quite challenging on their own. I tend to be quite finicky about new editions to rule sets but this one is fully backwards compatible with all of the expansions and was as fun as the original rules. Another nice things is they have incorporated a cheat sheet for the rules in the back of the book so in most cases you can look there for an answer and not in the text. My biggest complaint if you can call it that was that they did not incorporate the monsters from all of the expansions.
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My biggest complaint if you can call it that was that they did not incorporate the monsters from all of the expansions.
Lord yes. This exclusion baffles me, unless it was about money. Maybe they thought that if they put them in the base rulebook, people wouldn't buy the expansions?
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Lord yes. This exclusion baffles me, unless it was about money. Maybe they thought that if they put them in the base rulebook, people wouldn't buy the expansions?
I am not worried about the money somuch as I will pick up the expansions regardless. I just don't like switching rulebooks during a game to find an encounter. I am guessing that adding the monsters in would have added quite a bit more content into the current rulebook and that would have had a corresponding raise in the price point.
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Osprey will probably have page count restrictions - their printers will probably have stepped charges, so they will limit the authors to a certain number of pages. This is what I';vie experienced chairing my group of parish councils who support a community newsletter. The printers the editor uses varies costs according to number of pages in easy to understand steps, so every once in a while I get an e-mail saying we've crossed another threshold and its going to cost £n can she go ahead.
Personally not too fussed asa if you're playing a scenario from one of the supplements...you'll have the book with you anyway.
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Biggest improvements for me are:
Balancing issues: with the changes to warband makeup, limit on levels gained per game, base mechanics and 'shopping' it seems less likely that one (or a few) warbands will get on that runaway train of power.
Spells: Joe has looked at what spells were taken lots, which weren't taken often and those that were unclear and tweaked them to bring them all closer to each other, making the variety greater.
Add in the extra scenarios and backwards compatibility and its a winner for me.
That said,if you and your group are still enjoying 1ed then don't feel you have to change.
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They walked a fine line and did a nice job keeping all of those supplements relevant.
My only selfish wish was that complete solo rules were included in the new base rules, but that's OK. I have Perilous Dark and Ranges of the Shadow Deep, so I am good.
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For those who are wondering why X or Y wasn't included in the Second Edition - basically, I wanted to keep the rulebook focused on the core rules for the game. This makes the game more approachable for people that are new to the hobby or new to the game. So, the only things I 'added' from the supplements were the rules specifically designed to replace ones found in the core rulebook. Just the addition of the new scenarios, and some slightly expanded rules, caused the book to be much bigger than the first one, and I didn't want to take this any further.
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Personally not too fussed asa if you're playing a scenario from one of the supplements...you'll have the book with you anyway.
The supplements are probably going to remain as they are.
There is an article about compatibility and a link to the Osprey appendix here.
http://therenaissancetroll.blogspot.com/2020/07/frostgrave-second-edition-appendix.html (http://therenaissancetroll.blogspot.com/2020/07/frostgrave-second-edition-appendix.html)
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I like second edition. One aspect I am still. Unsure about is the new improvement rules. Only being able to improve 1 spell and 1 stat per game seems to remove a lot of development opportunities. Perhaps that is the idea.
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It's part of the balancing over a campaign, but it's also easy to toss out if your group doesn't like it.
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It's part of the balancing over a campaign, but it's also easy to toss out if your group doesn't like it.
I like this change a lot. When I do finally get back to gaming at the FLGS or club, it will keep certain players from running away with things.
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I guess, with regards the monsters, when there are enough from all of the supplements, magazines and digital editions a "Monster Manual" (read Frostgrave/GA/RoSD: Bestiary) style book could be produced that collates them all?
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that'd be good. With some new ones as well.