The Dragon Tablets: Iteration One Playtest

There are many aspects of interaction and this playtest will test combat. My estimate is that each of the heroes, Nephithi Andas, Edward Ashcroft, and Arthur Wing will be able to handle four of these orc bandits each. TES combat is not so easy that an enemy is downed by minimal injury, so I have decided that they will automatically go down when their hp has reached 0. But they will not defend themselves or make All-Out Attacks.

Setting the Stage

The heroes are traveling on foot along a road, through a wooded area, during the day time and nothing is out of the ordinary.

Turn 1

Twelve orc bandits are ambushing the heroes from among the trees. As all three heroes have Combat Reflexes, this Total Surprise is treated as a Partial Surprise. As Nephithi is the leader of the heroes and she has Combat Reflexes, they get a +2 bonus to the initiative roll, she also has a higher IQ than the leader of the orcs, for another +1, but she doesn’t have the Tactics skill. The orc leader has Combat Reflexes and get a +2 bonus, but it doesn’t have Tactics. Nephithi rolled 5 and with her +3 bonus that’s 8. And the orc leader needs to roll 6 for a tie, but only rolled 4. So despite this being an ambush, the heroes get to act first.

Edward spends a Ready maneuver to get his bow from his back. He makes a Fast-Draw roll to draw an arrow as a free action. And a Bow -3 roll to ready the bow as a Free Action (thanks to Heroic Archer), he makes both rolls easily.

Nephithi makes a Fast-Draw roll to draw her sword as a free action and succeeded easily. She selected the Wait maneuver, planning on converting it to an Attack maneuver to thrust her sword into the first orc’s vitals.

With the shield already strapped to his arm, Arthur drew his sword in no time with a successful Fast-Draw roll, and Waited for the first orc to come close enough to him. He would have liked to bash their skull in, but that’s a -7 move and with a skill of only 17, having a 50/50 chance to hit seemed to risky. So he would only clobber them normally.

Thanks to their Combat Reflexes, all 12 orcs were able to snap out of the mental stun and all of them take Move and Attack maneuvers. The first time one of them came close enough to Nephithi, she mad a Broadsword -3 roll of 15 which is lower than the adjusted 18, which means that she hit and skewered the orc with her sword, rolling 1d+1, or 6, for damage. Which is tripled for impaling damage to the vitals, or 18. Thus dropping it. Because of her Extra Attack, she repeated her move for the next orc to close, hitting again, but only doing 12 damage. Fortunately that is high enough and another orc drops.

When the first orc was close enough to Arthur, he swung his hammer at it. He rolled Axe/Mace for 7 to hit and 2d+6, or 14, for damage, downing it without the multiply by 4 he would have gotten for bashing it on the skull.

All four orcs with large knives banded up on Edward and went into Close Combat, so as to make sure to lower his skill with the bow by -3. They all make knife rolls, but having moved this turn, they have a -4 penalty to their skill. Still three of them make it. But Edward is quick and he rolls against Dodge, which he can do normally in Close Combat, and rolling 10, 8, and 12, he avoids all attacks.

An orc with a light club and another with a spear are the only remaining orcs around Nephithi. Neither of them enter Close Combat. The clubber swung his club at her, rolling 9 vs. 12, a potential hit. But Nephithi rolled 11 vs. 15 to parry the club with her sword. The spear carrier attacked from two yards away, instead of the one for the clubber, rolled 8 vs. 12 for a potential hit, but Nephithi rolled 8 vs. 12 to dodge successfully.

The three remaining orcs were all spear carriers and focused on Arthur. All of them attacked from two yards away. One of them missed with a 14, but the other two had potential hits with 10 and 11. He blocked the first spear with his shield, 12 vs. 13, but failed to dodge the second at 13 vs. 11. Rolling 1d+2 for 3 damage. Fortunately the damage resistance of his torso armor is 5, so the attack doesn’t penetrate. And he is still fine.

Turn 2

And so it is Edward’s turn again. As he is an Heroic Archer, he doesn’t have to apply the weapon’s Bulk penalty when attacking with a ranged weapon in Close Combat. Edward feels more confident and shots for the skull, rolling 9 vs. 12 and hitting. Rolling 1d+3 or 5 for damage. The skull has  damage resistance 2, so only 3 goes through. But with the x4 damage multiplier for attacks to the skull, injury becomes 12. Enough to down the orc. He fast draws another arrow, 13 vs. 16, and a Bow -3 roll, 13 vs. 16, to draw it.

Nephithi casts Flame Jet, 4 vs. 17. So this is a critical success! Thus there is no energy cost for the spell and the GM is directed to be both generous and creative as to what other results. I checked out the Critical Hit Table for suggestions and decided to just roll on it. This might also be the only time we have the chance to do that in this example. I rolled 8, so shock penalty doubles (to a maximum penalty of -8). I had been planning on spending 3 Magicka on the spell and with this having no energy cost, there’s even more reason to do so. I only rolled 9 for damage though and then 12 vs. 13 to hit, as she’s using her offhand to attack. So the three yard flame jet injures, but doesn’t kill the spear carrier. With her Extra Attack, she stabbed the clubber in the vitals, rolling 11 vs. 18 to hit and 4 on 1d+1 for 12 injury, enough to down the orc.

Arthur takes an Attack maneuver and Steps towards one of the spear carriers attacking him, to get close enough to bash him. Rolls 11 vs. 17 to hit and 2d+6 for 12 damage, bringing it down.

The three orcs with large knives try to attack Edward, one miss, one critically fail and rolls an 8 on the table, having to spend a Ready maneuver before he can attack again, and one might actually hit, but Edward parried the attack.

The spear carrier on Nephithi tries to stab her with the spear and it rolls 4 vs. 4, with the shock penalty, for a critical success. Thus she cannot defend herself. Rolling 1d+2 for a damage of 4. Her armor has a DR of 2, so she suffers an injury of 2.

The spear carriers on Arthur both had to take steps to get back into reach, one of them steps into his back hex, as he cannot defend against such attacks, and they rolled 13 and 11 vs. 12. Fortunately the orc in the back hex missed. And Arthur rolled 14 vs. 11 to dodge, failing to avoid the spear. The orc rolled 1d+2 for 3 damage, which is less than DR 5 on his armor, so he takes no injury.

Turn 3

Edward takes the Attack maneuver and attempts to fire another arrow into an orc skull, he rolls 6 vs. 12. Rolling 1d+3 for 5 damage, the same bad roll as last turn, but it’s still enough to bring an orc down. He rolls Fast-Draw and Bow -3 again, 6 and 8 this time, and draws an arrow and readies the bow to shoot.

Nephithi takes the Concentrate maneuver and takes a step closer to the orc attacking her. She then used her flame jet on one of the spear carriers attacking Arthur, rolling 10 vs. 15, for shock penalty, to cast the spell and 15 vs. 12, for shock penalty, to hit, so she missed, wasting the 3 Magicka she used. With her Extra Attack, she attacked the orc attacking her.  She rolled 8 vs.16, with the extra -2 for shock, to hit the vitals. Rolling 1d+1 for 2 damage, translating to 6 injury for the vitals, enough to bring it down.

Arthur turns around and steps towards one of his attackers to start his Attack maneuver. He then rolls 12 vs. 17 to hit and 2d+6 for 12 damage to bring the orc down.

One of the orcs readied his knife and the other attacked Edward, rolling 10 vs. 12 to hit. While Edward rolled 13 vs. 14 to parry, so he avoided being hit.

The spear carrier tried to stab Arthur again, rolling 9 vs. 12 and Arthur rolled 14 vs. 13 and failed to block. The orc rolls 1d+2 for 8 damage. Arthur’s armor deals with 5 so only 3 penetrates. And as the spear does impaling damage, that is turned into 6 injury.

Turn 4

Edward lets go of another arrow, rolling 5 vs. 12 for another skull hit and 1d+3 for 5 damage, turning into 20 injury and dropping the orc.

Nephithi took a Movement maneuver to move to the final spear carrier and used her Extra Attack to attack it, rolling 12 vs. 18 to hit the vitals and 1d+1 for 4 damage, turning into 12 injury and bringing the orc down

Arthur took a Move and Attack maneuver and moved to the final orc. Rolling 9 vs. 9, -2 penalty to attack into close combat, -4 penalty for move and attack, and another -2 to get it down to the maximum 9 and thus hitting. Rolling 2d+6 for 15 damage and bringing the final orc down.

After Action Report

The heroes finishing 12 orcs in four turns wasn’t bad. That’s an average of 1 orc per PC per turn.

Looking at Nephithi, as she is the leader, it may be useful for her to spend 1 point in Tactics to get another +1 bonus if they are ambushed by more worthy foes. As she took the Wait maneuver during her first turn, she might actually not have access to her Extra Attack at that time. As she uses spells in her off-hand, there is a -4 penalty to attack and it might be a good idea to do something about that. With the books I’m using for the First Iteration, the only viable solution is Ambidexterity, but there are other solutions available in other books. Being able to attack twice per turn, it was not unexpected that she dealt with more orcs than either of the other two. She could have cast Armor to protect herself from injury, but in this case it would have added a 5th turn to the battle.

Edward is the fastest of the three, that’s why he acted first, but not having a Fast-Draw (Bow) skill, he had to spend his first turn not attacking, thus dealing with fewer orcs than the others. After that, he made great use of Heroic Archer as his bow has a -7 bulk penalty he didn’t need to worry about when attacking in close combat.

Arthur may be less skilled with his weapon than the others, but he does much more damage with it so he didn’t need to target the vitals or the skull the way the others did. The heavier armor also paid off for him.

Clearly the First Iteration works. These three characters are playable, even if I only used a limited set of their options in this combat. It would be interesting to pit them against foes that defend themselves or a boss kind of encounter.

Having seen some weapons and armor, a little magic, and two races other than human, we can use The Dragon Tablets with what we have, but there are improvements we can do to make it better.