Rounding out some details in Kala Mandala: skills, items, mechanics
While creating pre-gens, I found a few things that I thought would need fleshing out at the table. Note that not all of these have not been playtested. All references to Early Access 0.13a.
Skills
Aromatherapy (Fighting)
- Oil = Small item.
- Takes 1 Turn to apply.
- Spend 1 watch to create 1 oil, requires cooking equipment.
- Must purchase ingredients (20-50g, not always available) or forage (1 watch/1 oil).
Rote Learning (Magic)
- At beginning of first adventure, start with one scroll memorized from those you hold. If you don't hold one, pick one of your companions'. If they don't have any, pick one.
- Upkeep (casting within 3 days) may be met in downtime.
- No capacity limit to language/script/memorization.
Beats to Study to (Magic)
- Must hum for a Turn (10 minutes) to impart effect.
Can Be Improved (Magic)
- If starting skills: if you don't have one from your other skills, start with 1 scroll (doesn't apply if learned during game).
Mini Maladies (Healing)
- The malady can impact one stat or roll, with GM agreement.
- The malady lasts until healed or natural recovery.
- Resides in an object - player must account for which.
Baby Spirit (Thieving)
- If attacked, roll DEX save to avoid damage.
- Cannot be destroyed (may look mangled and need some TLC!) but being damaged will cause it to cry, per skill description.
- If acquired in-game: must account for how its acquired (eg, downtime activity)
The food-related skills
Workout Meal (Fighting)
- each recipe = 1 ration (therefore, 1 item). PC decides whether a carried ration is a regular, replenishable ration or a workout meal (may apply to starting rations). 1
- use 1 watch to make two rations (will have to acquire ingredients).
Fortifying Foods (Healing)
- consuming one of these consumes the ration. PC decides whether a carried ration is a regular, replenishable ration (Playbook, p. 22) or a fortifying food (may apply to starting rations).
- use 1 watch to make two rations (will have to acquire ingredients).
With both Fortifying Foods and Workout Meal, there's a tradeoff in carrying the power-ups or the replenishable ration. Without a replenishable ration, the character risks Exhaustion (Playbook, p. 30).
Skills and prayers
The following skills can be used as dance, songs, or food for purpose of making a Good Offering:
- Aromatherapy (consumes item)
- Workout Meal (consumes item)
- Workout Song (counts as daily use)
- Healing Dance (counts as weekly use)
- Fortifying Foods (consumes item)
- Flute Rogue (counts as one daily use)
Inventory
Armour: only rattan buckler counts as 1 item, others as Small.
Arrows: 1 item on top of bow (which is bulky).
Heirlooms: are Small or otherwise do not count as Item slots except,
- Bamboo flute (can also be played for Good Offering in Prayer)
- Shawl
- Theatre mask
- Umbrella
Also to be determined by player: if you have the torch, how are you carrying it to avoid setting things on fire?
Lockpicks: are Small.
Other things to be considered.
Over-encumbrance: my instinct is not to use Cairn-style full inventory rules (full inventory = 0 HP), but it's an option. 8 inventory slots is tough! It may reflect an emphasis on meddling-style adventure rather than acquisitive power-building in "Eurocentric fantasy" (see Playbook Design Notes) (which may also be proto- and/or crypto-Capitalist in nature?), but inventory and money are still mechanically important. For this reason, I didn't count gold as inventory during my first play.
Scars: do you want to use Cairn's scar rules?
Rations: (copied from previous post) it seems like the game is halfway between two systems. On one hand, a ration is a replenishable inventory item meant to last for an adventure. On the other, characters starts with 2 or 3 in their loadout, suggesting that more than one would be consumed in a session - this would be unnecessary if a ration were replenishable, although introducing ration loss/consumption as a dungeon or wilderness event as in Cairn might require this. Also, the skill Fortifying Foods treats rations as one-off consumables (Workout Meal might as well, though not explicitly stated).
I like the idea of replenishable rations, and I also like the idea of being able to power up the rations as consumables with skills, so I'm not sure how best to handle this.
First aid kits: if these do operate like bandages in Cairn (to stabilize someone with Critical Damage), they're a raw deal. One use of bandages is equivalent to 1/30 of a character's item slots (1/27 if they're avoiding full inventory), but one use of first aid kit is equivalent to 1/16 item slots in Kala Mandala (assuming you're not using full inventory rules). Not that these must be balanced, but something to think about.
Downtime and growth: PCs should be able to maintain most skills and skill-related consumables. I'm also inclined to supplement the Growth procedures (Playbook, p. 31) with Cairn's Downtime Actions procures. However, I have a question about how to balance skill maintenance and the clock for learning skills and other downtime growth: given more than just a couple days, it makes sense that PCs would have the opportunity to do both. This might not need a more rigorous procedure, but more table discussion and specific rulings.
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It's not specified in the skill description that each meal is a ration item, but I decided to treat it like Fortifying Foods.↩