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The second edition of Barbaric by Stellagama Games was released earlier this year. I discussed the first version of the game in a previous post, where I also posted my custom character sheets. It’s a high-fantasy, D&D-style game using the Quantum Engine rule set, which is a simplified stripped down version of the Cepheus Engine\Traveller rules.
It’s a solid, efficient (only 63 pages) rule set, and quite inexpensive. Definite recommend.
Basic Rules
Everything in Barbaric is a 2d6 die roll, where one of the six skills (Combat, Craft, Lore, Physical, Social, and Stealth) are added to the roll. If the roll is equal or greater than a specified difficulty level (usually 8+), the action is a success.
Characters can learn and cast spells by making Lore rolls. There are no limits on how often spells can be cast, but a critical failure (rolling a 2) can cause bad effects. There’s a D66 table of available spells.
Setting
There is no official setting that is part of the book, but the implied setting is a D&D-style world, with lists of magic items and monsters.
New Rules
Here’s some of the changes in the new version:
Here’s my updated version of the character sheets, in both A4 and US Letter formats. They’re fillable, and you can import an image. I’ve added this to my unwieldy, ever-growing list of character sheets. It’s also on my somewhat better organized page of Cepheus Engine character sheets.
barbaric2e_a4_charsheetDownload
barbaric2e_letter_charsheetDownload
Design Notes
The font for the title is Barbarian. The page font is CrushYourEnemies. They’re both available for free download.
The ouroboros (the snake eating its tail) is from vecteezy.com. The runes at the top and bottom of the page are actually Sumerian cuneiform taken from the book A History of Sumer and Akkad by L. W. King (available at Project Gutenberg)
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It’s a solid, efficient (only 63 pages) rule set, and quite inexpensive. Definite recommend.
Basic Rules
Everything in Barbaric is a 2d6 die roll, where one of the six skills (Combat, Craft, Lore, Physical, Social, and Stealth) are added to the roll. If the roll is equal or greater than a specified difficulty level (usually 8+), the action is a success.
Characters can learn and cast spells by making Lore rolls. There are no limits on how often spells can be cast, but a critical failure (rolling a 2) can cause bad effects. There’s a D66 table of available spells.
Setting
There is no official setting that is part of the book, but the implied setting is a D&D-style world, with lists of magic items and monsters.
New Rules
Here’s some of the changes in the new version:
- The Sorcery stat has been removed. All sorcery uses the Lore stat
- Lifeblood & Endurance (the old randomly generated version of hit points) have been replaced with Stamina points – calculated by adding 14 to 3 times your Physical stat
- Combat Moves are now defaults instead of optional for characters whose Combat stat is above 2. Combat moves are special abilities for use in combat. The higher the Combat score, the more moves that are available.
- If Stamina is reduced to zero, the character is Wounded, and usually out of combat. After combat they can roll on a Triage table to see what happens to them.
- If a character decides to try continuing to fight while Wounded, they can, but will receive penalties when rolling on the Triage table. Characters have to make Physical 6+ rolls to continue fighting while wounded.
- In the first version, combat was a 8+ Combat roll. In 2E everything has a Defense stat. This is the number you need to roll equal to or above to hit.
- Traits are replaced with Archetypes, which is a light class system. Each new character chooses one, which gives the player a single ability.
- There are now Faction rules where each Faction has skills as assets. It functions as a little minigame the GM runs between adventures.
- Presumably as a response to whole WOTC OGL debacle, the new edition now has a Creative Commons license.
Here’s my updated version of the character sheets, in both A4 and US Letter formats. They’re fillable, and you can import an image. I’ve added this to my unwieldy, ever-growing list of character sheets. It’s also on my somewhat better organized page of Cepheus Engine character sheets.
barbaric2e_a4_charsheetDownload
barbaric2e_letter_charsheetDownload
Design Notes
The font for the title is Barbarian. The page font is CrushYourEnemies. They’re both available for free download.
The ouroboros (the snake eating its tail) is from vecteezy.com. The runes at the top and bottom of the page are actually Sumerian cuneiform taken from the book A History of Sumer and Akkad by L. W. King (available at Project Gutenberg)
Continue reading...