So the other day I got to playtest my game as a player, rather than as someone running the game, which was an awesome experience (in the sense that you don't usually get to be on the receiving end of your own games, not necessarily that there aren't things to fix).
We played the game "as it's meant to be played", though much of the session was down to creating characters.
I wanted to make a support character, a healer with an emphasis on social capabilities, but also still have a little firepower because our group tends to range from 3-5 players and everyone has to be able to do everything.
A lot of what I want to talk about is the actual act of making a character, which I found refreshing after my recent experiences with D&D.
My character for this game is a one-eyed alchemist named Masuma, a former street urchin and alchemist's apprentice who has now begun a personal quest for the magnum opus. I'm incorporating a lot of alchemical themes here, and one of my goals was also to make a character who is less of an obvious adventurer and more of a people person and contributing member of society. Before the game, I'd only come up with the concept, and I hadn't started to work on the mechanical side of the character.
I didn't spend the 40 free starting XP yet, though I'll do so next time we play and update the character sheet.
Attributes
| Combat Skill | Brawn | Grace | Toughness | Intellect | Presence | Awareness |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | 23 | 27 | 29 | 31 | 30 | 31 |
We rolled attributes with the standard 15+2d10 method and an extra roll, then distributed as we wanted. I had pretty good luck on the dice, except for a result of 17 (the lowest possible) which got replaced. My only gripe with this is that it makes the whole attribute block go a little iffy, so I might actually toss that 17 in because my average attribute is still pretty good with it and I want more definition to the character.
Specializations
One of the things that I wanted to bring to fruition in Hammercalled is the idea that you choose what your character's good at. The attributes serve as a baseline for comparison (and balance), but specializations can be whatever. If you're exceptionally strong, for instance, you put it there.
For those not familiar with Hammercalled, the idea here is that you just say things your character is able to do, and you get a bonus equal to the desired amount. For instance, if you say "I am able to fight well", your character gets a +15 bonus in combat.
If you're really into storytelling, you can make it a reflection of the character's personality. However, with GM veto power, it also serves as an antidote to power-gaming. You have to say what you do well in particular, so you don't wind up with a lot of haggling during play.
- IAAT practice alchemy. (+15)
- IAAT see past the surface. (+15)
- IAAT fit in and make my point. (+10)
- IAAT fight when I have to. (+10)
- IAAT hide from prying eyes. (+10)
- IAAT get around nimbly and quickly. (+10)
- IAAT handle animals. (+5)
- IAAT master languages. (+5)
The last specialization is likely to change wording at least, but I like the other ones.
I intentionally put a little nerf in in a couple places; the most overt one is "fight when I have to" for the combat ability. It's a good idea to include some fighting ability in a character, but part of the point of this is that it means that Masuma can't initiate violence.
Talents
Healer (2)
Reroll failed Immediate Aid tests, gain +1 margin on all healing, including First Aid.
Fastidious (2)
Gain +6 to Wear Threshold.
Enhanced Defense: Intellect (1)
+5 to defense when Intellect is the attribute used.
Gear
Gear is probably my favorite part of Hammercalled. Everything else I've seen done elsewhere relatively well, but I think that Hammercalled has what could quite possibly be the best gear system of any tabletop game for blending speed and resolution. The one possible exception would be Bulldogs! (affiliate link), which has a similar gear system powered by Fate v3.
One of the things that Hammercalled does is make its gear a defining element of its characters.
Ranged Weapon: Alchemist's Bombs
Cost 4, Damage 6, Charged (1), Unreliable (-1). This weapon by default has a Wear Threshold of 80 (20% chance to suffer damage when used), and the Charged quality lets it ramp up to an impressive Damage 9, but by dropping the Wear Threshold to 70. After the Fastidious talent, this becomes 86 and 76 respectively, which is more feasible for a main weapon. I get, on average, between 16-12 shots with this weapon before it's out of juice, which is enough for most fights but not going to let me live by the sword.
Armor: Cloak of Al-Hanin
Cost 3; Alternate Defense (Intellect), Protection 3. Not as much fun stuff to say here, other than that it pushes Masuma's defenses to all use Intellect. In-universe, this is because it whispers secrets of future dangers, which can then be decoded by those smart enough to see the truth. This is the attribute that ties to using alchemy to heal and as such will be my first priority for increases.
Tool: Alchemist's Toolkit
Cost 3; +5 to alchemy, First Aid (2): as a Miscellaneous action, may restore Margin+4 (+1 additional for Healer) health to a target during combat.
Note: Due to the Healer talent and the +5 from the tool, this is Masuma's best roll: 31 Intellect, +15 from specialization, +5 from the tool, and being able to reroll, for an expected success rate of over 75% with no other penalties. However, because this is a reroll on failure, not on success as well, the margin doesn't increase as much as it would if you had a strict "roll-twice, keep best" system, like advantage in D&D.
Overall
Some things that I noticed during the playtest during the actual play section:
The big pain of a d100-based system is that with basic linearity it is almost guaranteed to fail when novice characters get into trouble. It's important to make sure that it is clear that an average difficulty test is somewhere between +10 and +20 from the character's base target number.
Energy, which will combine the old Destiny and Adrenalin systems into something that's more of a traditional resource, will really help to make the game go more smoothly once the issues are hammered out.
Downtime rules would be really nice. I should get those done. I made some for Segira, and I had told myself that Hammercalled doesn't need them, but I guess they are really more important than they have been.