So with a little friendly nudging & some great suggestions from an appreciative reader (ReaperWolf at the BoL Forums) I finally updated my Barbarians of Lemuria GM Screen to reflect the small number of rules changes & additions in the Legendary Edition of that august game. Most notably I’ve tweaked the Task Modifiers to match those listed in the LE. I also added in the “Shake off wounds” option to the summary of spending Hero Points. Oh, and I updated the armor section to match the LE approach to armor.
All of this necessitated some layout changes that I’m not entirely enamored of, but it’ll still get the job done.
Oh, and my house rules for kicking and having large shields as an option are still on here, too. Feel free to ignore those if you don’t want ’em in your game.
Download this puppy here:
If you happen to spot anything that needs updating or fixing, please let me know in the comments for this post.
Creative and practical. I know this might be a question for the forums, but do you use any other BOL rules variants/additions besides large shields and kick attacks?
Glad you like it, amigo. It knocked the original together to make running my first attempt easier and only shared it on a whim. But since other folks found it useful I figured I’d be a good guy and update it (thanks to the nudge from ReaperWolf, that is).
I’m trying to think of any other variants I’m using when I get to play BoL (which isn’t terribly often, given my players’ preference for a heavier system (normally BRP) and I’m not coming up with anything off the top of my head. Of course, anything I’ve added I probably don’t even realize is a house rule anymore 🙂
Are there any you’re using, or considering?
Main ones we’ve used:
*immediate counterattack (a la BRP’s riposte rule) if you make a mighty or legendary parry roll.
*’heroic evasion’– pay a hero point to make an active dodge roll
(agility+defense vs. 9), even if you’ve already attacked that round. Most often used to avoid getting squished by giant monsters.
*Giving PC’s the option to add the protection rating of their shield (+1 or +2) to their defense rating and forego the armor bonus.
*Giving shields and balanced weapons like one-handed swords and quarterstaves a bonus to parry.
*Daggers do 1d6 damage in surprise situations (making them more suitable for assassins).
*A boon that allows switching points between defense and melee ratings (and vice versa) to reflect defensive or offensive fighting.
As you can see, most of these expand defensive options for the PC’s. They’ve been more or less cribbed/inspired by BRP.
Interesting stuff, G-Man! And yes, I can definitely see the BRP influence in those.
Ripostes are wonderful, but I hadn’t given any thought on how to implement them in BoL. Now I know. And it gives a strong reason to parry, which is good. Thanks!
I’m especially fond of having shields work as a defense increase rather than as armor. I haven’t tried that yet, but I have pondered it. How as it worked in play for you so far?
The boon for switching points b/w Melee and Defense is tasty, too. My gut reaction is that, since it’s a game, everyone should be allowed to do that, just to open up the tactics a bit. But then I think of the bookkeeping nightmare and like the idea of it only applying to those who have selected the boon. Of course, all of my players would select that boon anyway, cheeky buggers that they are 🙂
Because of the 2d6 curve, increasing defense by a factor of 1 0r 2 makes you significantly harder to hit. This held up during play. (Another fun rule is allowing the PC to sacrifice the shield to ‘absorb’ a successful hit–‘shields will be broken’)
Yeah, keeping track of too much detail in combat isn’t really BOL-like. I like the OSR approach of making up ‘spot’ rules on the fly for what PC’s want to do, or allowing even outlandish things if a hero point is spent.
Sacrificing the shield is beautiful! And, of course, hero points do such a wonderful job of letting things go all kinds of wild without ending up crazy.
I’m an unquestioned “rulings, not rules” fanatic, myself. I know lots of people have had bad experiences over the years which lead to the explosion of rules, but I’ve been fortunate as a player not to have had to suffer jackass GMs. And I’m pretty sure I’m not (and never have been) a jackass GM myself. So that kind of approach works for me. I’m lucky.