Sellswords and Spellslingers from Ganesha (first game)

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

Mostly it is modifying existing creatures.

Wolves are mainly just down-sized bears:
DL 10, HP 1, DMG 1, Move 6"

Wargs
DL 12, HP 3, DMG 2, Move 6"

Werewolf (Silmarillion version) - this is to cover just the usual ones, not Draugluin and certainly not Carcharoth
I have lesser and greater wereolves:
DL 12/14, HP 5/6, DMG 2, Move 6"
Are Legacy creatures.
Venomous bite if hit make a constitution roll vs DL 8/9 or be at -1 to all activations/attacks  until Healed.

Spiders (lesser/greater)
Lesser can be horde creatures, greater are loners:
DL 8/10, HP 2/3, DMG 1/2, Move 4
Greater spiders are large for missile purposes and are DL8
Poison : If bitten by spider to have constitution roll vs DL 10/12 or lose an extra hit point and move 1" slower until healed.
Spiders are as likely to attack NPCs/monsters as they are to attack PCs.
Webs: still working on how these will work.  I am not happy with my current rules for this.


Cold Drake
Small dragons without fire. The only model I have has stumpy wings, so these do not fly.
DL 14, HP 6, DMG 2, Move 6".
Large so DL 14 vs missiles
Legacy creature
Buffet: The tail and stunted wings can be used as attacks.  All activating PCs within 1" must roll (in their own turn) vs DL 10 or be knocked prone  +1 damage.

Fire Drakes, as above but with a fire breath weapon - a cone of fire range 8" with a 4" base.  DL12 vs dodge, no armour or shield saves.  Are immune o fire attacks.

Clearly, more creatures are needed including Vampires, Balrogs and proper dragons.....

[midismirnoff]

Hi ladies, thank you for sharing your ramblings! I'm confuse about the PC/player party definition:

Is it 60 starting XP per player's party (60 XP for my 3 models, 60 XP for my friend Bob's three models) or per whole party (30 me and 30 Bob)?

The 4/5 XP reward is per player (i.e. If I have two PCs do they get 2 XP each or 4 each?)

Thank you!

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

I am sure Hobgoblin will correct me, but I take it that each players party starts with 60XP and awarded XP are per character - if you have 3 characters that would be 3x4XP, 5 characters 5x4 XP.  There are also individual XPs.
Some of the more impressive traits are 8 or more XPs, so there may be a lot of games where you choose not to spend the XPs while you wait to amass enough to get something special.

[midismirnoff]

Sounds ok to me. Yet on the mission's intro it is stated a number of XP "per player". I find it way better as you do.

Another question: in two points of the book (the skill danger sense and the mission with the Wine jars) the author talks about an "ambush bonus" to be denied. Can anyone point me to that ambush bonus?

Thanks!

[Froggy the Great]

From https://www.facebook.com/groups/63935273102/ :

--Scenario rewards are per player, with individual rewards per character.
--Ambush bonus is on the Ambush card - frex: monster ambushing you gets +2 DL and you may not perform opportunity shots at him.

[midismirnoff]

Thank you Froggy! I've also joined there, to ask this kind of questions.

[shandy]

I've now played two games of Sellswords and it's a fantastic game! Great fun & clever mechanics - just what I was looking for.
For a more detailed review, visit https://wargamingraft.wordpress.com/2018/02/02/sellswords-spellslinger/



It has inspired my to delve into 28mm fantasy for the first time... 

[midismirnoff]

Nice write up, thanks for sharing! Everybody seem to find the game a bit easy, now for my error I've been playing the first mission @60xp for the whole party of 5 instead of for each player. It was hell hard, but super extra fun!

[shandy]

I think it seems a bit easy if you are used to games like Zombicide, which are, at the core, survival games. S&S is an adventure game, so it makes sense that it is not that deadly. Wrong expectations, but now I'm really happy with how S&S works - it feels more like D&D (at least the way we play it), which is exactly what I want!

[Hobgoblin]

I reckon - and this is very D&D - that it's greed that makes the game deadly. We've typically lost most of the PCs in the games we've played, but that's because the players had half an eye on extra equipment, and so the PCs were looting bodies rather than helping their friends - especially those who were being run by other players.

[Froggy the Great]

I reckon - and this is very D&D - that it's greed that makes the game deadly. We've typically lost most of the PCs in the games we've played, but that's because the players had half an eye on extra equipment, and so the PCs were looting bodies rather than helping their friends - especially those who were being run by other players.

I could see this happening, particularly when paired with the Drunk hindrance.  In my last game though, most people just ignored the treasure because of the wolves and kobolds and wolves and orks and the troll and more wolves and the barbarians are DEAD and we're nowhere near the exit....

[Paratrooper 42]

Interesting write up, I've never really considered Fantasy Gaming, the whole D&D thing passed me by, but the mechanisms sound interesting.

Do you think they would work for WW2 'patrol' type games, I'm thinking recon missions and escaping POW scenarios and the like?

[midismirnoff]

Erratum: we played tonight like it's written, scenario 2: total party kill, definitely not an easy game. We must have let on the floor over 30 goblins and half a dozen orc brutes, but haven't proved to be enough! More shields and armors next time!

[Hobgoblin]

Interesting write up, I've never really considered Fantasy Gaming, the whole D&D thing passed me by, but the mechanisms sound interesting.

Do you think they would work for WW2 'patrol' type games, I'm thinking recon missions and escaping POW scenarios and the like?

I'm kind of in the opposite camp, as I only play fantasy games (sf included). I haven't plumbed the S&S rules sufficiently deeply to be of much help on this, but I'll have a go anyway. I think you could certainly do games in any genre with the S&S 'engine' - cooperative play, failed activations triggering enemy movements and basic AI.

I don't know whether the magic rules would cover some advanced weaponry as we haven't used them yet, but you could easily "power up" the rules for crossbows and the like to create rifles and submachine guns. You even randomise damage (say 1D6 for a gun - most foes have a single hit point, with tougher types having 2, 3 or more) rather than having it fixed (bow 1, crossbow 2, etc).

Alternatively, you could mash it up with the same author's Rogue Stars, a sci-fi game from Osprey that uses a similar activation system and has lots of rules for advanced weapons. It's much more fiddly, and designed for opposed games, but is a superb firefight simulator.

The two main problems I can see are these:

1) In a modern setting, close combat is going to be much less of a factor, as the swelling hordes of monsters are likely to be replaced with soldiers with guns. That might take out some of the fun, as there's a big difference between 30 goblins swarming towards our heroes and 30 riflemen blazing away at them! Of course, you could offset this by having lots of cover on the table.

2) The game relies a fair bit on having "big nasties" among the monsters - tougher in combat and harder to kill. That would be need some rationalisation in a modern game, though you could abstract it by having officers with more hit points but randomised damage so that their ability to survive a hit would be far from certain.

So something like Pulp Alley would probably be a better fit. But I'm sure if you just "reskinned" S&S, you'd have plenty of fun.

[Paratrooper 42]

I'm kind of in the opposite camp, as I only play fantasy games (sf included). I haven't plumbed the S&S rules sufficiently deeply to be of much help on this, but I'll have a go anyway. I think you could certainly do games in any genre with the S&S 'engine' - cooperative play, failed activations triggering enemy movements and basic AI.

I don't know whether the magic rules would cover some advanced weaponry as we haven't used them yet, but you could easily "power up" the rules for crossbows and the like to create rifles and submachine guns. You even randomise damage (say 1D6 for a gun - most foes have a single hit point, with tougher types having 2, 3 or more) rather than having it fixed (bow 1, crossbow 2, etc).

Alternatively, you could mash it up with the same author's Rogue Stars, a sci-fi game from Osprey that uses a similar activation system and has lots of rules for advanced weapons. It's much more fiddly, and designed for opposed games, but is a superb firefight simulator.

The two main problems I can see are these:

1) In a modern setting, close combat is going to be much less of a factor, as the swelling hordes of monsters are likely to be replaced with soldiers with guns. That might take out some of the fun, as there's a big difference between 30 goblins swarming towards our heroes and 30 riflemen blazing away at them! Of course, you could offset this by having lots of cover on the table.

2) The game relies a fair bit on having "big nasties" among the monsters - tougher in combat and harder to kill. That would be need some rationalisation in a modern game, though you could abstract it by having officers with more hit points but randomised damage so that their ability to survive a hit would be far from certain.

So something like Pulp Alley would probably be a better fit. But I'm sure if you just "reskinned" S&S, you'd have plenty of fun.

Thanks for the reply.  I could see how 30 riflemen blazing away could be a problem    Maybe I'll take a look at Pulp Alley.