The Guide of Guides

Well, tonight I sat down to start penning some words for the Castle Keeper's Guide. Lucky me.

For the most part I am working on organizational issues. But there are a few tidbits you might like to know.

The classes will go up to 24th level not 20th. On this, the game (like the original and many incarnations since) was designed for play up to about 13-15 level. For CnC, 12th level is the unofficial retirement age for a character. In part this reflects the game mechanics and design and considers the length of real time it takes to get a character to 12th level.

That said, the classes make a quantum leap in power as they advance beyond 12th level. The game will necessarily change as the characters begin to outgun 90% of the monsters in the book. This is fine. The characters, after 12th level, approach hero status. Much along the lines of aragorn, gandalf, conan, the gray mouser etc. The characters become difficult to kill and they simply outmatch many creatures.

Also consider, this is CnC power -ups so don't expect some aweful stuff.

For example, the fighter gets a 2nd weapon specialization at 12th level, combat dominance extends to all 1hd creatures at 14th level then to all 2hd creatures at 16th level, an attribute bonus is gained at 15th level and at 21st level a really cool Battle Maneuver ability is added (using 1/2 BtH as AC bonus or damage bonus or any combination thereof.) and some other junk.

We are putting the final touches on some optional rules. One that many may like and many may deplore are extra abilities. At various levels a character gets to add an extra ability to their character (a rogue for example gets them at 1, 2, 6, 11, 16 and 21 lvl). These extra abilities do increase the power of the players but are there for those who might want to dabble in them. These include things like enhanced spell resistance, fiersome blow, expert miner etc. and well, some other junk. Additionally there is a section on how to simply switch out abilities for others.

Another optional rule concerns armor. Armor is being reworked a bit so that it can be used to soak damage. This also brings into play certain other optional rules (such as with the abilites mentioned above). Certain abilities can only be added into the game if damage soak is being used, Nice huh,

In all what will happen is that certain sets of rules will natuaraly fit together while other not so much.

we are also trying to explain how the SIEGE engine works and how it can be taken apart and rebuilt to fit your level of detail, style of play and creating new and applying it.

For example, many people explain the Siege Engineby saying you have to beat a CL18 to succeed at a task . If the task related to your prime you get a +6 to that roll. A 12/18. Well, the actual original CL was 20. With size attributes you get a 0/2/4/6/8/10 (simplifying to a 12/18). In this case every attribute would be assigned a bonus. If you chose a primary, secondary and tertiary attribute system you go with 0/4/8 for low fantasy and 2/6/10 for high fantasy (character succeed 20% more often).

So, taking this you could have humans with 3 primes, demihumans 2 primes, humans 2 secondary, demihumans 3 secondary, humans 2 tertiary and demihumans 1 teritiary or any break up u see fit.

anyway, i show how the system can be broken down.

races - a new halfling !!!
Anyway, as I work on things I will start posting them.

Davis Chenault



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