A 5th Edition supplement for building Strongholds and attracting Followers! And we're raising money to livestream my next campaign!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Dragon Minis Update and Reviewing Your Shipping Address!
over 5 years ago
– Thu, Apr 04, 2019 at 02:47:12 AM
Hi everyone, Anna here again! This is going to be a shorter update than my last one (I think?) but is going to cover the current state of dragon minis, the dragon resin-casting video, and the process of reviewing your shipping address prior to the “address lockdown” phase as the physical rewards get sorted and sent to their respective global warehouses.
REVIEW YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS IN BACKERKIT
As a reminder, we’re getting close to shipping this Kickstarter! I’m getting some additional information from BackerKit, our pledge manager, on how the “address lockdown” process works before I push any buttons — in the meantime you can help us make things go more smoothly by verifying that the address we have on-file for you is correct and updating it if it’s not!
2. Once you're in the pledge manager, scroll to the bottom of your order confirmation page and press the big "View Confirmation" button. On this page, you can edit your shipping info on the left side.
Here's a video that goes through the entire process:
Please reach out to us at “[email protected]” so we can be made aware of what you’re dealing with and do our best to lend a hand. We want to make sure you get your rewards and that they’re delivered to the right address! :)
Q: I put in my email address, but never received an email from BackerKit to access my pledge information, or it told me my email address doesn’t exist. How do I figure out what email address I used, or update it if I’m no longer using my old one tied to my S&S pledge?
A: There isn’t a way to update the email tied to your pledge in BackerKit yourself, but we’d be happy to do that for you. Please email us using our hello@ address above and provide the following information so we can get you sorted as quickly as possible: first/last name, old email address (if you can remember it), and preferred email address.
Q: I’ve moved countries, but I can’t update my country information in the pledge manager. How can I change it?
A: Changing countries may result in a change in shipping costs, so BackerKit doesn’t currently allow backers to change their shipping country on their own. Fortunately we can do that for you, so please email us and we’ll get it updated and let you know if there’s any additional shipping fees that are due. When you email us, please provide the following information: first/last name, old shipping address (if you remember it), and your new shipping address.
Q: I’m going to be moving during the months of June/July, and I a) don’t know what my new address is going to be, or b) don’t know exactly what date I’ll be moving and don’t want my rewards to end up at the wrong place. What do I do?
A: We already have a few folx in this situation, so you’re not alone! Please email us and we can work with you on a temporary solution until you’re settled into your new stronghold :D
DRAGONS
Dragons in Flight to Fulfillment Warehouses!
The dragon minis safely wrapped in their pallet nests...
Over 80,000 individual pieces of resin have been cast, and after being bagged, boxed, put in cartons, then wrapped on pallets all dragons are on their way to our fulfillment partner’s warehouses! They will soon be sent off to the UK, Australia, and Canada warehouses, where additional counting will occur to make sure they all made it safely after their journey.
Once all the books arrive at the international warehouses and shipping addresses have been locked down in May, they’ll be shipped out at the same time as the other physical rewards. The finish line is in view! :)
Casting a Resin Mini with Trenchworx
The dragon minis were all manufactured by Trenchworx in Utah. Their founder, Dave, visited the MCDM studio and he brought a BUNCH of equipment to take us through the process of casting a gemstone dragon. We also had our friend Jason, the 3D modeler of the dragons, come in and chat about some of the interesting things we learned about translating digital models to a physically manufactured miniature. We recorded it in our new “MCDM Garage” set, and you can check it out below!
That’s it for now; once we get word that the books have left the printers and are on their boats to the fulfillment warehouses we’ll let y’all know, and after that we’ll share an update about the final lockdown for shipping addresses and try to address some questions you might have about that!
The Mega-Update on the Books and Shipping Schedule!
over 5 years ago
– Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 02:56:01 AM
Hi everyone, Anna here to talk with you all about book stuff for the standard and Kickstarter-exclusive editions of Strongholds & Followers, as well as the latest physical rewards shipping schedule! I also have an important update about the Kickstarter-Exclusive Edition of Strongholds & Followers, so please make sure to read over that if you’re due to receive one.
Without further ado…
THE LATEST BOOK SCHEDULE
After hitting a few bumps, we’ve got a much more accurate timeline from our partners for when we can expect printing to wrap up, the books to get packed and loaded into boats, and when they’re supposed to arrive in our various warehouses around the world barring any unforeseen catastrophes (knock on wood with me, wouldja?).
SCHEDULE: SNAPSHOT
Happening Now! -- Printing and Binding
Start of/Early May -- Arrival at Australia Warehouse
Early/Mid May -- Arrival at US Warehouse
Mid May -- Arrival at Canada and UK Warehouses
By early/mid June, we expect that all physical rewards will have been shipped from the fulfillment warehouses to your shipping address on file in BackerKit, our campaign’s pledge manager. Hopefully earlier, even! :) We’ll be continuing to provide Kickstarter updates as things progress to keep you looped in.
YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS
This also means we’re getting very close to our shipping address lockdown via BackerKit! Before the end of March, BackerKit will be sending out an email to everyone, letting you know we need you to lock down your shipping address where we’ll be sending your physical rewards.
If you can’t remember what you put for your shipping address, want to double-check it, or need to update it, you don’t have to wait for that email -- you can do it now by following these steps:
2. Once you're in the pledge manager, scroll to the bottom of your order confirmation page and press the big "View Confirmation" button. On this page, you can edit your shipping info on the left side.
Here's a video that goes through the entire process:
REWARDS DELIVERY SCHEDULE: STEP-BY-STEP BREAKDOWN
The books are in the process of being printed now, and earlier this week we received actual sample pages of how they’re going to look -- and let me just take a moment here to tell you that they’re beautiful! The colors really pop on the page and we went through every sheet to check for accuracy or any weird misprints and couldn’t find a single one. Of course, things can happen when you’re printing over 30,000 books (which is over 8 MILLION pages!!), but we’re working with an experienced printer and are really confident that they’re going to be just as beautiful when they’re in your hands.
Printing is estimated to wrap up in early April, at which point the books will be sorted into groups, put in boxes, the boxes will be put on a pallet, and then the pallet will be wrapped to make sure the books stay dry and clean as they travel across the world to our fulfillment partner’s warehouses in Australia (where they’ll arrive the earliest at the beginning of May), the United States (set to arrive in early-mid May), Canada, and the UK (both estimated to arrive in mid-late May).
Once the books are at their respective warehouses, the fulfillment team will begin immediately going through the Backer/preorder manifests, pairing the books with the rest of the physical rewards, and triple-checking that everyone’s getting what they ordered. This process takes just over a week considering the large amount of backers we have.
After the packages are taped up and labelled, tracking numbers will be emailed to all US Backers (the fulfillment team has let me know that some international Backers will also have tracking, but not all), then they’ll be sent out for delivery through various couriers in that region.
KICKSTARTER-EXCLUSIVE EDITION UPDATE
I have some awesome photos to show off, but before I do that I have some bad news to share in regards to the gilded page edges for the Kickstarter-Exclusive edition. I’m deeply heartbroken about it, but we will not be able to do gilded edges for this book.
After delivering our final version of the PDF for printing to our partners, they reviewed the files and realized that we had a significant number of pages with artwork that went all the way to the edge of the page (known as “full-bleed”). The process of gilding page edges includes applying a very high heat to the page edges, and when that comes into contact with darker inks on multiple full-bleed pages in a row, there’s an extremely high chance of the book actually catching on fire due to the reaction between the heat and the inks. The silver lining is that they fortunately were able to catch this before printing/gilding had started, otherwise we could have lost a significant portion of inventory we’d have to reprint, and it would’ve added on at least a week or two to our schedule to purchase new materials and start over.
To all our Backers who were due to receive the Kickstarter-Exclusive Edition, I don’t think I can convey how sorry and disappointed I am in this turn of events. I had my heart set on creating a book with gilded edges, and I know you were looking forward to it just as much as I was. I’ve already chatted with Matt, and we think what we’ll have to do is update our layout for future books to make it more “gilding-friendly”; I’m also going to continue working with our printer to do some tests and find out how we can make this work the next time around.
BOOK PICTURES!
Okay, let’s look at some pictures! These are all bits and pieces we’ve received from our printer, so I’ll go through and provide brief captions on what’s being shown, any notes/adjustments we’ve made, etc.
(Since the initial proofs were already shown in the previous update, I’ve left those out; you can follow the link to check them out if you’d like!)
Let’s start from the inside and work our way out…
This stack of pages was our most recent delivery from our printer and contains all the actual printed pages of Strongholds & Followers! As you can see, the end pages (the bit that’s glued to the inside of the case and the first page you can actually flip) are black in color. I like dark-colored ends because it feels like a theatre curtain you’re getting to pull back before diving in.
Our title page! This particular piece is probably one of the most difficult in the book, as it went through a number of revisions until we finally hit the pose and composition that you see here.
One of our most colorful pieces, this picture really shows off how the printed colors are really vibrant and beautiful; we’re really happy with the results!
Here’s a pic of our warfare unit cards! We’re hoping that the white background on the cards make them a little more printer-friendly :)
This little bit of woven fabric is located at the top and bottom, and are referred to as “head” and “tail” bands. On the standard edition, they’ll be white like you see here, but on the Kickstarter-Exclusive edition…
The Kickstarter-Exclusive edition will feature these nice red head/tail bands, with a matching red ribbon bookmark!
Alright, now that we’re done with the inside, let’s take a peek at what the outside is made of.
This is the naked hardcover book; basically the “skeleton” of Strongholds & Followers before the wrap is applied to the case. The pages inside are blank, and we received this to verify that the dimensions, binding, and weight were what we expected before starting the next steps.
This is the wrap that will be around the case for the standard edition! The front features the Fighter’s Keep (it wasn’t our original plan that this be the cover, but Backers loved it so much that we decided to stick with it!), and the back depicts a portion of the Battle for Castle Rend.
The Kickstarter-Exclusive edition will come with a dust jacket to protect the case; in addition to the same scenes as the standard edition, it also has two end flaps that show off some of our other favorite pieces: Pinna in the Gravesford market, and the Monastery.
Here are a few images of what the Kickstarter-Exclusive edition looks like when it’s all together (please note that the pages in the pictures below are not final):
The front!
The back!
Inside the front cover!
Inside the back cover!
Finally, here’s what the wrap around the Kickstarter-Exclusive edition case looks like, with the gold foil lettering on the front and spine, and the debossed “MCDM” logo along the bottom front! (Please disregard the uneven page edges and lack of bookmark ribbon; I put in our loose-leaf pages since this is actually just an empty hardcover case.)
One thing to note about the Kickstarter-Exclusive case is that we’re going to have our printers remove the little “ripple” in the logos. We’re going to flatten that out so it looks uniform.
WHAT'S NEXT?
If it’s not the video showing us creating a dragon here at MCDM with Dave from Trenchworx, our next update will be about locking down your shipping address before the end of March. After that, most of our updates will be keeping tabs as the books and other goodies make their way to their home warehouses and when they start getting sent out to Backers/preorders.
FAQS:
Q: I haven’t received an email invite to the MCDM store to claim and download my Strongholds & Followers PDF. How do I get it?
A: You can either email us for assistance ([email protected]), or follow this link and create an account using the email tied to your BackerKit/Kickstarter: https://shop.mcdmproductions.com/account/register. If that’s successful, you should be able to click the banner at the top of the store and follow those instructions to claim your PDF for free! :)
Q: I need to update my shipping address and I’m a Backer/preordered through BackerKit; how do I do that?
Once you're in the pledge manager, scroll to the bottom of your order confirmation page and press the big "View Confirmation" button. On this page, you can edit your shipping info on the left side.
Here's a video that goes through the entire process:
Q: I preordered a physical copy of Strongholds & Followers on the MCDM store and I need to update my shipping address. How do I do that?
A: Unfortunately Shopify is pretty limited in what it’ll allow customers to do, but we’d be happy to help get you sorted! Please email us at “[email protected]” from the email address tied to your MCDM store account with your new shipping address and we’ll get you figured out.
Q: I have another question but your measly FAQ doesn’t cover it.
A: Don’t worry, we got you! Just shoot us an email at “[email protected]” to let us know what you need assistance with and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can! :)
The Proofs and the Stream!
almost 6 years ago
– Wed, Feb 06, 2019 at 01:33:31 AM
The proofs are here!
Yay! Ok so what you’re looking at is basically the same thing printed out many different times for many different reasons. One version of the cover might be for checking colors, another might be for checking spot-gloss. It’s pretty confusing when you first open the thing up and there was a little panicking on our end.
The actual copy of the book, for instance, was the wrong color and on the wrong paper. Well, “wrong.” We were thinking “Good Lord this is all wrong!!” And then we found out the pages we were looking at were literally just so we could check the layout and margins and fonts. Oh. Ok. Good to know. THESE pages are for colors and these OTHER pages are for the actual paper type and then there’s a few samples that are all of it in one. But obviously if you’re going to print out 256 pages just to check if the margins are right, you don’t need to do it on the most expensive paper and with the most expensive inks.
If there were any problems, we’d send these back along with our corrections and then we’d have to wait another week or two to get the revisions back, but happily we couldn’t find anything wrong. So we’re off to the presses!
That means the book can literally start being printed now, a process that is going to take weeks, and then when it’s done all the books have to be shipped to the warehouses, which takes even more weeks, so we’re still months out.
That’s frustrating for everyone, including us obviously, but this is a learning experience for us. This took longer than we expected and there are things we can do next time to make it take less time, but also just knowing where the hitches are, and what causes them, allows us to make a much more robust schedule for the next book. Like, accounting for Chinese holidays for instance. Not a problem if the book was 128 pages and came out in October! But I made the decision to add content to the book and that added time to everything, more writing, more art, more editing, and that pushed us out until American and Chinese holidays became an issue.
I stand by that decision, I think the book is the best book we could have made. But it means the hardcopy isn’t done! The minis are done, the shirts and stickers are done, now we just wait for the book.
You’ll get a video soon (next week?) showing the process of making the minis that I think everyone will get a kick out of. Dave from Trenchworx came down from Utah with some dragon eggs and we hatched a few dragons here. From concept art to 3D model to mixing the resin through to the finished product, we covered every step of the process.
Oh and we launched the stream!
Which of course begets a Campaign Diary!
I was pretty happy with the way the whole thing went. I was happy with the audio, the video, the overlay. We already sat down and made a list of everything we want to improve, short-term, long-term. I think there are definitely improvements to be made in the A/V department, I have opinions about all sorts of stuff including the amount of cross-talk at the table.
Of course, you put your live game on the net folks are going to be critical, but that doesn’t bother me. Just means folks are watching. I'm critical of lots of stuff I watch.
We’ve done just what we set out to do. We wanted to stream our next game...and we did it. We’ll keep doing it. The PDF is out there, the book is being printed, we’re planning the next book.
We’re not done, the KS isn’t over until folks have their books and minis and stickers, but that’s all in progress.
Next update will be...I dunno what, probably the Making Minis video. Then updates when the book is done printing, when it’s arrived at the warehouse, when the shipping starts.
Thanks to everyone reading this for your support and belief in us. I can’t wait to hold the final book in my hands.
The D&D Stream Launches Wednesday, January 30th at 7pm PST. Here's what you need to know...
almost 6 years ago
– Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 01:08:01 AM
The writing, art, design, and layout of Strongholds & Followers is done, the physical proofs are being shipped to us, the minis, shirts, and stickers are at or on their way, to the warehouse. But the book and minis were only half of the project!
The other half was paying for office space and cameras and lights and micromaphones for a 5E stream.
I hope everyone reading this can come by and hang out for the launch of our new stream, but I recognize that watching people play D&D live isn't for everyone. Each stream should (if time affords it) also generate a Campaign Diary where I just talk to camera for 30 minutes about what happened in a mostly-narrative manner, and highlight the DM lessons I learned and what I did wrong, or what went well. A lot of people who aren't down for watching 3-6 hours of incredibly mundane people playing D&D have a lot of fun watching the Campaign Diaries.
We started planning this campaign back in 2017, right after my last campaign ended. I sent the players a handout with pitches for four different campaigns I was interested in running and asked them to pick one.
There wasn't actually consensus among the players regarding which one they wanted to play the most, but the Chain of Acheron was everyone's second choice, so I made an executive decision and chose that.
It may be that we play for a few months, and folks aren't having fun. The game I want to run isn't jiving with the one they want to play, that's pretty typical. In which case we'll change stuff and maybe play a different game! Maybe a different one from this doc, who knows? Only three times in my life has a campaign of mine turned into something we did every week for three years.
After deciding on the Chain, I sent the players a handout covering the different regions in my world, so they could choose where their character is from. The Chain has been all over Orden, and to other Worlds across the timescape, so an office in the Chain could be from anywhere.
When running a new game for new players, I try to keep the blah blah down to one page, but these are players who (with on exception) had all played D&D before and played with me before, so I figured they could handle a long read.
My world is a very tropey mashup of historical Earth places which some people find derivative and obvious. This is entirely fair. I would almost certainly have my own opinions about their world. :D As someone who loves history and language and culture and sociology, I love doing a deep dive into why certain things in this place and time were named what they are, and then permuting them a little to try and get realistic-sounding names. But I also like just making stuff up! A balanced diet can include some of both.
The players all made characters separately. I thought it would be fun if they each found out what they were all playing at the same time you did! But we filmed the important part of character creation and you'll get to see that on the stream.
I sent the players one more handout, giving them some idea what The Chain of Acheron were about, what life in a fantasy mercenary company might be like, why someone might join, and where the Chain had been. I wanted to give them the opportunity to really fill in their backstory with tales of things they did in this battle or that war, should they be inclined to do so.
The goal here was just to make sure everyone was on the same page about what being an officer in this mercenary company meant.
Those are all the handouts I gave them. You are now almost caught up with the players!
The campaign is set in my world, only a little while after the last campaign, and because of the way the new campaign starts, you should probably know a little bit about at least two NPCs who are famous and known to all the players.
Lady Sariel was a PC played by my friend Jess years ago in an earlier game I ran at Turtle Rock Studios. She was an elven cleric, daughter of the king and queen of the elves. Sariel died in the final battle of the game and was resurrected as a Vampire Spawn by the Scion of Orcus.
The heroes defeated the villain, which freed Sariel from the compulsion to obey his commands, and I promoted her to Vampire Queen!
The next campaign I ran (which is also the last campaign I ran) she was a distant antagonist the players had to occasionally deal with. She is collecting the Teeth of the Dragon, a series of ancient elven artifact swords and already has at least three of them; Arcturus the Sword of Stars, Scorpius the Sword of Lies, and Orion the Master Sword.
The last campaign ended in a confrontation with Lady Sariel that was subverted when the players discovered Lady Sariel wants the same thing they want; to stop Ajax the Invincible.
Ajax is my setting's Final Boss. He's a high-level Alexander the Great analog who is about halfway through his plan to take over the world. He's already conquered several regions. He and his wizard Mortum unlocked the secrets of the flying cities of the Sky Elves and from his floating fortress he has so far proved unbeatable.
Lady Sariel has three of the Teeth of the Dragon. Ajax is now Saint Ajax and those who pray to him gain divine spells. There is no record of a mortal becoming a saint in history.
Sariel has sworn to destroy Ajax. And this is where the stream begins. You now know everything the players know.
Stronghold & Followers Rules FAQ!
almost 6 years ago
– Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 01:14:36 AM
The book has been out for (counts days….) five days! All the emails have been sent, if you backed the kickstarter or preordered, check your Promotions Folder, or Spam, or deleted/archived items. We are working our way through all the support emails. If you haven't received your store invite email yet, email us at: [email protected] and we'll help you out as soon as we can!
Meanwhile, folks have the PDF and it seems as though in general people are pretty happy with it? I make it a point to look around the internet in places outside our community and see how folks are reacting and I pay special attention to folks who have questions or find some parts of the book less useful than others.
Our goals moving forward are twofold.
1: Find out what bits folks like so we can make a point to do more of that in the next product.
2: Find out which bits folks don’t like so we can patch it until they do like it! Within reason, obviously we can’t make everyone happy.
That first “patch” is coming soon. We have a google doc where folks can log typos or just complain if they don’t like something or don’t understand something. We are fixing typos, we are rewriting language to make it clearer, more self-consistent, and more consistent with 5E’s language.
There are many many places where folks just had questions because things weren’t clear, and we’ve already fixed those in our local version. If you go to the Google Doc you can see which bits have been fixed, which aren’t going to get fixed (“hale” is a real word!) and which are in-progress.
This FAQ only addresses the most common questions about the rules and text of the book with the biggest impact.
When we update the PDF, you’ll get a notification via the email tied to your MCDM store account, and be able to download the new version. When we finally send the book to print (or reprint it) we’ll always use the most recent, updated, PDF.
The Store
Q. It says I only get 10 downloads. When you update the PDF, will that reset?
A. Yep! When we release a new version of the PDF, we’ll reset your download limit.
Strongholds
Q. What is the “Size” per stronghold for in the chart on page 10?
A. It’s the size of your stronghold’s casualty die when used as a fortification. We’re going to update it so it says d6, d8 to make it clearer.
Q. Is there any advice for clearing the wilderness or running the town that grows around your Stronghold?
A. Not in Strongholds & Followers. Being a ruler and taming wilderness are far enough outside the subject of building strongholds and attracting followers to warrant their own writeup.
Q. How much does it cost to research a spell when using your Tower?
A. Nothing. The text references cost, but that is deprecated functionality. The cost is just time, and however much money you spent on the tower, and however much blood you spilt to earn it.
Q. Is this really all you get for building a Temple? +15% to your Concordance?
A. Currently, yes. We’re planning on revising this. The intended behavior is that a Temple means you will automatically be able to summon one servitor, probably summon two, but after that it’s unlikely because you’ve accumulated so many penalties to your Concordance. Returning home should clear those penalties.
That’s going to take some math and thinking and maybe testing, but that’s the intended behavior.
Q. The Warlock Fane’s Master Invoker ability is both weird and bad.
A. Well, that’s...that’s not a question but it’s a fair point. :D The intent with Master Invoker is to grant the Warlock limited use access to Invocations normally beyond their reach. But every time they benefit from one of these higher-level Invocations, they lose one use of the Master Invoker ability, until they must return home to recharge it.
In practice, this is hard to explain and requires players track “use” of abilities which do not have charges. Possible, but more work than we should have to do, I feel.
We are looking at revising this ability, so that it grants an extra spell slot, which can be used a number of times equal to your stronghold level before you must return home to recharge it. But that is only one potential fix.
Q. The Sorcerer’s Sanctum Ability is not actually very good.
A. We’re looking at that too. Considering granting Sorcerer’s an extra Metamagic point, possibly one per level of their stronghold, instead of the exploding dice.
Q. Well what about Rogue’s Satisfying Strike?
A. That IS a question! Being able to heal yourself in combat should meaningfully increase a rogue’s survivability. Anything that just buffed damage output would probably be a waste since rogue’s don’t really have a problem doing damage. But it’s certainly not as sexy as some of the other abilities. We’re considering changing to Vanishing Strike, allowing the Rogue to become invisible for a limited time after a successful sneak attack.
Q. How do Stronghold abilities work in a city? Some of them cover miles!
A. Instead of a province or a hex, Stronghold abilities in or near cities should be measured in districts or quarters. An Establishment 6 miles outside Capital could spy on one district, but not the whole city and would not be able to change which district they spied on, although they could upgrade and spy on more!
Q. Hey can we build several Strongholds in the same province?
A. Sure but that would be a castle. If you want to build a tower where I’m building a keep, we’re both going to be competing for local resources and labor, and that will drive the prices up, and that’s why castles cost more than just several strongholds built far away from each other.
Q. Why can’t I have four temples in a Castle?
Why can't I own several strongholds?
A. It’s purely a balance issue. If you can build an arbitrary number or combination of strongholds you can create some weird edge cases with armies or concordance or favors. Also in general the things in this book are intended as player rewards, like a magic item. To be awarded the way you would a rare item.
Q. I feel weird awarding a player a stronghold and the other players get nothing.
A. Whoah, why are the other players getting nothing!? They deserve rewards too! They don’t all need a stronghold, that would be crazy and they probably don’t all want one, but they should be getting something equally cool! There are lots of neat magic items in the core rules, and some new ones in S&F. In my experience, players don’t even worry that much about how powerful an item someone else got is, as long as the stuff they get is sufficiently COOL.
Q. Why are strongholds so CHEAP?!
A. These last these questions are all sort of related. A stronghold seems cheap if you assume everyone’s going to pitch in to buy a keep (for instance). But the system assumes the players divide their cash equally, then decide what to spend it on. A stronghold is a reward for a player, something for them to spend their share of the loot on. If the party has to loot 50,000gp for someone to afford a 10,000gp keep, the economy changes somewhat.
Retainers
Q. How do you calculate bonuses for a Retainer’s saving throws?
a. The text says “A retainer gets +3 to all saving throws, and an extra +3 to saves with a primary ability.” This is outdated. Retainers get +6 to the saves listed on their card, and +3 to their other saving throws.
Q. How does a retainer’s Hit Die affect their health levels?
A. A retainer has health levels equal to the number of levels (if a pc class) or hit dice (if a monster). We don’t have rules yet for using monsters as retainers, but we wanted to lay the groundwork now. Alas, because of the wording, it sounds like a characters type of die (d8, d10) has an effect. It doesn’t. Just how many they get.
Q. Are retainers going to get smoked by high-damage spells?
A. Well depending on the retainer and their save, yeah. The retainers presented are designed for a somewhat narrow range of play. But we’re looking at revising the rules to make them hardier when attacked by magic.
Warfare
Q. Is the math for the example unit wrong?
A. Yeah the Ironheart Defenders should be cost: 440.
Q. Man why are dwarves so much better than elves in war?!
A. This is an important question. It reflects the premise that just because two different species are equally good at producing extraordinary heroes optimized for dungeon crawling and dragon killing (whom we call PCs) their average 0-level citizen infantry are not necessarily equally good at fighting wars. At maintaining discipline, taking orders. I think dwarves tend more toward order and discipline and elves tend to be independent and free-thinking. Elves would make much better scouts, but not regular army.
But those are MY assumptions. I think my reasoning is sound, but the goal of this Warfare system isn’t actually to get you to adopt my assumptions. It’s to give you one set of assumptions and a system that’s simple and flexible enough to let you easily tweak it to reflect your own. If you look at the Unit Ancestry Table, each Ancestry is defined by 5 numbers, all within a range from -2 to +3. This is designed to make it very easy for you to build in your own assumptions. Some folks feel like Elves and Dwarves should be the same cost, but elves be better at attacking and avoiding damage, and dwarves should do more damage and be harder to hurt. This would be very easy to do!
Items
Q. How does the damage from a Templar’s Glaive work?
A. The text says “Each time you attack, you choose whether it deals fire, cold, or lightning damage in addition to its normal slashing damage.” The intent is to allow the wielder to choose to add an additional damage type when attacking, in order to exploit an enemy’s vulnerability, not extra dice of damage. The updated text reads; “You may choose to do either fire, cold, lightning, or piercing damage with this weapon.” The other weapons will be updated to match.
Misc
Q. Hey is there art missing? There’s a blank spot on page 222 next to Gemstone Dragonborn.
A. Well the art’s not missing per se, we didn’t know the text was going to flow like that until way after we were done getting art. So it was a question of “delay releasing the book, or get some art.” We chose to get the book out...then get the art! BEHOLD!
A Topaz Dragonborn Wizard
This will be in the updated PDF and the print book.
