Stance and engaging enemies

[zedturtle]

You might want to consider colour blindness when doing colours for these cards. Pick some colours that can't be mistaken for others at a glance. Obviously if you check more closely the text should be the differentiator but if you're looking for colour then avoiding two that are close in tone would help.

White and Black are obvious, a paler Red and darker Yellow might work.

Alright here are a new set, they are color coded (in both the badge and the bar) and have icons in the badges to help distinguish for color blindness as well. Let me know what y'all think!

[jamesrbrown]

Those are looking great Zed!

Your work has inspired a new idea...

What if you re-designed the cards just a little bit to also accommodate player-hero information, such as name and Parry rating? This would add a new dimension to the card: personalisation. Follow me for a second.

What if you then designed adversary cards that included title and Parry rating along with special abilities?

If a Loremaster had these cards available, he could lay them down on the table during a combat episode. Players would choose their stance card and lay it on the table, representing their player-hero. As long as their isn't more than twice the number of enemy cards as player-hero cards, one player-hero may choose a rearward stance card for every two player-heroes choosing a close combat stance card. For example, if 13 Orc Soldiers attack 6 player-heroes, none of the player-heroes can choose a rearward stance card because there are more than double the amount of Orcs compared to player-heroes. If, however, there are only 12 Orc Soldiers at the start of combat, 2 player-heroes could choose their rearward stance card while 4 of them would choose a close combat stance card and enter an engagement.

If the number of adversary cards is greater than the number of player-hero stance cards, the Loremaster chooses engagements and pairs the cards on the table following the guidelines in the rulebook. Following the example from above, 12 Orc Soldiers attack 6 player-heroes. Two player-heroes choose forward stance, one chooses open stance, one chooses defensive stance and the last two choose rearward, placing their cards on the table. The Loremaster pairs 3 Orc Soldier cards with each player-hero card in close combat (the maximum number of enemies each). If there had been any Goblin Archers among them, the Loremaster would have assigned at least 1 Orc Soldier card to each close combat stance card, but could have held the Goblin Archers back to fire their bows.

If the number of player-hero cards equals or exceeds the number of adversary cards on the table, the player-heroes get to choose the engagements. They must pair up (engage) at least one player-hero card with every enemy card and follow the normal rules for choosing rearward (2:1 ratio). Six player-heroes are attacked by a Cave-Troll. At least two player-hero cards must be paired with the Troll (up to 5 of them can be). The others can choose rearward stance.

Each round, the player-heroes choose a stance and can swap out their card accordingly. However, they must remain paired in an engagement until they defeat those enemies. If all the enemies in their engagement are defeated, count the remaining number of adversary cards on the table. If there are more adversaries than player-heroes, the Loremaster pairs a new enemy with them, borrowing from another engagement, or he can allow the player-hero to decide what to do and adjust accordingly. For example, 3 companions are in a fight with 8 Wild Wolves. The Loremaster has paired 3 Wolf cards each to two companion cards, and 2 Wolf cards to the last companion card. The last companion defeats both of his enemies before his friends finish theirs. The Loremaster allows the player-hero to decide what enemy he will attack next and then takes that card from its current engagement and pairs it with the player-hero. In this case, I would also rule the player-hero could simply choose rearward stance and attack any target at will. The rulebook doesn't deal with this kind of situation, but the important thing is to have only one player-hero per engagement so that the attack and defense TN is established based on their chosen stance.

As you can see, using cards should help tremendously to manage engagements while providing information about combat TNs, Parry ratings, combat tasks, and special abilities.

[JoeArcher]

These look lovely and I think I prefer them to the stance mat. Then I'll just some miniatures to keep track of engagement pairings.

[zedturtle]

[quote=jamesrbrown]Your work has inspired a new idea...[/quote]

That's kind of how I envision those who will use these cards with miniatures will implement the idea, although without the personalization (though adding that is easy).

Making adversary cards might be tricky, as I don't want to step on C7's toes too much by making too much of the game available outside of the official rules... Maybe I can make a generic Adversary card?

[Seosaidh]

You're cards are very beautiful! I think that a generic adversary card would be great! You could simply make fields for important characteristics such as Attibute level, Endurance?, Hate?, Parry, Armour, Weapon Skills, Special Abilities? (I would imagine that there would only be room to list, not explain). You probably don't really need to list all the skill groups, although you could if you have room. Endurance and Hate might also not be good for the characters to see (maybe the LM could write these on the reverse side of the card so they are hidden). The Layout in the Revised core rules could be copied exactly, except you wouldn't fill in the numbers/weapon skill names. You probably should also add a Name field above the attribute level to identify the card. Of course, the top banner should be tinted red/black with a Red Eye icon for the diamond...

By the way, did I mention that these cards are awesome? Thank you!

[JoeArcher]

Yes a generic advesary card (perhaps form fillable pdf) would be quite awesome.

Your cards are great btw

[Hermes Serpent]

Take a look at the French orques-gobelins.pdf linked in my sig.

Some nice design work there but it's almost certainly infringing on C7's IP to put out that much information from the game.

[beckett]

You might want to consider colour blindness when doing colours for these cards. Pick some colours that can't be mistaken for others at a glance. Obviously if you check more closely the text should be the differentiator but if you're looking for colour then avoiding two that are close in tone would help.

White and Black are obvious, a paler Red and darker Yellow might work.

Alright here are a new set, they are color coded (in both the badge and the bar) and have icons in the badges to help distinguish for color blindness as well. Let me know what y'all think!

These are great! Thank you for the effort, Zedturtle!

[Glorelendil]

Now I want a deck of official adversary cards with Jon's artwork on each...

[zedturtle]

Now I want a deck of official adversary cards with Jon's artwork on each...

That would fabulous. I nominate Tarot size and volunteer myself to do the layout. Now just to get Jon onboard and then there's the small matter of the approvals process, surely that won't more than a day or two...