The city of Scinna is built in and around the Broken Mountain, the geography of which is defined by a flat 'bowl' on the side of the mountain, split by an enormous crack that has been carved into a deep ravine by an underground river reaching the surface. There is ample evidence that the area was settled by some unrecorded civilization a long time ago, but as far as recorded history tells Scinna started as a small settlement taking shelter inside of the ravine and clinging to the river. isolated This settlement had trouble growing due to the long winters and poor farmland of the area until a foreign scholar who came to the area to study its unique flora and fauna "invented" a new plant that became the staple crop of the town and its population began to grow.

Over time that scholar, Holgest the Founder, would go on to form a guild of alchemists that would make Scinna into a wealthy, prosperous city outright ruled by the Grand Holgestian Order of Alchemy. While they developed a number of fantastical wonders, nothing made Scinna richer than the Aster Panacea: a medicinal treatment that could regenerate the body from nearly any injury or illness, and even greatly extended one's lifespan. That came later, during the reign of the 7th Archmaster of the Holgestian Order, who using the Aster Panacea lived for the next 200 years until just recently.
The Aster Panacea is as you can imagine HIGHLY in demand, but the secrets of how its made are closely guarded and the Grand Alchemists are very picky about who they allow to use it, mostly keeping it to high ranking alchemists, their servants, and foreign nobility that pays a king's ransom for more decades of good health. They only occasionally let anyone else have it, usually as a highly public 'reward' to create loyalty and competition for their favor.

>>97549145
The city these days is split up into three distinct layers, each with their own identity.

The lowest, oldest part of the city is the Vale. This is what grew out of that original settlement clinging to the river. The wealth and status flowed into the newer parts of the city as the Grand Alchemists made Scinna more prosperous and the city expanded, leaving the Vale as a slum. There is a stark cultural divide between the people of the Vale and the rest of Scinna, as the Vale folk consider themselves to be the most 'Scinnan' and cling to folklore and superstition.

On top of the mountain you have the High City, which started off as an observatory built by the alchemists to study the stars, and then slowly grew into a larger facility, and then a walled castle district of its own. It contains the Academy, the seat of power for the Grand Alchemists, as well as the tower-estates of the nobility that grew up on the fringes of the Grand Alchemists power.

In between them is the simply named Upper Ward, the most populous part of the city. This was all new construction following the Grand Alchemists coming into wealth, building a sprawling city that fills and somewhat overflows the bowl of the mountain, using great bridges to cross the ravine. The Upper Ward is the economic machine of Scinna, filled with scholars and merchants and artisans that live in the shadow of the Grand Alchemists. Providing them services and materials, or trying to perform their own research to apply their way into the Academy, or just hungry for whatever secrets they can glean from the alchemists for themselves.

>>97549185

Unfortunately for them, while the Grand Alchemists proved to be quite smart at their dark sciences, they were rather less good when it came to actually running a city. A series of poor decisions on their part lead to the recent Proskuneonite Revolution, which deposed the Grand Alchemists and led to the burning of the High City, killing most of the alchemists and destroying their Grand Library.

While there had been growing discontent against the Alchemists for some time, two major factors brought things to a head in the revolution:

The first was a very unpopular war that Scinna waged against the foreign country of Phyraid. Under claims of Phyraidian pirates attacking Scinnan ships, Scinna launched a war of invasion against Phyraid that lasts for three years. It was a hard fought battle mostly won through Scinna's technologically superior firearms and the fact that Phyraid has been a nation in decline for a long time, but just when Scinna had taken a large chunk of territory in Phyraid... the Alchemists abandoned it. Called the whole thing off, brought everyone back home. This resulted in a large number of ex-soldiers who felt that the war was pointless and got a lot of people killed for reasons that Alchemists either didn't think through or have kept to themselves.

The second and most direct cause of the Revolution was Saint Damona.

>>97549248

Damona Treybal was a local woman who claimed to have prophetic visions which slowly grew into a cult around her gospel. She would recite visions of the past, the present, and the future in such a way that she never claimed to know what the visions exactly meant or why she was being shown them by the silent 'angel' that guided her, but she knew that everything she saw was true. After she predicted the burning of the High City, the Grand Alchemists invoked an old but rarely enforced law banning the worship of gods within Scinna and had her publically executed by beheading.

The next day, when her body was set to be publicly burned, her faithful rioted and stormed the proceedings. In the aftermath it was revealed that the body that was to be burned was not, in fact, Damona Treybal. It was a completely different woman.

This kicked off a larger series of riots as people became convinced that Saint Damona was still alive, and that her execution had been some kind of trick. The inciting push of the revolution was to rescue Saint Damona. Other interested parties added their own momentum to this growing wave against the establishment, and it sparked into full on Revolution, leading to a months long siege of the High City and eventually its burning when the defenses were finally overwhelmed.

It was only then that Saint Damona was finally confirmed dead. But, in one final miracle, her body *refuses to decay*. Her head was put on display in the Academy, which has since been taken over by the newly formed Church of Saint Damona and is serving as their cathedral, for one year so that all could witness the miracle for themselves before she was properly laid to rest deep within the 'Cathedral'.

>>97549268

Its been two years now since the Revolution, and Scinna is in a rough spot. Put simply, no one is in charge. The Revolution fractured after their victory and of the various power blocks that remain none of them are strong enough to assume control on their own strength. This has lead to an unsteady cold war with the city carved up street by street between local militias and the larger factions that they more or may not swear allegiance to.

The overall factions in the city are:

The Church of Saint Damona, which has a lot of power and public support but has thus far shown no interest in actually assuming control over Scinna's affairs. Instead they are focused on rebuilding the Academy as their site of worship, and the matters of their church. There is a fair amount of internal conflict there, as the exact *doctrine* of their new religion is not yet set in stone. Their holy book, The Dreams of Saint Damona, is an incomplete work which still struggles to fully attribute meaning to the visions left behind by their Saint.

The Reformist Families, a group of five noble houses that betrayed the Grand Alchemists and sided with the revolution early on. Their hope was to use the revolution to depose the Academy and, in the aftermath, assume control of the Holgestian Order and bring in fresh leadership and new ideas. Unfortunately for their their ambitions backfired and the Grand Alchemists dedicated their full forces to wiping out the Reformists as best they could, leading to the total extermination of their leader's houses and leaving the remaining four families crippled. After the revolution, the Reformists bolsters their forces by acting as a safe haven for former loyalists to hang their hat in relative secrecy, but many loyalists refused to partner up with these traitors and became bandits instead.

>>97549324
The Court of Plenty is a conclave of merchants and artisans being lead by a charismatic rabble-rouser, who hopes to take over and rule Scinna as a mercantile empire that the believe that Scinna always should have been in the first place. Whats the point of all of this incredible alchemy if you mostly just keep it to yourself? Thats leaving money on the table. Scinna shouldn't be an isolated city-state up in the mountains, known only for its limited clientele of Aster Panacea, we should be the most influential nation in the world!
The Court of Plenty has money, resources, and vision. What they don't have is a strong military presence. The soldiers working for them are most militias with a mercenary attitude, of which there are many but not well organized into a larger fighting force.

The strongest military faction is, without doubt, the Free Scinnan Army. Lead by a minor hero of the Phyriadian war named Alexander Arno, The FSA is the most direct successor to the military force that made the revolution possible. It was Arno that planned and coordinated the siege of the High City and lead the fight against the Grand Alchemists, its likely that the Revolution would have failed without him. Its entirely possible that he could have assumed control of the city immediately after the war, but at the time that wasn't something he actually wanted.
It wasn't until it was too late that Arno realized the chaos that the city was descending into for lack of strong central leadership, and that the government he expected to form in the wake of the revolution was not going to happen. Now, Arno's greatest fear is that Scinna is vulnerable and the longer they go split by these internal power struggles the more inevitable it becomes that a foreign power will simply roll in and take the city by force. Arno is stuck between feeling the need to unify Scinna under his military leadership, but needing to do so in such a way that the city isn't depleted by civil war to do so.

>>97549391
Lastly we have the silent faction of the House of Stone. While not interested in ruling the city, it would be remiss not to mention the order of masons that actually built and maintain the city. A distinct organization from the Grand Alchemists, the Masons actually predate the arrival of Holgest in Scinna, and maintained their independence as the Grand Alchemists grew in power. They serve Scinna, not whoever is in charge of the city, and thus maintain neutrality. They command a lot of respect, especially in the Vale, and while they have no aspirations to rule (which is, in fact, explicitly banned by the dogma of their masonic order) they have the potential to serve as kingmakers to the other factions.

>>97549411
With the battle lines drawn, we can finally speak to what the players actually do in this game.

During the Revolution, as law and order broke down, looting became common during the rioting. In one district of the Upper Ward, this lead to a woman named Katerina who owned and operated a gunsmith shop to take her best musket, find a high place, and start shooting thieves. Before her identity was known the papers called her the 'Trouble Shooter' and she became something of a folk hero during the revolution, inspiring a wave of other vigilantes to step forward and bring order to the city now that the magistrates of the city were no more.

After the revolution ended, Katerina (with some help from a more more organizationally minded individual) ended up becoming the heart of the Troubleshooters as an organization. They are, essentially, vigilante justice minded folk who work as freelance police and problem solvers, dealing with troublesome individuals that either fall through the cracks and the factions don't care about, or dealing with problems that the factions themselves cannot solve because it crosses over into another faction's territory. Keeping the smaller militias in line, hunting down criminals, dealing with banditry, and so forth.

Kate keeps everyone honest, and the Troubleshooters otherwise have a large degree of agency and freedom to pick and choose what problems they solve. Enter the players, in a role that is defined by being just neutral enough that they can accept work from any of the larger factions, and in doing so undertake assignments where what they choose to do can influence the rise or fall of those factions. There are more Troubleshooters than just the PCs, but the PCs are the best of the Troubleshooters as since they work as a team instead of solo they get the bigger jobs.

>>97549467

And thats the rough, birds eye view of the setup for the campaign. Without yet getting too into detail regarding how the factional conflict has played out so far, what Saint Damona's deal is, what the alchemists were up to and whats happened to their research since, secret tunnels, theoretical electricities, or monsters.

But thats probably enough word vomit from me until someone actually expresses interest in knowing more.

>>97549076
You the telescope that wasn't a telescope, star that wasn't a star guy?

>>97549618
I don't remember the specific post you are referring to, but that sounds like me. There is some stuff going on with the stars in this game, which ties into the more supernatural elements of the world and the greater mystery percolating beneath the surface of the world. Its not that the cold war for control of the city doesn't matter, but it is happening on top of a time bomb that they don't know anything about because it was the Alchemist's biggest secret and everyone who knew about it is dead or otherwise has departed this mortal plane as a result of the Revolution.

Question - if this Scinna is a mountain-bound isolationist city-state, how was it getting into a naval boondoggle with another major power?

>>97551736
Good question. Scinna itself is not on the sea, but the river that flows out of the city runs to a small sea port called Wharftown. A lot of trade with Scinna comes into and out of Wharftown and then makes its way up to the city by riverboat. The riverdocks are something of a lifeline for Scinna.

Wharftown and Scinna are closely linked, even if separated by distance, in that Wharftown was actually settled by people from Scinna in ages past. Wharftown has also gotten most prosperous as trade with Scinna has increased and that trade flows through their port. Scinna thus maintains a small fleet of trade ships and naval vessels that fly the Scinnan flag but are based out of Wharftown, and Wharftown was considered important enough to Scinna that the grand Alchemists founded a noble house (Gavenda) whose entire job was to just be in charge of Wharftown and keep things running smoothly.

This actually brings up an important detail regarding those 'noble houses' of Scinna: while they are hereditary and based around a central family, each one of them is expected to do a fucking job. The Academy didn't just ascend families and give them status for nothing, their position is contingent on them staying on top of their game in either some area of research or some manner of service they provide for the city. It was part of how they delegated out the responsibilities of keeping everything running so that the Grand Alchemists could focus on their research.

For example, House Hrabik's focus was on botanical alchemy, but their JOB was to maintain the greenhouses and have them grow exotic plants not native to Scinna for research purposes, and sometimes grow food as well. Ruzicka's job was to develop arms and armor and keep the city supplied with both. House Kovarik's focus was on ores and metallurgy and mining, but what that really meant is that if the Grand Alchemists said they wanted any kind of metal it was Kovarik's job to find it and bring it home. And so on.

>>97551858
Also, for the record, while the public reason for the Phyraidian War was battling piracy, it was mostly a land war because the reason for the fighting never had anything to do with boats. Though they did have to get there on ships. The players eventually found evidence in an underground sanctum belonging to the School of Pluteum, the Astrologers of the Grand Grand Alchemists. What they found was a decades long math problem involving multiple evolving orbital models and a lot of complicated math, whose purpose was to determine where something would have landed thousands of years ago based on ancient recorded astrological phenomena at a specific point in time. And the final answer was eastern Phyraid.

The entire war was concocted because the Grand Alchemists wanted whatever it was that fell out of the sky way back then. And once they had it, they ended the war and brought everyone home. Which is why everyone was just confused and upset by the whole war, because they never got a non-bullshit answer for why they were fighting in the first place and they didn't even keep any of the territory they took.

The Grand Alchemists were not very good leaders.

>>97549076
How many, if any, of the alchemists survived?

Knowing a bit about revolutions, I'm curious if
A) Any alchemists on the inside supported the revolution?
Or thought unrest would be a good opportunity for them to rise in esteem (calming it or putting it down) and misjudged?
B) Any alchemists who got away, forming an underground? Or escaped to their previous allies, outside the city-state? (weren't they bribing foreign bigwigs... did they cash in those bribes?
C) Any of the new "leading" forces pick up some of the Alchemists' levers/positions of power, or if that'd be too blatant, then any of their useful tools of wealth/leadership?

>>97552196
A bunch of alchemists survived by various methods. Mostly lower ranked alchemists that went into hiding or found refuge.

A) The Reformist faction includes nobles, many of whom were trained in alchemy, who jumped in and supported the revolution from the outset because they thought they could control it. Indeed, the speed with which they did so implies that they had been looking for an opportunity like this for a while, and the revolution was when they took their shot. House Archambeau, a very young noble house formed to explore the potential of this fancy new 'steam power' they had come up with, were the ambitious minds leading the movement but as a result got fucking exterminated by the Grand Alchemists with poison gas. Most of the other fallen houses, even the powerless ones, have at least some survivors. No one survived House Archambeau.

B) We know some Alchemists managed to smuggle their way out of the city either during or after the revolution. In fact, the players tracked down and killed one such smuggler as an early game mission, ending up taking under their wing the alchemist he was trying to get out of the city because their job never specified what to do with anyone but the smuggler. So now they have Jirina Maly on their side, an apprentice galvanic engineer who was working for a Master whose focus was "theoretical electricities". There is no underground of alchemists as such, many of them during the revolution were either lynched by angry mobs or just disappeared off the street, leading to...

>>97552455

C) All of the factions actually have some alchemists, or stolen alchemical research, in their back pocket. The Church is clearly toying with alchemical shit involving both their medicines and keeping at least one alchemist under guard in the old Asylum who was being kept around to design a machine for them. The FSA has new and experimental weapons as Arno searches for something scary enough to act as a deterrent, the Reformers as mentioned before naturally have alchemists in their ranks. The Court of Plenty is most open about the pet alchemists in their 'employ', in that they have offered "amnesty and protection" to any and all Alchemists, and have the ones that have joined up with them working to make new products.
Their big unveiled project is that they have found a way to make fruit that ripens into an alcoholic state naturally after being picked, which both is an alcoholic treat and acts as a preservative that makes them travel better. This did this with alchemists of House Hrabik who joined up witht hem for their own protection during the Revolution, which House Hrabik very much does not appreciate.
The Court of Plenty's goal is to sell this abroad and make a bunch of money, in doing so declaring that Scinna is 'open for business' and centralizing dealings with foreign nations on themselves to make themselves the de facto voice of the city. But, to grow enough of it to sell, they need to take control of the Greenhouses that House Hrabik technically still owns and controls. Which puts the Court and the Reformers in direct opposition there.

>>97552496

All of this is the more or less public info. In secret, and the players know some of this already, something *definitely* fucking happened with the leadership of the Grand Alchemists. The city is full of secret tunnels, and based on stuff the players have found the grand Alchemists *knew* that the revolution was going to happen and the High City was going to burn a long time ago, and prepared means of escape in secret.

And it would have worked too. except that the Revolution was aided by a spymaster named Playwright, who many assume had to previously work for the Grand Alchemists. Playwright leaked the exits for all of the secret tunnels to the Revolutionaries and they got sealed up and guarded, trapping the Alchemists in the High City after having had a viable escape plan ready and waiting for a hundred years.

After their escape plan fell through, the leadership of the grand Alchemists (The School of Lumen), the entire School of Fos (dedicated to the study of light) and the high ranking Alchemists of the other Schools of the Academy all locked themselves up in the Grand Library in the High City under armed guard... and no one ever saw them again. They stayed there until the place burned down around them. Or something else happened to them, but even the other people int he High city don't know more than that and the popular belief is they burned to death.

>>97552523

Meanwhile, the lower rank Alchemists who *didn't* get an invite to the sleepover at the library tried to manage their own escape plan: unsealing some monster infested tunnels beneath the city because they know there is another exit down in the Vale, on the other side of something called the Necropolis.

This did not go well.

The expedition perished terribly and unleashed some shit into the previously safe tunnel networks, and in the process all of the remaining Holgestian Knights died with them in their ill-fated attempt. The Holgestian Knights, for context, were not just trained men at arms but ones that had Aster Panacea on their side. Essentially, so long as they didn't actually fucking *die* they could be healed from any injury, and they lived for a long time. So an entire group of them getting slaughtered is a pretty grim sign of how bad the Necropolis is.

This failure interestingly coincides almost immediately with when the Revolution finally broke through the defenses of the High City and burned the place down, including the Library. These lower ranked alchemists making their last ditch escape attempt exhausted their best military units and in doing so compromised the defenses of the High City, allowing the revolutionaries to claim victory.

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this sounds pretty cool
has the status quo changed significantly over the course of the game?
are the PCs still troubleshooters or have they changed job titles?
lastly, does Scinna have a city flag or a coat of arms of some kind?

>>97554882
>has the status quo changed significantly over the course of the game?

Nothing truly massive, but that's about to change. The players have built up reputation and know a lot more secret shit that's been going on, but aside from the cold war turning increasingly into a shooting war the faction landscape is more or less still recognizeable as being close to what it was from the start.

However, the Reformist faction is about to all but collapse. They haven't been holding up well trying to defend the Greenhouse District from the Court of Plenty, who needs it for their new botanical products, and the players sided with the Court on this one. The Reformers are not going to get exterminated, but once this fully resolves they have basically lost whatever claim to being a contender for power they had. The Reformers were always in the weakest position, so this defeat downgrades them to minor players.

Meanwhile, Arno is preparing to leave. Not forfeit the fight exactly, but another country (Ros Canos) is testing Scinna and Arno has concluded that Wharftown is going to come under a attack. So he is compelled to move the bulk of his military forces down the river to reinforce and prepare Wharftown for that fight, because if Scinna loses Wharftown the city is doomed.

This leaves the Court of Plenty in a seemingly unopposed position of power, except that the Church is also about to make their move for more explicit influence of the city.

So things have been slowly deteriorating for a while, but the state of the board is about to shift a lot in a short period of time.

>>97554882
> are the PCs still troubleshooters or have they changed job titles?

They are still Troubleshooters. A new player has been added, and there was a subplot with one of the other Troubleshooters taking bribes from the Court of Plenty, but they are still going along. But there is a sort of sword of damocles hanging over the organization in that they only really have any function so long as the city is divided and in chaos, and once any one group is powerful enough to reinstate a rule of law the Troubleshooters will have outstayed their welcome.

> lastly, does Scinna have a city flag or a coat of arms of some kind?

Scinna's colors are Blue and Silver, with their symbol being the 'crown of stars', an arch of five stars forming a semicircle over a Lumensflower, the the flower of the vine that Holgest invented that kicked off alchemy in Scinna.

The Lumensvine is a parasitic plant that wraps around and infests trees. The Lumensvine grows flowers, but these flowers do not bear fruit. However, whatever tree the plant has infested *does* bear fruit, even if they really shouldn't. So you can take something like normal pine trees, grow Lumensvine around them, and turn them into an orchard of Lumenfruit. Which are like stiffer, starchier pears. They get used in a lot of Scinnan cooking as something of a staple crop due to how poor the terrain is for farming otherwise, and are fermented into local wines and brandys.

Strangely, Lumenvine can't grow far from Scinna. They just don't thrive in other places.

I am more interesting in how well does the ruleset of Honor+Intrigue supports all this faction play and kind of bloodbournian atmoshpere. Is there a possibility for the players to end up leading one of the factions or forming their own?

>>97555484
>I am more interesting in how well does the ruleset of Honor+Intrigue supports all this faction play and kind of bloodbournian atmoshpere.

Thats admittedly been a challenge. This campaign was the first time anyone in my group touched H+I, so we were sort of learning the rules at the same time as I was coloring outside of the lines that the system expects. One of the players also ended up with a style that made pawns basically irrelevant even in larger numbers, in one noteworthy case a series of decent rolls letting him just punch unconscious 9 pawns in a single round all by himself and ending the fight before anyone else even got an action.

I eventually instituted some alternate rules in the book (such as moving the dice system from 2d6 to 2d10 to make bonuses and penalties less strong) and some house rules of my own (such as a change to damage and parry where damage is determined by degrees of success on the roll, and parrying lowers the degrees of success on the attackers roll, thus making parrying more often result in *reducing* damage rather than flat-out negating an attack which means fewer wasted turns. You still can reduce an attack to zero, but either they had to have been an attack that only barely hit you anyway or you have to have rolled exceptionally well).

Also, monsters have abilities that can operate outside of the normal rules of the game. Sometimes in the form of extremely heavy resistances or immunities to certain kinds of damage or combat actions, as well as outright supernatural attacks that do weird things outside of the normal swordplay of the system.

> Is there a possibility for the players to end up leading one of the factions or forming their own?

Realistically no. The players simply don't have the resources or the public support to contest any of the factions on that footing.

>>97555595
I am trying to pull off something kind of similar and I am having a hard time picking a system. I was considering H+I but I am not a fun of heavily modifying systems I am not fluent with. I guess I will have to keep looking. Excellent work btw. Your game seems really interesting and well thought out.

>>97555710
What specifically are you trying to do? I shopped around on systems a bit myself, so maybe something that didn't work for me will be a good fit for your game.

>>97556061
I want to set up a campaign focused on faction rivalries where the players start as weak outsiders and grow in power and influence as they join a faction and start rising up in ranks. I want each faction to offer it's own advantages in way of items and even character options (traits, classes, access to magic etc). I would specifically like for magic to be more of a midgame thing rather than something that players start with. The last part is were I am having more difficulty with. Thanks for offering to help.

>>97559051
Well, the bad news is that you are not going to find a game that does that all for you, and even if they *did* you would have to rewrite it heavily anyway because whatever factions the book has prepared by default won't be the factions you came up with and want to run.
The good news is your faction stuff is system agnostic and easily tacked on to basically any game system. What I would do in your place is something like this:

In addition to experience or whatever other progress rewards exist in the system, track a new resource called Reputation divided by whatever major factions are in play. You do a mission for a faction? Your Reputation with them goes up. You kill some of their guys in a fight? Your reputation with them goes down. You butter up a prominent figure in their group at a dinner party? Get a little Reputation. Decide to give the macguffin everyone is fighting over this week to Group A instead of Group B? Gain Reputation with A, lose some with B.
This acts as a gameified way to track your parties relationship with each faction. If you want to get ~crazy~ with it, you could track reputation on each player's sheet instead of at the group level, meaning that different PC's could cultivate relationships with different factions, and then reputation is counted based on who is in the scene. You are negotiating with the Moon Conclave? If four players are present, add up the individual reputation scores you each have with the Moon Conclave and treat the combined score as how the Conclave favors you or no. One of your PC's actually has negative reputation with the Conclave because he keeps helping their enemies? Maybe that guy should wait outside, his presence makes things worse for this. Etc.

Then all you have to do is write up a little table of what rewards and services exist for each faction, and how much Reputation you need for each level of it and you're done. Maybe add in a wildcard where players can beg favors from a faction by spending Rep.

>>97559807
>I would specifically like for magic to be more of a midgame thing rather than something that players start with.

I can't think of any systems off the top of my head where this is a thing. Maybe someone else on /tg/ can give you suggestions for that one. The best idea I can think ofther is that you should find a system that you like how it plays out of the box, and then restrict character options to meet your needs. For example, doing this with DnD of basically any edition would be a terrible idea. There isn't a good way to strip the magic out of the system without leaving a great big non-functional mess in its place, because the system doesn't work on the assumption that magic isn't commonplace.

But you could pick something modular with a bunch of splat books like GURPS/Savage Worlds/Etc and then start off the game with magic off the table and then fold in material from more magical source books as you see fit.

The key where is that your idea doesn't work with hard class-based progression ala DnD, because that presumes that your character options are set. If your character is built over time using abilities that are bought individually with xp from some pool of options, you can start off with a limited pool and then add things to it over time.

>>97549145
>Broken Mountain
Lol like Brokeback Mountain

>>97555595
To be fair, it's kinda on the GM to not have a huge cluster of Pawns standing in a knot. But they really aren't intended to be more than ablative armor for stronger enemies in that system or BoL. It can definitely be a bit of a problem.

>>97559832
WFRP 2e does that. There's early game magic but it's very marginal.

>>97565834
It did take some trial and error to find a good mix of difficulty for the game, again mostly due to my own inexperience with the system. In that specific case it was a group of pawns trying to hold a choke point in formation, so they were not spread out. This was also early on in the game when we were using the 2d6 dice system, so consistently hitting successes wasn't exactly difficult with even a few points invested in the right stats.

Moving to 2d10 dice, as well as making use of 'mini retainers' which only 3-5 lifeblood who were just enough enough to not get evaporated in groups like pawns but were still pretty easy to beat, helped find the right balance for the type of combat I was trying to run. Pawns still get used, but I never run fights that are *just* pawns like I thought I could at the start, unless this fight is more of a cinematic scene that anything supposed to by a real fight. Or if reinforcements get called in midway through a fight, those will often be pawns.