As I said, these rules are moderately complex. The minimum time per turn is 1 week. But I will do more if orders come in quickly and I have time. So..
Da Rules Every Campaign turn or “week” will have a different theme to the gladiator event, sometimes there will be a general combat, sometimes a duals tournament, maybe even fights against animals. This will be announced at the start of the week. Fighters must be at the town to participate in an arena fight.
Each arena fight will have a total purse. That amount is split up according to where a fighter places in the fight. First place gets half of the purse, and then each place after that gets half of the remaining pot.
The Campaign Map:
You can form units of your gladiators that move around to various places on the campaign map. These can gather, craft, build a camp, or even attack an enemy camp.
Any unit has a base movement of 2 hexes on the campaign map. Some items will become available that allows you to move faster.
Town (You guys are free to name the town)
This is where the gladiator arena is and where everyone will start out.
In Town there is a safe storage bank, a trainer, a market, trade depot, and of course the arena.
Bank: Stores all of your money and equipment without risk of losing it, pretty simple.
Trainer: Your starter characters start with full stats, new recruits start with based stats and must be trained up.
The trainer has 3 slots, these slots can be bid on by the gladiator schools for a guarantee for 1 stat increase for the gladiator being trained.
Market: Weapons and materials can be sold at auction by gladiator schools. These are then bid on by the rest of the schools.
Trade Depot: Every few weeks a caravan arrives with various different goods that can be bid on.
Rest of the Campaign map features:
Mines, Quarry, Woods, Open land. Any Hex can be occupied by an unlimited number of schools. However if two schools that consider each other hostile occupy the same Hex with gladiators, a fight breaks out.
Mines: Ore for metal weapons is mined here, simple enough.
Quarry: Stone for buildings and walls is mine here.
Woods: Trees for buildings, weapon handles, and bows/xbows are cut here. Leather from animals caught is also gathered here.
Open Land: School camps are built on these hexes, at camps, you can build various buildings and build fortifications with wooden or stone walls.
The Camp: A school can set its camp up at a open land Hex and begin setting up buildings for improving the school.
Stone Wall: Permanent wall for keeping bad guys out. Walls are considered to have stairs for archers to get on top of them. 3 Stone per section
Wooden Wall: Wall that is considered to have 100 HP, can be broken down.
1 wood per section
All buildings require 2 Wood or 2 stone to build. Wood buildings can be destroyed in combat, stone can only be destroyed if a camp is captured.
Archery Range: Trainer character can use to train trainees in dexterity.
Training dummy: Trainer can train trainees in strength
Wood burner (Stone only): Creates fuel for blacksmith
Blacksmith: Uses 1 fuel to create weapons, armor and shields. Half of the strength requirement in ore is used to make a weapon along with 1 wood for the handle.
Shields and armor require metal (or leather) equal to their protective value.
Bowyer: Makes bows as well as wooden (1/2 damage) weapons.
Crafting System:
The crafting and gathering system is pretty simple. Each gladiator doing nothing in a camp or at a gathering location gets 5 crafting actions per “week”
All start at a crafting level of 1 and can get as high as six.
To succeed in a skill you have to roll your skill level or less on a d6
Those actions can be to gather materials, build buildings or craft something.
For example Urist the dwarf (skill 1) wants to craft a sword. He uses all 5 of his actions on swordcrafting. He has plenty of metal ore for the task. He rolls a 3,5,3,6,1. The one is a sucessfully crafted sword. 10 crafting or gathering successes elevate you to the next level of that skill.
Tactical rules:
When gladiators enter combat, whether in the arena or outside of it, they will be using a set of fairly simple rules. The “under the hood” part of these rules is roughly based on a miniatures ruleset called Melee as part of “The Fantasy Trip” series.
I have somewhat simplified the rules and what you as a player will see is abstracted to play off like a story RPG. When a fight begins you will PM me the disposition of your fighter (Berzerker, Aggressive, Defensive, Standard) as well as some specifics of how you would like combat to play out for your gladiator(s)
Ill then run a few turns of the fight, then post the results, giving you a chance to modify your orders and disposition.
Dispositions:
Berzerker: The character concentrates only on all out attack, he'll throw any throwing weapons he has, and prefer 2H weapons when possible. If the fighter is a shield warrior, he will use shield bash techniques whenever possible.
+2 to damage -2 Dex
Aggressive: This character makes strong attacks, but keeps himself more restrained than a fighter in Berzerker disposition. He tries to make careful and precise, but strong attacks. He will not often try to defend as he aggressively attacks the enemy.
+1 to DEX +1 to Damage
Defensive: This Character goes all out on the defense and concentrates on defending against attacks and dodging ranged attacks, looking for the opportunity of a counterattack. Every attack successfully defended temporarily gives the enemy an additional -1 penalty to dexterity until he either succeeds in hitting or disengages.
Standard: The gladiator simply acts in a balanced fashion. He will attack when there is a good opportunity, and defend when at a point of weakness. Ranged characters will try to stay and range and hit the enemy.
Most of this part will be done “under the hood” but you should still know generally how the combat system works when it comes to building your fighters and
Basics of a character.
Three Attributes
Dexterity- This measures the ability for a character to hit an enemy, how easily he can disengage from a fight, and whether he strikes first when entering into combat.
Strength- Most importantly, this determines how much damage the character can take before being knocked out or killed. It also determines how heavy of a weapon he can carry and how well he wrestles if he enters into a grapple.
Movement- Human Characters have a base of 10 movement ability. Other races may have different numbers. This is the amount of hexes a character can move per turn. A character can use half its movement points and still attack in a turn.
This number is affected by the weight of armor he is wearing.
Basics of Combat:
Once two characters are in adjacent hexes they have entered combat, you can not switch weapons without dropping the one you are holding while in combat, and have to disengage to move away. A character who hits an enemy without being hit pushes that enemy back and can either pursue or disengage.
Dropped weapons (bad attack rolls) and weapons from fallen gladiators can be picked up. But picking up in combat leaves you vulnerable.
Attacking: Attacks are done by throwing 3d6, rolling less then or equal to their current Dexerity (after modifiers) his a hit.
Attacking an actively defending enemy causes you to instead throw 4d6
Continuing to miss a character who is in Defensive disposition will get you off balance and cause you to get -1 penalties to dexterity every time until you hit or disengage.
Damage: Damage is rolled entirely on the weapon carried, as will be show in a chart below. Berzerker and Aggressive disposition add a small bonus to damage. A certain amount of damage is blocked by armor and shields. (See list below)
Taking 5 damage that gets through armor lowers your Dexterity by -2 for the next turn.
Taking 8 damage knocks you down.
Taking 8 damage after armor carries a 1/6 chance of causing a major crit, weapon crits with Blunt weapons can cause slow healing crushing injuries. Bladed weapons can remove limbs and cause decapitations.
Weapons: You can carry two weapons and a dagger. Wooden weapons are 1/2 damage.
Throwing a weapon comes at a -1 Dexterity penalty per hex
Dagger 1d6-1 -Can be thrown
Str-
Large Dagger 1d6 -Can be thrown
Str- 9
1H Hammer 1d6+1 -Can be thrown
Str 10
Shortsword 2d6-1
Str-11
Mace 2d6-1 -Can be thrown
Str-11
1H Axe 1d6+2 -Can be thrown
Str-11
Longsword 2d6
Str-12
Morningstar 2d6+1
Str-13
2H Sword 3d6-1
Str-14
2H Axe 3d6
Str-15
Pole Weapons: Moving, then attacking is a considered a charge. Charging against standing still pole weapons gives the person with a pole weapon +2 Dexterity for fighting against the charge. A gladiator charging in a straight line with a pole weapon gains double damage.
1H Javelin 1d6-1 -Can be thrown
Str-11
2H Spear 1d6+2 -Can be thrown
Str-11
Pike 2d6+2
Str-15
Ranged Weapons: Ranged weapons can shoot 6 hexes without penalty 7-10 Hexes and -1
11-13 Hexes at -2 and so on.
Shortbow: 1d6-1 2 shots per turn if Dex is 15+
Str: 9
Longbow: 1d6+2 2 shots per turn if Dex is 18+
Str: 11
Light Xbow 2d6 Every other turn unless Dex 14+
Str: 12
Heavy Xbow 3d6 Every 3rd turn unless Dex is 16+
Str: 15 Then every other turn.
Grappling: A gladiator can attempt to grapple with an enemy and begin wrestling. If successful, both gladiators drop any weapons or shields that aren't daggers and go to ground.
Higher dexterity makes it easier to disengage from grappling.
In Wresting:
Dagger 1d6+2
Bare hands, stronger enemy 1d6-4
Bare hands same str 1d6-3
Bare hands weaker enemy 1d6-2
Armor and Shields:
Plate-Stop 5 damage -6 Dexterity and MP
Chainmail-stop 3 damage -4 Dexterity and MP
Leather-stop 2 damage -2 Dexterity and MP
Large Shield stop 2 damage -1 Dexterity when being used
Small shield stop 1 damage
If there are any questions rules wise just ask.
Starting Players: Give me your school name, school color, and the Name and stats of your first gladiator. You can add 8 points onto base stats of Dex and Str.
Dwarves: Base Str:10 Dex :6 MP:8 +1 Damage to Axes and Hammers
Elves: Base Str: 6 Dex 10 MP:12
Humans Base Str: 8 Dex: 8 MP:10