How To Play Dragonbane

How to play Dragonbane

 

Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Dragonbane. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Dragonbane game at home.

 

I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.

1. Game category

2. Attributes

3. Skills

4. Pushing

5. Conditions

6. Dragons, demons

7. Boons, banes

8. Initiative

9. How to attack

10. Zero hit points

11. Sneak attacks

12. Actions and reactions

13. Armor

14. Weapon durability

15. Movement

16. Terrain

17. Encumbrance

18. Resting

19. Magic

20. Building a character

 

 

Game category. Dragons, demons, and player characters of fantasy races. Magic, mystery, and adventure. Dragonbane is a tabletop roleplaying game designed in the mirth and mayhem roleplaying style. Mirth and mayhem means there is room for laughter and a pinch of silliness, and also brutal challenges for adventurers to face in combat. Dragonbane is a translated and updated version of the Scandinavian game Drakar och Demoner, first released in 1982. Its main author Tomas Harenstam intended Dragonbane to facilitate fast and furious play, with less prep time than other d20 based ttrpg systems. Players embody characters whose professions give them specialized skills and weapons, to roll four, six, eight, ten, twelve, or twenty sided dice to fight against enemies such as harpies, minotaurs, giants, manticores, griffins, wights, trolls, and of course, dragons.

 

Attributes. Your character has six attributes: strength, constitution, agility, intelligence, willpower, and charisma. The character’s ability to do everything from wield their weapon, to sneak undetected, to barter with a shop keeper, to how many hit points they have, is derived from their numbers in these core attributes. You’ll determine those attribute numbers by rolling dice during character creation, and I’ve gone through an example of character creation at the end of this how to play guide to show you how attribute points are rolled. But basically, the higher the number, the better your character is at that thing. Here’s an example of the attribute number ranges. A five in the strength attribute would mean you’re not great at lifting or carrying things. Your inventory would be scant, and you’d get over encumbered easily. A ten is pretty average for an attribute. A sixteen in the strength attribute means you’re really strong, and are way better than a regular person at brawling and axes.

 

Skills. Every Dragonbane character has a number in thirty skills. Some example skills are the agility attribute based acrobatics skill, the charisma attribute based persuasion skill, the intelligence attribute based languages skill, and the strength based brawling skill. To see if you succeed when doing one of your skills, roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20. If the dice result is the same as or lower than your skill level, you succeed at what you were trying to do. If the dice shows a number higher than your skill number, then you failed.

 

Here is an example skill roll. You want to spot something hidden. Your spot hidden skill is a 14. You roll a d20. If the dice is a 14, 13, 12, 11, etc, down to 2, you see the hidden thing, yay. If your dice is a 15, 16, 17, 18, or 19, you don’t see the hidden thing. The higher your skill number, the more likely you are to succeed. If you fail, that might impact the story. Not only do you not see the hidden thing, which could allow an enemy to deal extra ambush damage to you, but also it might cost you more time, risk, or gold to achieve your goals. Failure never stops the story completely, but it is expensive to some of your consumables.

 

Pushing. Failing a skill roll doesn’t have to be the end. You could choose to push, which means gaining a condition in exchange for rerolling the dice. To push, first explain how the condition you’re choosing to gain results from the action you’re performing. You can’t choose a condition you already have. And then roll your dice again. Whether or not your new roll succeeds, you have gained that condition. A small note, if the first dice was a twenty, a demon roll, it can’t be pushed.

 

Conditions. There are six conditions, one for each attribute. The conditions are: exhausted for strength, sickly for constitution, dazed for agility, angry for intelligence, scared for willpower, and disheartened for charisma. For as long as you have the condition for that attribute, roll it with bane, meaning roll two dice and keeping the higher of the two numbers, whichever is worse. You can recover from conditions by resting.

 

Here is an example of pushing to gain a condition. You went fishing as part of a diplomatic delegation with a prince. The fishing roll was an 11, and you have a 10 in fishing, it’s a failure of a fishing trip. The prince is getting pretty frustrated because you and him haven’t caught anything and it has been hours. You’ve been out since the crack of dawn, and it’s getting hot, a trickle of sweat runs down your skin, and the flying bugs are swarming, and it’s really unpleasant here on the water with no shade. If you two could just catch one thing, you could go back in to shore and the fishing trip would have been a diplomatic success. The happy prince would be more likely to continue the marriage negotiations with you, lots of good stuff, all hinging on this one rod and reel. So you decide it’s worth it to push. You name a condition, sickly. You explain how this condition results from the action you’re trying to do. The action is that you are going to bait the hook not only with those fancy designer reusable lures, but you’re going to actually bait the hook with a live bait. It’s gross and you feel a bit sickly, but the live bait gives you another chance. You roll again. A nine! Success! You and the prince finally catch something, turning the fishing trip into a good day. The giant pike you pull on board is an excellent platter on the royal dinner table tonight, facilitating smooth communication between the political parties. However, if someone sneaks poison into your portion during the dinner tonight and you have to roll a constitution attribute check to see if the poison hurts you or not, the sickly condition bane means that you would have to roll two dice and keep the worse, higher number.

 

Rolling a dragon. When you roll a 1 on the d20 dice, that’s called rolling a dragon. It’s good. You want that to happen. In combat, rolling a dragon is a critical hit. You can choose from one of three combat effects for rolling a dragon: doubling the number of dice rolled for your weapon’s damage dice, or immediately performing a second attack, or if you’re doing piercing type damage you could choose to ignore armor on this attack. Outside of combat, rolling a dragon is also great. It can be interpreted a number of ways by your game master. One example is that if you were making a perfomance check, you impress not only the target but also everyone around you. A crowd gathers because of how cool you are. A second example is that if you were doing a seamanship skill check to navigate the ocean, not only do you succeed and the reach the port successfully, you also shaved off twenty percent of your travel time, arriving early. An action can be performed faster than usual when you roll a dragon.

 

Rolling a demon. When you roll a 20 on the d20 dice, that’s called rolling a demon. A demon roll can’t be pushed. Outside of combat, like on a skill roll, rolling a demon means the roll not only fails, it also has an additional negative effect such as you damage yourself or someone else or an item, or you make a fool of yourself in front of everyone, or you make a lot of noise. In melee combat, rolling a demon means you miss your target, you cannot push the roll, and you roll a d6 to see which of the negative effects on page 46 happen. The d6 table is: one drop your weapon. Picking up a dropped weapon costs an action. Two the enemy gets a free attack that can’t be parried or dodged. Three your weapon gets stuck and requires a strength roll that takes an action to pull the sword from the stone. Four you accidentally threw your weapon, and have to go move to it and then spend an action to pick it up. Five the weapon gets damaged and attacks with banes until it’s repaired. Six you hit yourself with your weapon. That was the melee combat effect of rolling a demon. The ranged combat effect of rolling a demon is on page 49 and is similar, with appropriate differences such as a ranged demon roll can make you run out of ammunition, and have to get more before you can use your ranged weapon again. For magic users, rolling a demon means you will roll a d20 on the magical mishaps table on page 60 to see if your character is now dazed, or suffering a strange magical effect such as vomiting frogs every time you lie, or that any gold or silver you touch now withers into dust. Rolling a demon when casting magic can result in summoning a literal demon.

 

Boons and banes. A boon means that you roll two dice and keep the lower one. That’s a good thing. A bane means that you roll two dice and keep the higher number. That’s a bad thing. For example if you have a boon on your myths and legends roll, instead of rolling one dice and trying to get equal to or lower than your 10 skill number, you get to roll two dice. If either dice is a 10 or a 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, etc, you succeeded and remember that myth or legend you were trying to recall.

 

Initiative means turn order. At the start of a round of combat, everyone draws from a deck of cards whose cards are numbered one to ten. Number 1 can go first, number two can go second, etc until number 10 goes last. A round of combat, where everyone gets a chance to perform an action, lasts for ten seconds. After the round is over, a new round begins and everyone draws an initiative card again. There are six rounds in one minute, so after one minute you will have drawn initiative six times. If a monster has multiple attacks, it might be drawing multiple initiative cards.

 

Surprise. If you and your allies surprise attack an enemy, you and your allies can pick and share any initiative card you choose. The targets you’re surprising draw from the remaining cards.

 

Waiting. You can choose to wait instead of acting on your initiative. To wait, swap initiative cards with another player character or NPC who has a later initiative card than you. You can’t swap initiative with anyone who has already taken their turn or who themselves had chosen to wait, earlier in the round.

 

How to attack. Everyone can move and can perform one action on their turn during combat. If you choose to attack, use the skill for the type of weapon you’re using.

 

Here is an example of a melee attack. Melee attacks must be made within two meters of the target. Brynri is in the grid space next to her target, a bear that leapt out of the forest and swiped its claws down her friend. She draws her knife as a free action. The knife skill on her character sheet is ten. To see if she hits with her knife attack, Brynri’s player rolls a twenty sided dice, also called a d20. If the dice result is the same as or lower than the skill level, she hits. So on a 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, etc, her knife hits. If the dice shows a number higher than her skill number, then she fails. So on an 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, etc, her knife misses. For this example, Brynri rolled a 7, and her knife hits. How much damage every weapon does is listed on page 74 of the rule book. Knives do a d8 of damage. Brynri’s player rolls an eight sided dice and gets a four, meaning her knife attack dealt four damage to the bear from the knife itself. She also gets a damage bonus equal to her weapon’s attribute. Knives have the attribute of agility, so if Brynri’s agility was really high, she would get to add a damage bonus onto that four damage. But her agility attribute is only 11, so her damage bonus is zero. To summarize that attack, Brynri rolled a 7 on her d20, which was below her 10 knife skill so her attack successfully hit the bear. Her damage bonus is zero and her knife roll was a 4 on the d8, so she dealt 4 piercing damage to the bear with that successful knife attack.

 

There are situations where you get special bonuses on your attack. For example if you roll a dragon, which is a 1 on a d20, then that is a critical hit. You can choose to either double how many dice you roll for damage, or immediately perform a second attack against another enemy, or ignore armor on the critical hit. Another special combat bonus happens when you attack a target who is laying prone on the ground. Prone targets are hit with a boon and the attack gets an extra d6, a six sided dice, of damage.

 

Here is an example of a ranged attack. Brynri’s friend Liam has a short bow. He wants to help out and attack the bear, too. He is at more than two meters and less than 30 meters away from the bear, so he doesn’t have to roll with a bane on his short bow attack. Liam can see the bear clearly, so he doesn’t have to roll with a bane for the target being partially obscured. His bow skill is 12. He rolls a d20 to see if his arrow hits. On a 13, 14, 15, 16, etc, the arrow would miss. On a 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, etc, the arrow would hit. He rolls a 5, so his attack hits. The weapon table on page 75 says that short bows deal a d10 of damage, so he rolls a ten sided dice and gets a five. His damage bonus is plus one, so five plus one is six piercing damage to the bear when his arrow hits it.

 

If he had rolled a one on the d20 dice to hit, that’s awesome. When you roll a dragon for ranged attacks, you can choose to either double how many damage dice you roll, or ignore armor on the attack. If he had rolled a twenty on the d20 dice to hit, that’s called rolling a demon, which is bad. There’s a mishap table on page 49 that Liam would have had to roll on to see what negative thing happened, such as dropping his weapon, running out of arrows, or hitting an ally with that arrow instead.

 

Zero hit points. What happens if, during a fight, your character reaches zero hit points? They fall to the ground prone, can’t move, and can’t do any actions. Each turn afterwards, they make a death roll. Death rolls can’t be pushed. Roll a d20 and compare the result to your constitution attribute. If the number is equal to or less than your constitution, then that is one success. For example, if your constitution is 14 and you roll a 14, that’s a success. A 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, etc is also a success. Rolling a dragon, a one, counts as two successes. If the number is greater than your constitution, then that is one failure. For example, with a constitution of 14, a 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 would all fail. Rolling a demon, a 20, counts as two failures. Note that if an enemy hits you and damages you when you’re making death saving rolls, that hit counts as a failed death roll. If you reach three failed death saving throws, then your character dies. Your Game Master will hopefully present you with some NPC options for NPCs you can play as for the rest of the session. If you reach three successful death saving throws, then your character rallies. You recover a six sided dice, also called a d6, of hit points, and stop making death rolls, and your failed death roll number resets. It’s possible that being at zero hit points left you with a severe injury. Roll against your constitution attribute. A d20 dice result higher than your constitution is a failure. A d20 dice result equal to or lower than your constitution is a success. If you succeed, you’re fine, you didn’t suffer a severe injury. If you fail, roll on the severe injury table on page 51, which contains a list of injuries, how they effect your character, and how long it takes to recover from them.

 

Rally. If your friend is down on the ground within ten meters of you and is making death rolls, you can help them with the rally action if they can hear you. A successful persuasion skill roll will let your friend move and act like normal, although they still have to make death saving throws. Sometimes, being able to move and get out of the way of an enemy to prevent themselves from getting hit can be really helpful. You can try to rally yourself, which works by rolling against your will attribute at bane, which means that you roll two dice and keep the higher, worse, number.

 

Healing. If your friend has zero hit points, you can roll the healing skill to help them. A successful healing roll gives the friend a d6 of hit points, and they stop making death rolls and roll to see if they got a severe injury. If you don’t own bandages, your healing skill roll is made at bane, which means that you roll two dice and keep the higher, worse, number.

 

Instant death. I mentioned earlier that enemies might still be attacking and hitting you while you’re making death saving throws. If they reduce you to your maximum hit point score in the negative direction, your character dies instantly. From a strategy point of view, that’s one reason why rallying and moving out of the way of continued attacks can be a good idea.

 

Sneak attacks and ambushes. There is a mechanic for sneaking up on enemies during a fight. Sneak attacks are between one individual player character and one individual enemy. First, make a roll using your sneaking skill. When you are within melee combat distance, which is two meters for most enemies, roll with bane, meaning you roll two dice and keep the higher, worse, number. Further than melee distance, roll normally. If the result was higher than your sneaking skill, then you weren’t stealthy enough and the enemy saw you coming. Draw initiative, and start combat. If the result on the twenty sided dice is equal to or lower than your sneaking skill, you succeeded, and your attack has the key word of being a surprising attack. Pick any initiative card you want between one and ten. Gain a boon on the attack, which means rolling two d20s to hit and keeping the lower, better result. If you are using a subtle weapon during your surprising attack, roll one extra dice, for example two d8 instead of one d8, for damage.

 

Ambush. An ambush is a sneak attack that can be made against more than one enemy. It works when you hide and wait for the enemies to come close to you. Each enemy makes an awareness skill roll to see if they spot the ambush or not. Every enemy that fails gets the bottom initiative card, starting at ten and counting up.

 

Melee and ranged attacking are two of many actions you can choose to spend your action on during your turn. The other action options are: Dashing, parrying, dodging, picking up an item, equiping armor, unequiping armor, first aid, rallying, breaking down a door, picking a lock, using an item, activating an ability, casting a spell, helping an ally, and a one round rest.

 

Dashing. Spending your action dashing lets you move twice your movement rate in one round. For example if your movement is normally eight meters, if you dash then you can get sixteen meters in one turn. Dashing takes your action, so you can’t attack and dash.

 

Parrying. You can use your action to parry on an enemy’s turn during a round. If you parry, then you can’t also attack on your turn because you used your action to parry. Parrying a ranged attack requires a shield. You can’t parry if you’re prone on the ground. Monster attacks can’t be parried. To parry, what happens is first you were hit by an attack while you were holding a weapon or a shield. Declare that you are going to parry before the attacker says how much damage they’re doing to you. Roll a d20 and see how it compares to your skill level with your weapon. If you were holding a shield, roll against your strength based melee skill, because there is no shield skill. If your result is equal to or less than your weapon skill, then your parry works. If your result is greater than your weapon skill, then your parry missed. If you succeed, then you can move both yourself and the enemy two meters without counting towards anyone’s movement for the round or triggering any free attacks. Instead of taking damage from the enemy’s attack, on a successful parry, you take no damage and the weapon or shield takes the damage for you, reducing its durability. If the weapon or shield gets reduced to zero durability, then it can’t be used again until it is repaired with a successful crafting skill roll.

 

Dodging. You can use your action to dodge on an enemy’s turn during a round. If you dodge, then you can’t also attack on your turn because you used your action to dodge. You can dodge while laying prone on the ground. You can also dodge monsters. To dodge an incoming attack, first declare that you’re dodging before the enemy says how much damage they’re doing to you. Roll your evade skill. If your result is greater than your evade skill, then your dodge missed, and you still get hit by the attack. If your result is equal to or less than your evade skill, then your dodge works. You evaded the attack and take no damage. You can move up to two meters in any direction without triggering a free attack from an enemy. The attempt to dodge consumes your turn, and you can’t attack.

 

Picking up an item. If you want to pick up an item or weapon from the ground, that takes your action. You can’t attack that turn.

 

Equipping and unequipping armor. If you want to equip or unequip armor or a helmet during combat, it’s going to take your entire action for that turn. It might be worthwhile in some situations, though, because armor restricts your movement.

 

First aid. If you have a friend who is at zero hit points, you can roll for the healing skill on your turn as your action. This might result in saving your ally’s life. But it will take your entire action for that turn.

 

Rallying. You can use your persuasion skill to rally your friend who has zero hit points to be able to move and take actions like normal. They still will make death rolls every turn, but being able to rally and then move out of the way of future enemy attacks can sometimes be very useful because every attack they receive while at zero hit points counts as a failed death roll.

 

Breaking down a door. Doors have hit points in Dragonbane. Attacking one to break it down is going to take your full action for the turn.

 

Picking a lock. You can roll your sleight of hand skill to try to pick a lock. Owning lock picks means you don’t have to roll with bane, which is when you roll two d20s and keep the higher, worse number. If your result is equal to or less than your sleight of hand skill, then you pick the lock If your result is greater than your sleight of hand skill, then you fail to pick the lock. Either way, trying to pick the lock takes your whole action for that turn.

 

Using an item. If you want to drink a potion or use some other item that’s within two meters of you, that takes your entire action for the turn.

 

Activating an ability. You can use an innate or heroic ability as your action for a turn. If you do, you can’t also attack that turn because activating the ability took your action.

 

Casting a spell. Most spells are considered actions. There are some spells that take less than one action, and some spells that take more than one action, and those are labeled on the individual spell. You have one action per turn, so if you cast a one action spell, which is most of them, you can’t also attack with a weapon on your turn.

 

Helping an ally. You can spend your action to give an ally a boon on their roll in the same round. A boon means they roll two d20s and keep the lower, better, result.

 

Reactions. A few of the action options listed above, such as parrying an incoming attack and dodging an incoming attack and some spells, are reactions. Reactions happen on the enemy’s turn but use your action for the round. If you’ve already gone in the round, then you can’t use a reaction such as parrying or dodging. If you’ve parried or dodged, then you can’t do any other action when it comes to be your turn.

 

Free actions. Dropping to the ground and shouting a few words are free, and do not cost your action for the turn. You can only do one free action and it has to happen in turn order, so if when it gets to be your turn, you shout a few words, then you can’t also drop to the ground. Drawing your weapon is a free action.

 

Armor. Wearing armor lets you take less damage from physical attacks. Subtract the armor rating from the incoming damage. For example, if you were going to take 3 damage, but your armor has a rating of 1, you would only take 3 minus 1 is 2 damage. Each armor has a note for how much it limits your movement. They might also have a note about the types of damage they are better at protecting against. There are three physical damage types in Dragonbane: bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing.

 

Weapon durability. Each weapon on the weapons table has its own durability score. If your armor can completely negate the incoming damage down to zero, then the attacking weapon takes the damage instead. For example if you had an armor rating of 3 and the incoming damage was negated down to zero, the sword that swung at you would take the 3 damage to its durability. If the sword’s durability drops to zero, the sword breaks. A broken weapon can be repaired with a successful crafting roll. Roll a d20 dice. If the result equals or is less than your crafting skill, you repair the weapon. If the result is higher than your crafting skill, you failed to repair the weapon.

 

For example, if the combat earlier had been against an enemy with armor instead of a bear, it would have gone like this. Let’s say that they were attacking a demon with an armor score of 4. Attacking this demon enemy would be very dangerous for a person wielding a knife. Brynri’s 4 damage that she dealt would be completely canceled out by the demon’s armor score of 4. Her knife would take the 4 damage instead, reducing its durability number from 9 to 5. If the knife’s durability drops to zero, then the knife would break. A broken weapon can be repaired with a successful crafting roll.

 

Movement. Everyone can move and can perform one action on their turn during combat. Distances in Dragonbane are measured in meters. The movement score on your character sheet is how many meters the character can move in a round of combat. Six things can affect movement, and those are: dashing, crouching, leaping, doors, enemies, and free attacks. If you want to move twice as far as you normally can, say that you’re using your action this round to dash. If you want to drop to a crouch on the ground or get up, you can make those movements for free, but only on your turn in the initiative. If you want to leap across a horizontal distance, make an acrobatics skill roll. If you’re successful, then you can leap up to half of your movement rate. If the distance is a quarter of your movement number, you don’t have to roll acrobatics to succeed. Doors. Opening an unlocked door and going through it costs half your movement. Enemies. If you want to walk past an enemy, they have to be either at zero HP or on the ground, or else they stop your movement by blocking your way. Free attacks. If you start within or travel through the area within two meters of an enemy and try to make a movement that would take you away from that enemy, roll for your evade skill. Evading doesn’t take your action, but if it fails, the enemy gets a free melee attack against you that can’t be parried or dodged. If you end your movement purposefully within two meters of the enemy, they don’t get a free attack. If your movement was involuntary, such as being thrown past them in the air or sliding down a slope, involuntary movements don’t trigger enemy free attacks.

 

Terrain. If you are moving through a cramped cave with a low ceiling, through rough terrain, or through a dimly lit area, these environments affect your movement. Cramped spaces with low ceilings make it difficult to swing melee weapons such as swords. All melee and subtle weapons except for piercing weapons get a bane on all rolls, which means that you roll two dice and keep the higher, worse, number. Rough terrain such as swamp water up to your knees or thick forest underbrush means when you try to move, you have to roll an acrobatics check. If you fail, you stop moving and fall prone. Dimply lit environments cause a bane to all attacks, which means that you roll two dice and keep the higher, worse, number.

 

Encumbrance. Except for your weapon, items that are larger than can be concealed in a closed fist count towards your inventory. Your inventory size before encumbrance is half your strength rounded up. If you have more items than that in your inventory, then you are over encumbered and would have to make a strength roll every time you try to move. Fail the strength roll, and you can choose to either stop moving or drop items until you’re down to half your strength rounded up number of inventory items. All people carrying someone else are automatically over encumbered.

 

Resting. Resting is how you recover hit points and willpower points. The shortest rest is a round rest, when you take a turn off in combat to get your breath back, understand the situation, and strengthen your resolve. A one round rest takes your full action for that turn in combat. Recover a d6 of willpower points, but don’t recover any hit points. That’s a round rest. How about a stretch rest? When you see the rule book refer to a stretch rest, a stretch means fifteen minutes. You take fifteen minutes off to recover a d6 of willpower points and from one condition. You also either recover one d6 of hit points on your own, or two d6 if someone succeeds on a healing roll to heal you. The healer can’t rest if they’re healing you, and they can only heal one person per stretch rest. You can round rest and stretch rest once each per six hour shift. Those are round rests and stretch rests. What are shift rests? When you see the rule book refer to a shift rest, that means six hours. When you are in a safe location resting for six full hours, you recover all your hit points and willpower points and recover from all conditions.

 

Magic. If you are roleplaying as a mage in Dragonbane, then you can add a school of magic as a skill to your character sheet. The three schools of magic in the core rule book are animism, elementalism, and mentalism. Your number is derived from your intelligence attribute. The base chance derived from your intelligence on page 25 is also the maximum number of spells you can prepare during a shift rest from the list of spells you’ve learned and written in your grimoire. Magic tricks don’t count towards your prepared spell number. Learning a new spell and recording it in your grimoire takes one shift, which is six hours long. You can cast a spell from your grimoire that you haven’t prepared, but it takes twice as long. If you lose your grimoire, you lose all your spells. Mages aren’t compatible with metal. If you’re wearing metal armor or holding a metal weapon, your spells all fail to be cast. You can carry small metal items in your inventory and still cast spells. If you roll a 20, a demon roll, when casting magic, roll on the magical mishap table.

 

To cast a spell, spend willpower points based on the spell’s power level, and roll for your skill level in that school of magic. The power level of the spell is one half the number of willpower points it takes to cast the spell. For example a power level one spell takes two willpower points to cast. If a spell doesn’t say its power level, it costs two willpower to cast. If you’re out of willpower points, you don’t die like you could if you run out of hit points, but you can’t cast any more spells without draining your own life force. To drain your life force, roll a dice of your choice, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, etc. The number you roll is how many willpower points you gain and have to immediately spend or else lose, and is also the number of damage you take to your hit points after the spell is cast. Casting a spell takes your full action during your turn, or on an enemy’s turn if it’s a reaction. All the spells listed in the general magic section can by learned by any mage.

 

Here is an example of casting a spell from the school of animism. You want to cast lightning bolt on your turn in combat. The spell’s text says it takes an action. First, spend twice as many willpower points as the spell’s rank. Lightning bolt’s rank is two, so you spend four willpower points. Then, fulfill any spell requirements, which for lightning bolt is making a gesture. The spell’s text says its range is up to 40 meters, so you gesture at an enemy twenty meters away. Lastly, roll a d20 dice against your skill in the magic school of animism. Your skill number, which is based on your intelligence attribute, is 12. You roll an 11, so your spell succeeds. You call down a bolt of lightning and the spell’s text says the enemy suffers two d8 damage. You roll two eight sided dice and get nine total, so the enemy takes nine damage from your lightning bolt. There’s more text in the lightning bolt spell for additional enemies that get hit, if there were additional enemies present.

 

Here is an example of casting a spell from the school of mentalism. You want to read someone’s thoughts. The spell’s text says it takes an action. First, spend twice as many willpower points as the spell’s rank. Telepathy’s rank is 2, so you spend 4 willpower points. Then, fulfill any spell requirements, which for telepathy is saying words and making a gesture. The spell’s text says its range is up to 10 meters, so you point at a person 9 meters away, and mutter words at them. Lastly, roll a d20 dice against your skill in the magic school of mentalism. Your skill number, which is based on your intelligence attribute, is 10. If you were to roll an 11, 12, 13, 14, etc, your spell would fail. You roll a 10, the same number as your school so your spell succeeds. You can hear the surface thoughts of your target. Telepathy lasts as long as you concentrate.

 

Here is an example of casting a spell from the school of elementalism. You want to summon an undine. The spell’s text says it takes a stretch, which is fifteen minutes. First, spend twice as many willpower points as the spell’s rank. Undine’s rank is three, so you spend six willpower points. Then, fulfill any spell requirements, which for undine is having some water available, saying words, and making a gesture. The spell’s text says its range is up to 4 meters, so you pour some water on the pond in front of you. Lastly, roll a d20 dice against your skill in the magic school of elementalism. Your skill number, which is based on your intelligence attribute, is 14. If you were to roll a 15, 16, 17, 18, etc, your spell would fail. You roll a 2, so your spell succeeds. You summon the undine. The spell’s text says that it stays around for a stretch, which is fifteen minutes. The undine has the movement, HP, weapons, and resistances listed in the spell text. While here, it looks like a tidal wave whose crest is shaped like a watery woman. The undine is a monster during combat, see page 84 for general monster combat rules, and acts independently on its own initiative, staying in sight of the mage who summoned it and following their commands as a free action. You can make free actions to tell your undine what to do on your turn in the initiative.

 

Let’s roll an example character, Brynri Flintkind, a non player character who appeared in a few adventures. Creating a character in Dragonbane means picking something for thirteen categories. These categories are: name, age, appearance, kin, innate ability, profession, attributes, trained skills, heroic ability, weakness, gear, memento, and calculate your derived ratings.

 

Brynri’s name is Brynri and she’s a two hundred and ninety seven year old mountain dwarf. Her appearance is that she’s four feet five inches tall, has graying golden hair, and weathered tan skin. As a dwarf, she’s got an analogous kin in Dragonbane, but for people in my game who will be adapting a variety of fantasy creatures to this setting, pick the kin that has the innate ability that best suits your character. In Dragonbane, dwarves come with the innate ability that they are unforgiving. Unforgiving means that when dwarves attack an enemy who has dealt at least one damage to them in the past, they get a boon, which means they roll two dice and keep the lower, better number.

 

You will also be picking a profession when you create your character. For Brynri, she’s a retired adventurer who now runs the antiques shop called Mountain Matron's Relics. That matches with profession number eight, merchant. This profession determines your character’s key attribute, skills, heroic ability, and gear. Merchants have the key attribute of charisma. Merchants also have the trained profession skill list of awareness, bartering, bluffing, evade, knives, persuasion, slight of hand, and spot hidden. Keep those in mind for later; six of your trained skills have to come from your profession’s list. And the gear of a dagger, sleeping pelt, torch, flint, tinder, hemp rope, donkey, d6 food rations so rolling that now that’s three, and d12 silver so rolling that now that’s five silver. I add those on the character sheet.

 

Let’s determine Brynri’s attributes. We are going to roll four six sided dice, also called d6. We will roll four d6 and remove the lowest dice, leaving the three highest dice. We’re going to do this six times, and that will determine our six attribute scores. You must assign your attributes in the order you roll them, and then at the end you can swap any two. For Brynri, that’s 12 strength, 14 constitution, 13 agility, 9 intelligence, 17 willpower, and 16 charisma. Note that if any of the rolled results are higher than 18, their maximum starting number is just 18. We can swap two scores if we want. Those actually look pretty good so I’m going to decline the swap, which was phrased as a “you may” thing. She does get some attribute modifiers because of her age. Her strength, agility, and constitution are reduced by two, and her intelligence and willpower are increased by one. So her actual numbers are 10 strength, 12 constitution, 11 agility, 10 intelligence, 18 willpower, 16 charisma. Those are the numbers I write on the character sheet. I can also write down her movement, which is calculated by adding an agility modifier to her racial movement number. Based on how she is a dwarf with an agility of 11, page 25 shows that Brynri has a movement speed of 8. Weapon and agility damage bonus. On page 25 we see that because her strength is 10, her strength based weapon damage bonus is zero, and because her agility is 11, her agility based weapon damage bonus is also zero. Because Brynri’s hit points are equal to her constitution, that means her HP is 12. Because Brynri’s willpower points are equal to her willpower, her WP is 18.

 

There is a table on page 25 that tells you what your base chance is for a skill based on the attribute related to it. The attribute is abbreviated in parentheses after the skill. For example acrobatics parentheses a-g-l means that the agility attribute determines your base chance for your skill. Let’s go through Brynri’s attributes one by one to determine her base skill chance. Her strength is 10, so her skill at crafting, axes, brawling, hammers, spears, and swords is a base chance of 5. The next attribute, constitution, doesn’t determine any skill base chances. Her next attribute, agility, is an 11, so her base chance is 5 for the skills acrobatics, evade, hunting and fishing, riding, sleight of hand, sneaking, swimming, bows, crossbows, knives, slings, and staves. Her next attribute, intelligence, is 10, so that means her awareness, beast lore, bushcraft, healing, languages, myths and legends, seamanship, and spot hidden all have a base chance of 5. The next stat, willpower, doesn’t determine the base chance of any skills. Her last stat, charisma, is a sixteen, so Brynri’s base chance is 7 for the skills bartering, bluffing, performance, and persuasion.

 

Trained skills. Training a skill doubles its base chance. Six of your trained skills have to come from your profession’s list of trained skills. Page 24 has a table of age and number of trained skills. For old people like Brynri, she has six profession trained skills and six we are free to choose. From the merchant’s trained skills list, I will pick these six: awareness, bartering, bluffing, evade, persuasion, and spot hidden. On the character sheet, there’s an empty diamond next to the skill that you can fill in to show it’s a trained skill, and you can double the base chance number that was there. We have six left. I’ll reserve one for the weapon we end up going with. Or actually, based on her starting gear of a dagger, that should be knives. I mark the diamond next to the skill and double knives’ base chance. For the other five, let’s go with knowledge type skills that older people might know more about than younger people. Beast lore, bushcraft, hunting and fishing, languages, and myths and legends. I double their numbers and mark the diamond next to those skills.

 

Merchants have the heroic ability of treasure hunter. The profession page doesn’t expand on what that means, so, using control f to find the words treasure hunter later in the rule book, it says that treasure hunter has a requirement of having a bartering skill of at least 12, which Brynri does. Hers is 14. Treasure hunter says it takes 3 willpower points. At a crossroads, activate treasure hunter to learn the direction of greatest treasures.

 

Weakness. There’s a list of weaknesses to pick from on page twenty six. For Brynri, the person who created her character said that her flaw is that she has a hard time relying on others too much. Quote, “If I want it done right, I have to do it.” We can use that as her weakness, or we can use number twenty from the list, haughty.

 

Memento. There are a list of mementos your character can start with on page 27. If you don’t already have a memento, pick one or roll one from that list. Brynri’s carrying number 17, a bone whistle.

 

Encumbrance. Your inventory size without encumbrance is half your strength rounded up. For Brynri, that’s five items. Hmm, but she’s currently carrying seven. That weapon, the dagger, doesn’t count towards encumbrance, but that’s still six. Good thing she has that donkey, which can carry ten items. Without that donkey, she would be over encumbered and would have to make a strength roll every time she tried to move. Fail the strength roll, and you can choose to either stop moving or drop items until you’re down to your inventory size number, which is half your strength rounded up. All people carrying someone else are automatically over encumbered.

 

Armor. Brynri didn’t get any starting armor. As a starting character with less than a gold to her name, she doesn’t have enough money to afford to buy any of the armor listed on page 73. So I guess that’s that. No starting armor for Brynri.

 

Brynri does have a dagger that she started with. It’s the last thing on the character sheet we haven’t filled in. The dagger’s stats are on page 74. I write the dagger stats on the character sheet. It’s a one handed weapon grip, whose range is determined by strength, that deals an eight sided dice or d8 of damage, has a durability of 9, a value of 1 gold, a supply of common, and has the features of subtle, piercing, slashing, and can be thrown. Subtle weapons grant a boon when performing sneak attacks. Piercing and slashing damage are damage types, which matters for some armor’s ability to reduce incoming damage types. And lastly the dagger can be thrown as far as Brynri’s strength, which is 10, and means she can throw it 10 meters.

 

For players in my upcoming Dragonbane game, when you build your character, please follow these starting character rules. Please pick your choice of any armor, page 73, and any clothes, page 75 of the rule book. We will represent how we’re higher level than starting characters by increasing our heroic abilities and gear. Please pick two extra heroic abilities, for three heroic abilities total. You will need to meet their requirements. For gear, please pick any three things of your choice from the gear section, pages 72 to 81. We will also make advancement rolls, which are explained on page 29 and which increase your skill number to make you more successful when rolling dice to do a skill check. I estimate that at our power level in the year, you should make 25 advancement rolls on the skills of your choice. A skill can advance to a maximum of 18.

 

Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Dragonbane in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of Dragonbane in action. We encourage you to find the Dragonbane rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.