FASA Games, Inc.

Hello

Tempted by the Mongoose sale I'm toying with the idea of picking up Earthdawn but I have a couple of questions before I splash out if anybody could answer them

1. How complex do higher circle characters get? By complex I mean do they have huge numbers of talents / skills etc. How many spells would an 8th Circle spellcaster be likely to have? The example PC's in Misguided Ambitions seem fine but I wondered how much more complicated they get. The reason for this is that we don't play too often so having huge lists of talents/spells is out. (most of them would get forgotten)

If anyone has got an example of what an 8th Circle character looks like that would be very useful.

2. How does combat play out at higher circles? One problem I've often found with level based games is that although Hit Points go up a lot, damage often doesn't so such combats can drag out.

3. We're not overly fond of extremely high level games so how essential are the Companions if we're not likely to get past the 8th Circle?


Thanks in advance

Good Questions, I am interested in the answers also
Allan

Well, an adept starts out with 5 talents (6 for spellcasters) and then gets 2 new ones every circle until circle 15, which if played properly nd not powergaming, takes years out-game ^^
If you guys only play every now and then, you can assume that you woll spent quite a bit of time in the lower circles.
35 Talents for a single Discipline adept is the max i guess, however there are second disciplines so you can double that, again this takes YEARS to achieve ^^

As for spells, you can learn all the spells you want, if you are willing to pay to learn them. A good number for a circle 8 Adept would be ~ 20 spells i guess.
One of my characters is second discipline elementalist of the 3rd circle and has 6 spells.

As for how complicated it gets:
Earthdawn definately has a rather steep learning curve which is mainly due to the understanding of the systems background and the dice steps. Once you've figured out what the difference betrween skills and talents, adepts and non-adepts are it should be fine. This has been one of the major issues with new players for me, cause they had a hard time differentiating between what has magic in it and what doesn't.
The dice steps usually only change with new items or new talent step. Most people know them by heart once they start playing regularly.

As for combat:
It really depends, every now and then we have combats that take ages and sometimes a fight I planned to take at least half an hour is over after five minutes. It's all up to the dice
Combat in general can be very straight forward (attack -> parry -> attack -> parry) but earthdawn gives tons of possibilities to really get the most out of your character (things like maneuver to get a better attack in the next round or a thief hiding weapons under his coat to gain surprise with his attack using them).

As for the levelling up:
If you give lots of Legend Points (the EXP of Earthdawn you could say) your players will of course advance in their discipline alot faster. however when I started the game I am running at the moment I kept my players in the first / second circle for about half a year and we played on a weekly basis. In the same time they could have been 3rd or 4th circle but i wanted to introduce them slowly into their new world.
The highest characters we had so far are fifth circle and that is only because we just started out a new campaign and took off with a rather high circle group. We've been through all the "low-level" stuff and now I just wanted my players to do some "great deeds", hence the higher starting characters.


Generally I can absolutely recommend ED. It was my first system and leaves almost unlimited possibilities, e.g. merchant / diplomatic campaigns. However you have to prepare for alot of reading! Earthdawn is only the system it is because of the great setting, therefore the GM should really get informed before starting out a game ^^
If you can get your players to do some reading also the experience for all of you will be even greater

As an example of what a higher-circle adept looks like, here's the write-up for one of the PCs from my last game. Typing her up, the numbers look slightly off -- it has been a long time since I double checked that all the thread ranks and such are factored in properly -- but this is close enough as an example.

Kira - Windling Circle 7 Thief/Circle 4 Warrior
Attributes (Value) Step
Dex (22) 9
Str (7) 4
Tou (12) 5
Per (17) 7
Wil (11) 5
Cha (10) 5

Talents (Rank / Bonus) Step
Climbing (2) 11
Karma Ritual (8)
Lock Picking (7) 16
Melee Weapons (8/1) 18
Silent Walk (7) 16
Thief Durability (5)
Throwing Weapons (7) 16
Surprise Strike (7) 11
Avoid Blow (8) 17
Thief Weaving (7) 14
Detect Trap (2) 9
Lock Sense (2) 9
Disarm Trap (6) 15
Disguise Self (7) 14
Tiger Spring (7)
Air Dance (6) 15
Unarmed Combat (2) 11
Wood Skin (1) 10
Warrior Durability (6/3)
Down Strike (6) 10

Defenses Base (w/Threads)
Physical Defense 18 (23)
Spell Defense 11 (13)
Social Defense 6

Physical Armor 5
Mystic Armor 6
Death Rating 130
Unconsciousness Rating 99
Wound Threshold 9 (13)
Recovery Tests 2 (d8)
Blood magic damage: Blood Pebble Armor (4), Blood Tattoo (2), Blood Oath to Valor (2), Blood Oath to Group (2)

Threads:
+5 Physical Defense
+2 Spell Defense
+2 Mystic Armor
+4 Wound Threshold
+4 Durability Talent
+5 Valor (magic sword)
+4 Blade of Cara Fahd

Adding the core of my own thoughts and some perspectives from design:

You'll gain a new circle after a minimum of about 3 adventures in the lower levels up to 6 in the higher ones (it isn't linear, getting from level 1 to 2 is faster than getting from 14 to 15), and that assumes you advance as fast as possible. Unlike other level-based games, you level based on the ranks of your talents that you increase individually (not your overall XP), and 4 adventures assumes you don't raise them all, hence "minimum". The minimum means you're neglecting half your talents.
So it is a rather slow game to progress through.

The main thing that makes higher level characters complex is that you keep getting new abilities. Some of them are passive (adding hit points is done by a talent), and you won't use all of them all the time (some are very specific), but you'll eventually get new ones you'd use in every combat.
You'll not only be rolling an attack and a dodge every round, but two or three other talents as well. At the high end (where you're not intending to go, but nonetheless) you'll roll or otherwise use ten talents per combat round if you're a combat character like a Warrior (non-combatants and caster don't roll that much, though, casters pretty much roll as you see in the demo adventure and are more about choosing what spell to use).
The upside is that combats take less rounds, because hit points don't increase as much as damage, and defenses don't increase as much as attacks. So, the round gets more complex, but the number of rounds decreases. I've had a lot of combats between levels 8 and 12 that only lasted two to three rounds. These are intense, however, taking as long as your dozen-round combat at level 1, if you have characters with a lot of abilities that grant them extra actions.

One advantage of this style of advancement in ED, however, is that because you get more and more abilities as you progress, you end up with characters who can do a lot without having to have a high learning curve, You get more stuff as you go on, and you only need to learn a couple new things every few adventures. If you just take it as you go along, playing an ED character is simple to learn even though he can do a lot of things (most problems with learning ED as player come from wanting to build out your character from level 1 to 15 from the get go. You don't need that in ED really, just learn it as you go along.)


Comapnions:
Past 8th Circle, you'll absolutely need them because they take you from level 9 to 15.
You won't need a lot of the rules in there before level 5, in any case, so you won't really need them for the rules parts until about 20 session in.
However, the Player's Companion adds to the player experience by having more information on the Disciplines (there are 5-10 pages with fiction where a member of the Discipline tells you how it is, for example, to live as a Warrior). As a GM, you might want to have the GM Companion because it has sample non player character (no room for them in the GM Guide) and for added setting information like airships or creature design.

not really adding to the great descriptions above, but with the sale going on, I'd take a chance on it anyway. It can't hurt, and you can always eBay the books for more money than you bought them for if you don't like the game.

As previously said, the mechanics can be complex and take a learning curve, but all the glorious dice rolling is worth it. Add to that the setting has no equal. FASA hit it out of the park on the first try and RB extended that to a grand slam (yay baseball metaphors!). The stories within the world are rich, the characters guiding the narrative are deep, and the world is lush with detail (and getting more so with each book).

Add to it that dragons are more like Smaug than the stereotypical chromatic dragons and you have the best system/world I can think of with Shadowrun neck and neck (but that's because the same folks made it).

Just an example: I played a 1st Circle Purifier and we were playing the adventure, "Infected." The dice worked to my advantage and I knocked out, in one hit, a 4th Circle Nethermancer. It was glorious.

Hello All

Thanks for the replies. That all sounds promising so I've ordered the 2 Guides plus Ardanyan's Revenge.

One other question, I'm fairly certain I've got some 1st Edition stuff lurking round the house somewhere. Are the adventures for that relatively easy to convert?

Yes, very.
You may jut want to adjust (usually: lower) some of the Difficulty Numbers for non-combat stuff and in some cases adjust the opponents. The earlier ED1 adventures were a bit hard on the characters or assumed a large group...
You'll find most of these or suitable replacements in the GM books, though.

My main experience was a long-running low-circle game. The setting really provides for great role-playing. The step system is really pretty satisfying and intuitive, IMO. The average roll for a step is the same as the step number. Bam!

Welcome to the game!

I want add that i am not using the Legend Point system in the game, but i have used a more flat approach.

this to say that i started my main group last september (sept 2010), played all the way to last thursday (that is half january 2012), playing 1 session / week, with some intervals (like summer break and my honeymoon) but all in all it has been like 55 sessions, and my 4 PC have just reached 5th circle.

So, it means that if you want a slow approach game, it's yours (the folks are around 25.500 lp at the moment, that is 460 lp / session, but in most of the first 20 the amount was more in the 200 range, going up to 300, then 400 and finally 500 (plus some epically rewarding ones, around 1000) in the last 15 sessions more or less.

but as arma wrote in the legend point award post, you can toy with the LP because it's all in your hands.

it just defines the speed at wich they grow up, and in most cases, they will spend more LP to do nice things than not powerlevelling up at max speed (not counting karma point, if you have them buying it, as i am..)

just do to another "number comparison", just to reach the 5th circle, i had my wife (a swordmaster) compete in 2 tournaments, losing the first and winning the second.
she spend 42 KP in the process, that are 420 LP out of the 26.000 she has earned.
in total she has spent something around 1300-1400 legend point (5% of the LP total) and those LP spent for karma arent going to her levelling at all.

then you have skills (all the knowledges are skills, you cant sub them with talents, so if you dont want them going around as morons, you have to train skills too).

then you have characteristics increases (that costs 800, 1300 and 2100 lp for each increase of +1 in a single characteristic)

then you have the Thread Weaving of objects, people, places and such. and those stuff cost LP aswell

so, all in all you can slow them without troubles, without taking the fun out of them
my group is 4 ppl based, they are f**kin addicted to the game and we are cruising out our second year of play.

eartdawn is a great game