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 MLaw wrote:
One would think that since Osprey has recently had several wargaming releases and none of them have a news and rumor thread that discussing them here would be fair game. Hmm. .fair.. what an interesting word.

There actually is a separate thread for all their new releases on this very forum in this very N&R section. Just saying.

OT, my FLGS just got the Frostgrave soldiers in this past week. Nice to see some retail outlets starting to get this stuff.

 MLaw wrote:
none of them have a news and rumor thread

That is a good point. Here we go:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/664227.page

EDIT:

Seems like this actually already exists:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/664133.page

Edited by Manchu. Any questions about moderation should be sent via PM or alternatively discussed in a thread in the Nuts & Bolts forum. Thanks!

 squall018 wrote:
OT, my FLGS just got the Frostgrave soldiers in this past week. Nice to see some retail outlets starting to get this stuff.

Any idea where your LGS got them from?

What's everyone's opinion on the Bard Karma houserules?

http://www.bad-karma.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/BadKarma_Frostgrave_RulesChanges_v1.2.pdf

 TheWaspinator wrote:
What's everyone's opinion on the Bard Karma houserules?

http://www.bad-karma.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/BadKarma_Frostgrave_RulesChanges_v1.2.pdf

They really put some effort into these, and I'd really like to give em a try at some point. The posts before they came up with the rules detail their thoughts and reactions to the game and are worth a read.

~iPaint

 TheWaspinator wrote:
What's everyone's opinion on the Bard Karma houserules?

http://www.bad-karma.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/BadKarma_Frostgrave_RulesChanges_v1.2.pdf

I wouldn't use them.

The XP bonuses for elimiating foes with the wizard are to encourage the wizard to actively participate inteh battle, instead of just hiding at maximum range. Bad Karma does away with them and increases the XP reward for casting spells. Spells which they were going to get XP for casting anyways. This elimiates any real incentive for the wizard to directly enter combat and exponentially increases XP rewards in general.

The Bard Karma rules limit the amount of between game actions, which are already limited by available gold. Then allows you and your apprentice to complete one each. Since the time between battles isn't daily, or regimented in any way, and GOLD is still the most improtant determinig factor to any of this, they seem like a needless complications to the system.

Scour the Ruins just gives anyone who isn't shopping or reccruiting a free treasure and 25xp. Neither is needed, and both push advancement even faster.

They eliminate the only serious setback to a warband, wizard death, with the left for dead rule.
Allow you to maigc away permanent injuried on a 12+ with a 100GP donation to a church.

Carrier pigeons, probably the least useful upgrade in the book, instead of saving 5Gp for each recruit, which is utter crap, allows you to recruit a henchman and full GP cost without using one of your two between game actions.

I feel that all of these rules needlessly complicate something that works fine as is, or actively work against the original intention of the rule they replace.

As noted previously....

WANT!

Who are these creatures? Kev has taken the undead heads and arms included on the Cultist frame, and added them to Frostgrave Soldier bodies to show you what you can do with them. Plus the Cultist on the right is a Soldier body with Cultist head and arms.

https://www.facebook.com/northstarmilitaryfigures

 adamsouza wrote:

 TheWaspinator wrote:
What's everyone's opinion on the Bard Karma houserules?

http://www.bad-karma.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/BadKarma_Frostgrave_RulesChanges_v1.2.pdf

I wouldn't use them.

The XP bonuses for elimiating foes with the wizard are to encourage the wizard to actively participate inteh battle, instead of just hiding at maximum range. Bad Karma does away with them and increases the XP reward for casting spells. Spells which they were going to get XP for casting anyways. This elimiates any real incentive for the wizard to directly enter combat and exponentially increases XP rewards in general.

The Bard Karma rules limit the amount of between game actions, which are already limited by available gold. Then allows you and your apprentice to complete one each. Since the time between battles isn't daily, or regimented in any way, and GOLD is still the most improtant determinig factor to any of this, they seem like a needless complications to the system.

Scour the Ruins just gives anyone who isn't shopping or reccruiting a free treasure and 25xp. Neither is needed, and both push advancement even faster.

They eliminate the only serious setback to a warband, wizard death, with the left for dead rule.
Allow you to maigc away permanent injuried on a 12+ with a 100GP donation to a church.

Carrier pigeons, probably the least useful upgrade in the book, instead of saving 5Gp for each recruit, which is utter crap, allows you to recruit a henchman and full GP cost without using one of your two between game actions.

I feel that all of these rules needlessly complicate something that works fine as is, or actively work against the original intention of the rule they replace.

I have to disagree. My group has been using them to great affect.

The changes to the ways wizards gain experience helps out players who don't want a front line spell blasting mage - say an enchanter who wants buff spells, or a druid that wants to throw lots of mud and fog onto the table. In the original version, damage dealing wizards can quickly outpace party-buffing wizards. It means that my Sigilist will never level as quickly as a damage-focused Elementalist, especially since Out of Game spells don't count for exp. This does not 'exponentially' increase the exp gained, as spells are still just as likely to go off as they aren't, but a spell that kills the enemy wizard will still give you 20 exp, not 100.

The out of game steps help restricts players and makes them think about what they want to do. A player that managed to win a few 5-1 or 4-2 games in the original version can quickly outpace everyone else as he quickly gets his pick of magical items and support buildings. Scour the Ruins only applies to warbands that managed to get no treasure tokens off the table - very difficult to do, unless your game went very, very badly.

As for the other rules, they're optional, so play as you like. Personally, I like the idea of a wizard pulling himself out of the ruins, basically naked and terribly injured, but pissed off more than anything.

Additionally - the Bad Karma rules do more to make Frostgrave a game about collecting treasures than killing the other warband. The five turn limit means I can't keep a treasure token on the table and spend the whole game hunting down your warband, and then get all the treasure from the game when you've been tabled. Additionally, since any treasure remaining on the table awards experience to both players, it makes collecting treasure all the more important.

I say try the recommended rules changes out that the very least.

I like the look of the BadKarma changes.

XP for wizards killing enemy soldiers is broken, in the original rules, because it massively advantages direct-damage style wizards (e.g. elementalist), to the point where there's no reason to take a sigilist or enchanter or similar. Plus it doesn't make any sense that a fireball cast by your elementalist killing a thief gets you XP...but an arrow, shot by your archer and enchanted by your enchanter, doesn't.

The other changes focus the game on the treasure (as it should be) and maintain a low-fantasy feel (which is a personal preference thing but fits with my preferences -- I don't like bad D&D style "magic shops").

The EXP rewards for the wizard defeating opponents is to encourage him to do something other than hide in the back, and acutally interact with the enemy warband.
An enchanter who hides in the back, steals treasures and runs off the board is BORING to play against.

Removing the combat related XP destroys the risk verses reward ratio. It allows for a wizard hiding out of combat to spam an easy to cast spell to earn the same amount of XP as wizard risking his neck while casting higher difficulty combat spells. Wizards who want to sit back in safety progress more slowly.

Also, the nonlethal seplls are not useless.
The Enchanter can be use Telekenesis to steal additional treasures while his animated construct is running amok
The sigilist can push his henchman towards the treasure, while his apprentice TKs it closer.

What's 40XP for dispatching a minion compared to 50XP + Gold & Magic for stealing a treasure ?






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ian Sturrock wrote:

XP for wizards killing enemy soldiers is broken, in the original rules, because it massively advantages direct-damage style wizards (e.g. elementalist), to the point where there's no reason to take a sigilist or enchanter or similar. Plus it doesn't make any sense that a fireball cast by your elementalist killing a thief gets you XP...but an arrow, shot by your archer and enchanted by your enchanter, doesn't.

The fireball killing a theif puts the wizard in harms way, and comes at a higher difficulty to cast, while the enchanter can hide while his minion runs around with that enchanted bow, that was easier to enchant than casting said fireball.

In D&D it would be like arguing that the guy sitting in his layer enchanting items should earn as much XP as the adventuring wizard fighting monsters.

We adopted a lot of those changes as well, makes for a much better game.

The silly kill-xp we kicked immediately, that rule just doesn't make for a nice campaign.

I think BadKarma has some pretty interesting ideas. Whether or not you use them probably comes down to the kind of group you play in. My own group is pretty casual, more rpg-lite style players, and rules work great. If you are more used to kill-the-all style games, you might want some house rules to further emphasis the treasure hunt aspect.

Basically, I would say, try the game as written. If after a few games you think there are issues, try BadKarmas ideas, or create your own house rules.

Whichever way is the most fun is the right way to play.

Even dropping XP for directly killing enemies (which we did after the first couple of games), we found that direct-damage specialist wizards were significantly more powerful than buff-type wizards. They really don't need the added boost of inherently faster character advancement.

 Manchu wrote:

 squall018 wrote:
OT, my FLGS just got the Frostgrave soldiers in this past week. Nice to see some retail outlets starting to get this stuff.

Any idea where your LGS got them from?

He got them from his regular distributor, not direct from northstar. He has had them on order since the game went to retail, so they took awhile to get. But he got about 10 of the books, four boxes of soldiers and one each of all the metal blisters.

Doesn't Brigade carry them?

http://brigadegames.3dcartstores.com/Frostgrave_c_578.html

 squall018 wrote:
He got them from his regular distributor

If you think of it, would you please ask him who his distributor is? I think Golden distributes them but it has been kind of confusing.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Doesn't Brigade carry them?

For retail sales, yes.

 adamsouza wrote:

In D&D it would be like arguing that the guy sitting in his layer enchanting items should earn as much XP as the adventuring wizard fighting monsters.

It's more like the magic user healing and buffing his fellow adventurers should get as much exp as the magic user that's running around throwing out lightning bolts and fireballs. Which is what happens in D&D.

 infinite_array wrote:


It's more like the magic user healing and buffing his fellow adventurers should get as much exp as the magic user that's running around throwing out lightning bolts and fireballs. Which is what happens in D&D.

This!

 infinite_array wrote:

 adamsouza wrote:

In D&D it would be like arguing that the guy sitting in his layer enchanting items should earn as much XP as the adventuring wizard fighting monsters.

It's more like the magic user healing and buffing his fellow adventurers should get as much exp as the magic user that's running around throwing out lightning bolts and fireballs. Which is what happens in D&D.

I know that guy, he's the cleric, and I'm pretty sure he's not afraid to get his hands dirty.

Right, because every single cleric has to be the warrior-priest, right? And no magic user would ever do anything other than cast damage spells.

Seriously, it sounds like you're ignoring every D&D school of magic outside of Evocation.

Oh snap!

Nerd fight!

 infinite_array wrote:
Right, because every single cleric has to be the warrior-priest, right? And no magic user would ever do anything other than cast damage spells.

 infinite_array wrote:

It's more like the magic user healing and buffing his fellow adventurers should get as much exp as the magic user that's running around throwing out lightning bolts and fireballs.

No, I've played D&D enough to realise that wizards don't have access to healing spells, and most of the buff spells are divine in nature.

In D&D where you have multiple player characters, it is perfectly possible for one of the player to adopt a support role.

In Frostgrave, the wizard is supposed to be the leader of the warband. If he wants to lead from behind, nothing in the game prevents him from doing so, or even penalizes him for doing so.
Frostgrave rewards wizards who take greater risk with greater reward.

Sigilists and Enchanters make free magic items(create grimoire, write scroll, enchant weapon/armor, animate construct, etc..) , gain free XP (absorb, knowledge) and it's not like they are barred from taking combat related spells. (Push and Telekenesis are insanely useful, and Enchant has GRENADE)

Frosgrave is a "Fantasy Wargame". if you choose to avoid combat and concetrate on treasure aquisition, you are making the decision to forgo possible XP gains for greater safety and loot.

Sounds like adamsouza likes playing elementalists & necromancers ...

Having played a fair bit with the rules as written... I am definitely taking a direct-damage specialist to Frostgrave Day (haven't yet decided which). Anyone who has access to a Difficulty 8 or 10 direct-damage spell and a couple of utility spells is significantly better in the early campaign than anyone who doesn't... and using rules as written, they will advance more rapidly too (while admittedly being at a slightly higher risk, but only slightly -- the wizard is unlikely to get one-shotted, and the apprentice can always be the one who always takes the 'risk' while Wiz hangs back and buffs/heals).

Mutter wrote:
Sounds like adamsouza likes playing elementalists & necromancers ...

Actually, I'm a big fan of Witches and Enchanters.

Here's some painted ones from C'mon (not my work). I do like the look, and this is a sprue worth it seems.

 kestral wrote:
Here's some painted ones from C'mon (not my work). I do like the look, and this is a sprue worth it seems.

Spoiler:

Yes, those are from the plastic Frostgrave soldier kit.

 Alpharius wrote:
Yes, those are from the plastic Frostgrave soldier kit.

Spoiler:

Thanks. I think I might've seen that picture but wasn't sure if that was 100% just the soldier sprue.. one of those guys looks like he's got a prospector's head and it's kinda crowded and hard to tell what's what.