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 Post subject: The Sapper in Action
PostPosted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 6:15 am 
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Rather than keep being a naysayer, I'd like to explore the feasibility of the Sapper profession, using the published adventures as the test. I'm a self-confessed Sapperskeptic, but for this exercise I'll be boosting the profession and trying to spot any opportunities for the sapper to use their abilities, particularly if they can meet a challenge more effectively than any of the official profession. This is basically a fork from: http://forum.libraryofhiabuor.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=266

The plan is this: I'll name the scenario (starting with The Darkness Before Dawn and then, if I can stay sufficiently motivated, progressing through Sleeping Gods, The Elven Crystals and finally Prince of Darkness) and then work through the locations in the published scenario to identify how the Sapper might use their abilities. Factors under consideration will include:
    -How long the solution would take and if it would be practical given any time contraints in the adventure
    -What materials would be required and whether they could be reasonably expected to be available
    -What level of manpower would be required

I'll use Kharille's profession outline available here: http://forum.libraryofhiabuor.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=220 as a basis of what the sapper will have, and will assume the sapper to be the highest ranked version recommended for the scenario (Rank 1 for The Darkness Before Dawn, for instance). I'd be very happy for input or suggestions along the way!

Coming shortly: The Darkness Before Dawn.

Cheers,


-Kyle


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 Post subject: Re: The Sapper in Action
PostPosted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 7:35 am 
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Time constraints may be a problem, but not all players are that impatient...

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 Post subject: Re: The Sapper in Action
PostPosted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 8:12 am 
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Kyle woohoo!! Following this thread closely...:D


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 Post subject: Re: The Sapper in Action
PostPosted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 11:41 am 
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Uploading 0.50 version, current since last September and unreleased until now. Check that other thread. Comments welcome.

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 Post subject: Re: The Sapper in Action
PostPosted: Sun Mar 12, 2017 7:12 am 
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Sapper vs: The Darkness Before Dawn

Our rank 1 sapper has:

Stats:
Attack: 12
Defence: 6
Evasion: 3
Magical Defence: 3
Stealth: 13
Perception: 5
HP:10

Skills:
Literacy
Basic knowledge of geology, meteorology, physics, engineering, masonry, metallurgy, chemistry. Also:
• Dig ditch
• Raise/reinforce wall
• Hydraulics

Equipment: Not stated in Sapper guide. I'm assuming:
Lantern
Flint and tinder
Backpack
Weapons:
Dagger
Hatchet
Quarterstaff
Toolkit:
Folding shovel
Hammer
Measuring chain (3m) with plumb bob
Rope (10m)
Hemp sack
10 litre Leather bucket (folds for carrying)
15 Florins

Coming next: The challenges of the scenario!


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 Post subject: Re: The Sapper in Action
PostPosted: Sun Mar 12, 2017 8:10 am 
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Hm... theres a thought. I forgot about starting equipment. The usual I suppose. Wait for the next supplement.....

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 Post subject: Re: The Sapper in Action
PostPosted: Sun Mar 12, 2017 1:28 pm 
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I’ll be scoring the Sapper against the other canon professions as well as against my own Archer profession (hey, I'm writing this. I make the rules 8-) ) I’ll try to be fair but obviously this will be pretty subjective. That said, disagreements and suggestions are welcome!

Scoring system:
0: no special contribution to make. The character is scarcely better than a Hotblood.
1: A minor contribution to make. The character has useful, but hardly pivotal, abilities that help to solve this challenge
2: A major contribution to make: The character is the ideal choice to deal with this challenge

Challenge 1: Feral Dogs
The challenge here is to survive the battle with the dogs
This attack comes quickly and the PCs have no opportunity to flee or take up a defensive posture. The Sapper has no special skills that will help with this challenge.
Score: 0 (0/11)
Scores for other professions:
Knight: 2 (for fighting ability)
Barbarian: 2 (for fighting ability)
Sorcerer: 1 (for Dragonbreath, Image, Lesser Healing, Weaken)
Mystic: 1 (for Invigorate, Mirage, ESP, Premonition)
Assassin: 2 (for fighting ability)
Elementalist: 0
Warlock: 2 (for fighting ability, Heal Injury, Imperil, Silent Warrior)
Knave: 0
Hunter: 2 (for fighting ability, precise shot
Priest: 0
Archer: 1 (for fighting ability)
Average: 1.2

Challenge 2: Solly in the Stocks

The challenge here is to free Solly from his stocks
The Sapper doesn’t have a specific skill for this but his general knowledge and equipment can probably help in opening up the stocks
Score: 1 (1/11)
Scores for other professions:
Knight: 0
Barbarian: 0
Sorcerer: 0
Mystic: 0
Assassin: 1 (for ability to climb up to stocks)
Elementalist: 0
Warlock: 0
Knave: 0
Hunter: 0
Priest: 0
Archer: 0
Average: 0
Average: 0.1

Challenge 3: About Town
The challenge here is to speak to a townsperson, even though they have locked themselves in their homes.
The players may attempt to break into the homes of the scared townsfolk. The sapper doesn’t have a specific skill for this yet but perhaps his tools could make it easier.
Score: 1 (2/11)
Scores for other professions:
Knight: 1 (for social status)
Barbarian: 0
Sorcerer: 1 (for Portal spell)
Mystic: 0
Assassin: 0
Elementalist: 0
Warlock: 0
Knave: 1 (for social skills and influence)
Hunter: 0
Priest: 2 (for social influence)
Archer: 0
Average: 0.4

Challenge 4: The Manor House
The challenge here is getting to Le Cloche in order to defeat him.
The manor is well defended and the level-1 Sapper doesn’t have the equipment, manpower, or time to attempt a break-in of the manor house that, considering the enemy forces within, would have a better outcome than that of a regular character doing the same thing.
A Sapper might conceive of an out-of-the-box solution (such as digging a tunnel into the basement and launching a surprise attack, or setting fire to the house) but the party is so small and short of resources, and the Sapper so inexperienced that this would be doomed to failure.
Score: 0 (2/11)
Scores for other professions:
Knight: 1 (for social status and fighting ability)
Barbarian: 1 (for fighting ability)
Sorcerer: 1 (for portal spell and offensive magic, image)
Mystic: 1 (for Mirage spell)
Assassin: 1 (for climbing, fighting ability)
Elementalist: 0
Warlock: 1
Knave: 1 (for subterfuge)
Hunter: 0
Priest: 0
Archer: 1 (for ability to pick of enemies in through windows)
Average: 0.7

Challenge 5: Entering the Forest
The challenge here is sticking to the path.
The Sapper doesn’t yet have any chemistry, so presumably he doesn’t know how to improvise a torch that stays lit in the rain. Consequently his abilities won’t help here.
Score: 0 (2/11)
Scores for other professions:
Knight: 0
Barbarian: 0
Sorcerer: 2 (for moonglow)
Mystic: 0
Assassin: 0
Elementalist: 1 (for candle. Less useful than moonglow because nobody else can see it)
Warlock: 1 (for eyes of night. Less useful than moonglow because it only illuminates a small area)
Knave: 0
Hunter: 1 (assuming the GM allows Favoured Terrain skill to help follow the path)
Priest: 0
Archer: 0
Average: .5

Challenge 6: The First Ambush
The challenge here is to spot and avoid the ambush
The sapper doesn’t get any skills related to traps until rank 2, so he presumably won’t spot the boulder trap with any more skill than anybody else.
The sapper can probably speed up the process of clearing the underbrush preventing the players taking the long way around, but not fast enough to make a difference, so they must still climb. The Sapper doesn’t have any skill to make this easier.
Score: 0 (2/11)
Scores for other professions:
Knight: 0
Barbarian: 0
Sorcerer: 0
Mystic: 1 (for premonition and slightly higher perception)
Assassin: 1 (for high perception)
Elementalist: 0
Warlock: 0
Knave: 0
Hunter: 0
Priest: 0
Archer: 0
Average: 0.2

Challenge 7: The Cliff Top
The challenge here is defeating the 5 Thugs.
If the players manage to get the drop on the thugs, the fight will be routine. There’s nothing special the Sapper can contribute.
Scores for other professions:
Score: 0 (2/11)
Knight: 2 (for fighting ability)
Barbarian: 2 (for fighting ability)
Sorcerer: 1 (for offensive spells)
Mystic: 1 (for fighting ability, Mirage spell)
Assassin: 1 (for fighting ability)
Elementalist: 0
Warlock: 2 (for fighting ability and Silent Warrior)
Knave: 0
Hunter: 1 (for fighting ability)
Priest: 0
Archer: 1 (for fighting ability)
Average: 1

Challenge 8: The Hollow Oak
The challenge is to capture Erkiss
The Sapper has no particular skills to make this task easier.
Score: 0 (2/11)
Scores for other professions:
Knight: 0
Barbarian: 0
Sorcerer: 0
Mystic: 0
Assassin: 0
Elementalist: 0
Warlock: 0
Knave: 0
Hunter: 0
Priest: 0
Archer: 0
Average: 0

Challenge 9: Hellhounds Attack
The challenge is to defeat the Hellhounds
The Sapper has no particular skills to make it easier to defeat the Hellhounds. There is insufficient time or warning to construct defences and the Sapper has no offensive capabilities other than those of a regular combatant.
Score: 0 (2/11)
Scores for other professions:

Knight: 2 (for fighting ability)
Barbarian: 2 (for fighting ability)
Sorcerer: 1 (for offensive magic)
Mystic: 1 (for fighting ability, Mirage spell)
Assassin: 1 (for fighting ability, special abilities)
Elementalist: 0
Warlock: 2 (for fighting ability, silent warrior)
Knave: 0
Hunter: 1 (for fighting ability)
Priest: 0
Archer: 1 (for fighting ability)
Average: 1

Challenge 10: The Final Battle
The challenge is to defeat Fhionn and her slaves
The sub-challenges in this section, and how the Sapper would fare with them are as follows:
Fhionn’s Windwall: The Sapper has no special skills or knowledge to help deal with this spell
Fight Fhionn: The Sapper has no special skills or knowledge to help deal with Fhionn
Fight the Slaves: The Sapper has no special skills or knowledge to help deal with Fhionn’s Slaves
Enslavement: The Sapper has no special skills or knowledge to help deal with Fhionn’s enslavement spell
Tangleroots and Inflict Wound: The Sapper has no special skills or knowledge to help resist Fhionn’s spells. Possibly he will be quicker at escaping Tangleroots if he has his hand free.
Making Fhionn look at Strabo’s Sword: The Sapper has no special skills or knowledge to help draw Fhionn’s eye to the sword.
Score: 0 (2/11)
Scores for other professions:
Knight: 1 (for fighting ability)
Barbarian: 1 (for fighting ability)
Sorcerer: 2 (for Image, offensive magic, ability to resist Fhionn’s magic)
Mystic: 1 (for fighting ability, Mirage, See Enchantment, Premonition, resistance of magic)
Assassin: 1 (for fighting ability)
Elementalist: 1 (for ability to resist Fhionn’s magic)
Warlock: 2 (for fighting ability, Silent Warrior, resistance to Fhionn’s magic)
Knave: 0
Hunter: 1 (for fighting ability)
Priest: 0
Archer: 1 (for fighting ability)
Average: 1

Challenge 11: Traitor’s Stand
The challenge is to get Le Cloche out of the manor house or defeat him in it
This is probably the one section where the Sapper can be useful. Now that time is plentiful and the townsfolk can be employed as labourers, it should be possible to construct a tunnel into the manor house, or a battering ram to knock down the front door.
Score: 2 (4/11)
Scores for other professions:
Knight: 2 (for fighting ability, social influence)
Barbarian: 2 (for fighting ability)
Sorcerer: 1 (for Portal, Offensive Magic)
Mystic: 1 (for Mirage, fighting ability)
Assassin: 2 (for fighting ability, ability to sneak into manor house)
Elementalist: 0
Warlock: 2 (for fighting ability, offensive magic, Silent Warrior)
Knave: 2 (for fast talking and trickery against Le Cloche’s forces)
Hunter: 1
Priest: 1 (for social influence)
Archer: 1 (For fighting ability)
Average: 1.4

VERDICT
Average score: 0.45
Average score for other professions: 0.69
The sapper has a few minor opportunities to contribute his skills in The Darkness Before Dawn, but overall any given adventuring party will be better off with one of the regular adventuring professions taking his place in the lineup. He is on average half as useful as the other professions.

On the other hand, get a load of the Elementalist, Priest and Knave:
Attachment:
DBD_By Profession.png
DBD_By Profession.png [ 20.68 KiB | Viewed 6737 times ]


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 Post subject: Re: The Sapper in Action
PostPosted: Sun Mar 12, 2017 4:01 pm 
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Hm... I need to read up on the adventures. A really smart player might be able to come up with something, and the GM's description of the environment would play a big factor, something I can't get just glancing through this data....

More useful in higher levels and late game... environment and terrain are the key....

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 Post subject: Re: The Sapper in Action
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 7:36 am 
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Kharille wrote:
environment and terrain are the key....

...and time...

...and a party of other adventurers patient enough to enable the sapper to perform whatever slow task they need to perform...

...and we're also overlooking that other professions probably already have a lot of the sapper's adventuring-relevant knowledge. For example, knights are almost certainly going to have good knowledge of defensive fortifications and a tactical knowledge that would enable them to take advantage of the defensive potential of terrain. Let's also consider a barbarian's* wilderness skills to enable them to camouflage traps, construct outdoor fortifications, understand water, etc. Sorcerers probably already have an understanding of chemistry as part of their alchemical experiments and Assassins could bring a mastery of traps and small mechanical devices to the party. And that's without considering overlaps with the new professions, like Hunter (or any knowledge elementalists may have about their element - some of the sapper's skills are predicated on a knowledge of how fire, air, and water behave - but who better than those who can manipulate the very essence of those elements to bring that knowledge to an adventuring party?)

These aren't brought out in the rules, as this kind of play is something for which the Dragon Warriors mechanics and scenarios aren't particularly suited, but I'd argue that the existing professions could be extended to enable this style of play rather than than introduce a new profession that will just create conflict within the party (or, worse, limit their creativity - look at the whole Hunter/Forage controversy).

Earthdawn had a useful guide in its rules - if a player can justify knowledge their character might have by virtue of their profession, they can make a check using half of their rank. If we were to sculpt an equivalent rule for Dragon Warriors, then I don't really see a place for the Sapper as an adventuring professional (or any purely skill-based professional) - as any adventuring-related applications of a sapper's skills I would just see as part of a well-balanced party's existing repertoire.

I think Wodenkrait was _very_ generous ascribing points to the sapper by virtue of maybe having some knowledge or tools that could be useful - I know he's trying to reverse his bias towards sapperscepticism, but it was a little extreme... By Wodenkrait's reasoning, all professions could be useful. I'd rather have compared specific named skills/abilities of the sapper in each challenge (and named them...), just as specific spells were mentioned for the magickers. I do also take issue with the usefulness score of the magickers, though, because they can only be useful in a couple of challenges before their spells are exhausted so, whilst magickers have broad versatility, they have to be very conservative about where it is applied (i.e., typically when all other non-magical options have been exhausted). Magickers should probably have a cap on the number of points they can score with spells and then have to rely on their native knowledges and abilities to score further points.

Anyway, that's probably enough sapper-bashing for one post. Regular visitors to this forum will know of my strong (and unpopular) views about the Dragon Warriors professions, so my beating on the sapper should not be construed as a criticism of that profession in particular, but more generally to the lack of versatility and distinctions between skills and talents between the professional abilities, for example.

* this assumes a definition of a barbarian as an outdoorsy guy who lives in wild/natural communities, rather than a definition of barbarian to mean any foreign warrior (and could therefore grant them pretty much any skill, depending on their background!)

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 Post subject: Re: The Sapper in Action
PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 7:56 am 
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Well, same way there may be bad chemistry between knights and assassins, I'm sure there may be bad chemistry between sappers and non sappers...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_mil ... ngineering

Just added another link in my research....

Indeed, military engineering was in many ways institutionally endemic in Roman military culture, as demonstrated by the fact that each Roman legionary had as part of his equipment a shovel, alongside his gladius (sword) and pila (spears).

That all important shovel. Rommel commented how it saves lives vs artillery. What better way to survive FIRESTORM spells?...


No wonder the Selentine were able to civilize these lands... Army of sappers (Gasp!)....

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