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Heroes of Adventure

Index of Heroes of Adventure releases and community forum · By Nameless Designer

Feedback Request

A topic by Nameless Designer created Jul 23, 2022 Views: 595 Replies: 29
Viewing posts 1 to 17
Developer (1 edit)

If anyone has any general feedback on the game (typos, edits, balancing issues etc) then feel free to drop me a note here, thanks.

For the base rogue skills, do you intend "Agility" instead of "Agile"? Having a skill and an ability so similarly named could be confusing.

Developer

Hey there. Yes, the Rogue skills on Page 34 of the Players Handbook should read 'agility'. I will mark this up for editing at the next revision.

Feedback noted on the similar agility & agile terms, I will have to dig out the thesauras and come up with another term (perhaps 'nimble').

Thanks for taking the time to post some feedback.

Nimble sounds like a good change to me.

Another thing - for human upbringing, #1, I'm guessing you meant to have them gain crafting, not agility.

Developer

Thanks, can't believe I didn't spot that one. That's the value of someone else checking something you've been staring at for days/weeks/months! Thanks again.

(1 edit)

Love HoA - such a well-detailed yet easy-to-pick-up game.
ERROR: throughout you use the term Patreon for Patron.

Would love to see it in hardcopy.

Developer

Hey stream-monk, thanks for the feedback. Yes, I’ve spotted this one and it will be corrected in the next release.

Appreciate the kind words.

I've been looking through the spell descriptions, and I noticed that several spells (Shielding, Wood Skin, Fortitude, Steel Skin, Psionic Blast, and Water Wall) mentioned an armour save skill, but no armour save skill is mentioned. Are these spells supposed to modify defense instead?

Developer

Hey Mr cbadger85, this was a hangover from when I toyed with a contested attack vs defence options. All marked for editing but will be going with the following:

  • (Rune Magic) Shielding 4 defence for encounter
  • (Earth Magic) Wood Skin 4 defence for encounter
  • (Form Magic) Steel Skin 3 Damage Resistance (deduct from damage sustained) for encounter
  • (Shadow Magic) Psionic Blast, no physical damage resistance applies here
  • (Water Magic) (Water Wall, changed to defence 8.

Good spots, thank you for the feedback.

This is an awesome game.  You should be charging for it, instead of giving it away for free.  I am the Solo RPG guy on YouTube.  I am thinking of doing a review if you would like.

Developer

Hey there, thanks for the kind words. No objections to you doing a review but I would suggest you might like to hold fire for a little while as I'm working on getting the playtest version of the rules to final release in the not too distant future.

ok,  will wait just a bit!  :)

(1 edit)

Although I will hold off on the review, I will make a quick youtube vid about the game.  Although nowhere does it say it is intended for solo play.  With the charts you put in there, and the demo in the thread with the guy solo playing the game, it obviously can be played solo .  I will help spread the word, so that hopefully will lead to more exposure for your awesome game.

Developer

Version 1 of the Heroes of Adventure core rulebooks have now been released if you are interested in checking out the final versions.

Thanks, downloading now!

Here is my Video.



Developer (1 edit)

Awesome, thanks so much for sharing the video and feedback. This was much appreciated.

Your welcome.

Minor typo in the Treasure Generator supplement - Table A: Treasure Type, the 2nd column says “Va;ue”.

Developer

Thanks for the catch!

(1 edit)

Hello Namless!

Good job on this RPG, the work you did is awesome and the fact you are sharing it for free is even more awesome|

I've been reading the Players Handbook, here's some types or edits I think could be done:

  • On page 10,  Weiland's stats show DEF:13, on page 11, second line on the right it says "Weiland's defence is 15, so its a hit". Seems to be a typo.
    • Since the Adventure example might be the very first intro to ttrpg for some players, I would put a bit more detail for the hit on Talia (English is not my first language, so feel free to adapt it as you wish ;-) ): "The Wyvern can make two attacks in a round, so the The referee makes a second attack against Talia. He rolls a d20 to attack (11) monster skill d4 (3) = 14. Since Talia's defence score is 10, that's a A hit which causes d4 (1) point of damage."
    • At then end of page 11, you write "Weiland strikes true with a long sweeping blow severing the neck of the creature, the head of the creature flies off and the body of the creature slumps to the ground, dead." That's three "creature" references in the same sentence, maybe it could be shortened to "Weiland strikes true with a long sweeping blow severing the neck of the creature, its the head of the creature flies off and its the body of the creature slumps to the ground, dead." Doing so will also give you space on the layout to insert the previous suggested details.
  • On page 21, on the left you refer to "Skills describes the hero's talent..." but looking at the character sheet just beside it, the "Skills" is in fact a subsection of a bigger group named "Talents". If we compare it to the Character Record Sheet on page 62, we can notice that the whole "Talents" section is renamed "Skills" and the "Skills" subsection is renamed "Physical". So I would update the text on p.22 to reflect that and also update the picture to match the Character Record Sheet.
  • On page 21 also, you refer to "Equipment; list weapons, armour..." but that section is named "Inventory" in the Character Record Sheet. So I would refer to "Inventory; list weapons, armour..." instead.

I'll continue my reading and let you know if I find something else!

Thanks!

Developer

Hey bf5man, thanks for the detailed proof-reading and feedback. I will take a look at each of these with a view to updating these old references/typos etc.

That is some excellent constructive feedback, much appreciated.

(3 edits)

Do you realize that each of the three PDFs has the official metadata title of 'Chapter 5 - Magic'?
If all three PDFs are open in a reader that uses the metadata title and not the filename, it is pretty impossible to know what tab to open to find anything ;)
Also, the Monsters Compendium is a whopping 100 mb for 64 pages. I managed to optimize my copy to about 10mb with little or no reduction in visual acuity.
I'll dip into editing and other feedback when I can get the time.

Developer

Hi stream-monk, I hadn't actually appreciated the metadata title was working off the same template name. I've updated this on current versions and played around with some .pdf compression software to get the file sizes reduced to some degree. Thanks for highlighting this, all feedback welcome.

Do you plan to do some type of printed version  in soft/hard back, after all the typos are fixed?

Developer (1 edit)

Hi there, there are no plans to print any versions (aside from the prizes offered as part of the jam at my own cost) as I’m not looking to get involved in sales/logistics etc. (this is a hobby project being released for free). However, I will likely update the pdfs based on feedback to a point when its not worth doing anymore (and the Players Handbook has been updated to v1.01 already). 

I would dearly love print copies ... guess I have no choice but to enter the Jam ;)

Developer (2 edits)

The more the merrier with the game jam! I have posted some instructions (link below) to a pdf print service where I get my personal copies printed as an option for people to get them printed at cost. Others have used lulu as another option.

Please note that this is a third party printing service I have used, I am in no way affiliated with them and not making any money off copies printed by them (just to be clear).

https://itch.io/t/2421172/printing-instructions-using-online-service

Hey, I wanted to congratulate you for releasing this game, the mechanics are solid and it seems pretty goo, love the simplified way you merged skills and abilities. However, after reading the player's handbook I have some doubts:

-Some traits skills, like command and will, seem pretty situational,  are there any monster abilities/situations that specifically call for this ability checks or is the Gm supposed to improvise it?

-Is there any restrictions on weapons/armor worn or is it completely free?  Doesn't that make weapons like the staff not great? 

-Is the stun property supposed to allow you to stun or automatically stun?

-Are maneuvers supposed to benefit from skills like Strength for tripping or are they not related to skills?

-Can you only level up a known skill or can you learn another? Can you just level 1 skill to max dice without level restrictions?

Thanks in advance for reading, I really love how this game is made and it is absolutely mi jam.

Developer

Hey Sawesawe, thanks for the questions (which also acts as a bit of feedback for me to see where things could be explained more clearly). 

Trait skills are my take on the equivalent of classic D&D attributes (Agility = Dexterity, Command = Charisma, Fortitude = Constitution,  Strength = Strength (obviously) although I have used Magic, Senses and Will aswell. Command is probably most used when interacting with NPCs or intelligent monsters or for recruiting followers.

The only restriction on weapons/armour is that if someone is wearing heavy armour (i.e. chain or plate) then athletics, agility (i.e. sneaking) and magic using checks are at disadvantage due to the bulk/weight of the armour. One of my design goals was to get rid of some of the classic limitations (i.e. a wizard can't wield a sword or use armour). In HoA a Mage could wear leather armour without penalty but if they wanted to wear heavy armour then they may be less effective at using magic. Essentially I am trying to give the players some choice and some benefits/constraints rather than saying "no you can't do that".  If you want to play Gandalf wielding a longsword then go ahead.

Good spot on the weapon feature stun. The intention was to stun something on a critical (human sized creatures or below) hit and this was written before I made a tweak to the combat manoeuvre rules (see below - when you can now perform a manoeuvre automatically on a critical). I need to think about this but tempted to just change all weapons with the 'stun' condition to the 'bash' condition (i.e. if attack misses by 1 you do half damage). This creates a nice choice over use of bladed vs. impact weapons.

Combat manoeuvres were changed later in development as my players didn't really engage with them at first. Currently you can try a combat manoeuvre or one will automatically take place on a critical hit. I would absolutely encourage use of other skills (like strength or agility or even athletics instead of melee attack) if the player makes a case for it.

Example: If Thrudd the Barbarian wants to grapple Lurko the Thief to stop him getting away. I would allow him to use melee skill or strength skill vs an opposed strength (to push him off) or agility (to dodge/avoid) the grapple.

When learning new skills you can choose to learn any new skill or level up an existing one. Potentially if you focussed all your skill increases in one or two skills you could reach the max d12 by levels 4-5 and it plateaus at this point and thats fine as I wanted a lower powered game where people can max out their skills. Hopefully adventures will throw a variety of challenges at players as opposed to just combat such as tense negotiations, traps or puzzles so people maxing our melee or ranged combat is not an issue (and the fact that a base roll of d20 vs a maxed our roll of d20 d12 means there's plenty of 'swing')

Hopefully, I've clarified your questions and this is all great feedback so thanks for taking the time to post. 

I hope you enjoy the game.