If you snap attack you can't attack on your turn. Its not extra attack, it's main purpose is to screw over spellcasters or to kill someone before they get their turn
Something I love about this system is how the precisely murderous feature of daggers and stilettos make them super useful for assasins Execution attacks with them are very deadly
It's sad to me that this system doesn't get the love it deserves. It's a genius set of rules that solves so many problems 5e players are familiar with, while keeping the fun crunch of 5e, and actually making it more fun in the process.
Yeah, agreed. I keep hearing it called an osr game, but it's got DNA from both 5e and the OSR. Of course, it's too 5e for the OSR crowd and too OSR for some of the 5e crowd. If more people just tried it, they'd find it's a fantastic game that sits between the two!
@@matthewrogers2866I'm from 4e back when it was introduced; Hated it. I knew about other systems but didn't find any at the time (just ignorance of the hobby, self taught group). Moved to 5e, breath of fresh air by comparison. I now run the without number systems exclusively (system issues with 5e, but also political, and lacking dm support). People are moving guys. There is hope. The answer is to Adjudicate games for strangers to introduce them to the system. I'm a forever DM, if someone wants to play, I choose the system, or they don't game.
I think the snap attack is more of a reaction attack, not extra, as you have to sacrifice your main action to do this. Still useful tho, due to spellcasting rules you can use this to interrupt spells and no mage ever gets to do anything (I think that's why it is not available to mobs by default). Additionally I think the swarm attack is the closest to the help action in DnD. It can be very useful for characters with weak attacks, like a tapped mage, which is basically any mage at low levels. They can just sit back in safety with ranged weapons and buff the martials' attacks. Also technically (and funnily) you don't actually need to ever shoot the weapon, so you don't need to worry about reloading, ammo or anything.
Think you're spot on with snap attacks, but I'd rule swarm attacks at range do cost ammo. Only one combatant needs to make the roll (and gets the bonus), but everyone participating is still "making an attack" and thus would consume ammo if that attack is with a ranged weapon (assuming it uses ammunition). Another way I'd think about it is that a ranged weapon that isn't consuming necessary ammo (e.g., a bow that's not using arrows) has no effective range and therefore isn't eligible for this action.
Plz like and share this video! I really want Worlds without number to be more popular! Link to the Aetherial Expanse kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/977277590/the-aetherial-expanse-setting-guide?ref=4qsw45 Thank you Ghostfire gaming for sponsoring this video!
Hey, your take on snap attacks isn't quite right - you sacrifice your main action to use a snap attack, so not an extra attack. It's mostly to shut down an enemy caster - if they get hit in a round before their turn, they can't cast a spell that round. My most memorable use of it was to outdraw an opponent in a one on one gunfight - the enemy beat my initiative roll and went for his gun first, so I made a snap attack to put a round in him first (and made the shot too 😂 ). It's also good if there's one guy the party absolutely wants dead before they can ring an alarm or dash away to safety! Ready also doesn't mean "in your hand" I believe; it's the first few inventory slots on your kit list, so a sword or crossbow you haven't yet drawn counts as Ready if it's strapped to your belt or back and immediately accessible - providing the crossbow is already loaded that is! Great video man, loving these so far!
This system looks great and I hope you keep covering it. Have been looking into stars without number as a potential system for a campaign so seeing some of the basics explained is nice.
More WWN! An SRD is coming for Cities Without Number which will have the base game mechanics so I am hoping for more 3rd party material to appear for all the Without Number series of games.
As soon as I looked over the content in the free version I knew I wanted to try running this system. Reading through made gave me that hunger to run that I haven't had in a long time.
It's freaking great - the expansion adds tons to the setting, more classes and like 23 or so origin foci to let players be nonhuman weirdos. The subreddit is a great resource, but could do with some more members ^_^
Yes part 2!! I love this system and your videos, so this is a match made in heaven, also did you know that the system is fully compatible with SWN and the upcoming wolves of god so you can, take pieces from SWN like the psychic class and some foci from both systems to add more options for your WWN campaign, pretty cool!
Upcoming Wolves Of God? My hardcover copy is wondering what you're talking about?? Maybe Cities Without Number, which my wallet is still wondering about.
So here's my thoughts on WWN combat with my few years' experience with it. Also, I forgot you can't split and shoot. I feel like any DnD GM is going to forget this is a rule though. Honestly, I don't think it really changes all that much if you also make only 1 on turn action in a round as well so it balances out. The Good: Swarm attacks are like the mosh pit move. You described it well. It's like help where you make one person's turn significantly easier, however, you just have to choose your swarm target and your target is anything you can hit on your turn which is usually longer reach than the help action which is nice and allows for interesting situations to be set up by a GM even against a bunch of goblins. Move Actions I like in general, great way to make things more interesting without bloating by adding in like another kind of a bonus action I love how reloading bows is a move action. It is so much better to the flow than it being a whole main action. Yes, the book says "Main Action" but that's for crossbows and hurlaunts. With bows You can reload as a bonus action if you have shoot 1 as well, so there's a lot of wiggle room. I feel like crossbows should also be movement to reload because only the hurlaunt does enough damage to really need a main action reload for balancing imo. I also love the screen ally move action. Both of these add a lot to the game where movement itself is a resource where planting and firing and tanking come at mobility but are easily accessible. Shock damage is great. Lets melee be scary like it should be, though I have to say the AC limit is very easy to forget. I also love how cover and stuff is listed. Very easy to know what they do and how much they do all in one place. Execution Attacks are amazing. Especially for experts because you get basically advantage on it since you know the DC before going in and it lets you pluck off or massively wound a target before combat even starts which is really great for a ninja or sniper build. At my table I always made sure to let these come up often whenever someone built into it. It was a lot of fun. The Bad: Scenes are commonly mistaked by DnD GMs as a "Short rest", or at least I did this and a few friends until the spells showed me up. They are encounter-reset. It's like if you got second wind at the start of every combat encounter. However, this raises some issues because while it's great for combat stuff, things like the Expert's reroll can go an entire session without coming back due to a heist scene. Or maybe it comes back every time you enter another room? idk, it's so loosey-goosey that your GM's interpretation of this alone can make tables completely different resource management systems altogether. You didn't really cover skills much. Yeah, it's add the number to check, but that system relies entirely on the GM's interpretation of the skills except for in case the book makes distinct calls and there's some weird overlaps in skills like notice/know and administer for example. It all depends on your GM if that skill ever comes up or is useful in general or even what stats are useful for those skills. This system has so much variation that every table could be playing a different game. If you brought in a character from one table to another, it could be totally crippled. I also can't overstate how much other system bias comes into this as well. Exert will have dex be "acrobatics" and str be "athletics" for DnD GMs but one from say Star Frontiers exert might be con because that's the equivillant stat used for running, and jumping and maybe reason that since str in this system is encumbrance, it'll work for lifting but suddenly a dex character isn't nearly as expeditious from one game to the other and both GMs are equally valid in how they run the game as described by the book. tl;dr the skill system is so loose every GM has a different skill system from each other. Morale Checks and Instinct checks for Monsters I think is good on paper and for new GMs, but I find it slows combat down to have to roll 2d6 for every monster on my table every time a monster falls over until they run. If 6/10 of my goblins die in 2 rounds, the other 4 are just out of there. It speeds things up, makes the players feel great, and feels realistic without extra effort. Instinct checks are more interesting by essentially having a built-in taunt response but having to flip to the section where it is and then choose the correct one for the creature type slowed this down. I'd advise just writing an instinct fail action on a note card with the rest of your monster's stats Speaking of monsters, this book is not great at helping you here. Yes, it has a bunch of statblocks that are condensed into a few numbers and it's great they have skill +xyz instead of having every skill listed underneath them like in DnD. However, it still assumes you're going back to the weapons section and manually attaching shields, weapons, and armor to these monsters which increases prep time and also doesn't have any encounter assistance options. It's hard to tell how many creatures to add with what stats or abilities for your party to be challenged, but not outright killed and the book basically is built for sandbox games with Breath of the Wild Guardian-like encounters that'll just outright kill PCs who come in unprepared "The creatures of a sandbox campaign don't care what level your party is" (282). There's a section to help make boss abilities, but just says to add them on with points based on how insane this thing is in the world which I still have a hard time wrapping my head around as a GM, because even if I made a god-like monster it's going to have like 60HP and a level 5 party can kill that in 2 turns and some of these abilities basically guarantee a glass cannon boss a lot of these things will outright kill a PC in one shot like a spell or double damage to the next attack on a marked target. Like, I assume it makes it so no boss can ever be alone, but it isn't outright said anywhere that I can think of. I've had to make all my statblocks by hand, based around my party's statistics to avoid this, but that increases prep time a lot which is why I haven't found the monster section of the book very useful nor do I recommend it. Though, maybe someone else has a great experience with it, I'd love to hear if there is one! On Turn Actions. I hate how it's "as many as GM says", because now every table has a different amount of essentially bonus actions you have in a turn which makes for wildly different games. The only time Delayed Action is useful is when you go high in initiative if it's individual and not group or when you want to essentially delay your action but still move like waiting for your archer to disengage so you can follow behind or wait for him to get to you and screen him. It's kind of niche and you can still use other on-turn actions when you do this, which is a GM's can of worms because there's a lot of these things from various sources but usually class features. Again, this is why I don't like how there's no guidance on how to run on-turn actions like there is for instant actions, main, and move actions. Snap attack is usually unoptimal because -4 is massive in this game and you sacrifice your turn and can't even move. It is NOT an extra attack, because it sacrifices your main action to use it, its usecase is when you need to act higher in initiative like if you rolled a 2 and the boss rolled a 20 you can act before the boss, but at a penalty. So there are times you can make use out of it, but it's very risky due to the penalty and loss of movement. I should also point out that it's only useful to martials. You can't cast spells, or use arts this way. The WWN held action is better because it lets you do both your on turn and main actions later on at any time. Pretty much it's what you want to do whenever you can because there's no drawback (other than your move action) so long as you have high initiative or win group initiative. Dual Wielding sucks. +2 damage -1 hit isn't worth over getting a large two handed weapon with better shock and thus better damage on average. Or even just a shield which lets you avoid taking damage which is big because HP in this game doesn't hit triple digits until late game and even then you have to build for it. Grappling sucks on most characters because you have to hit, then pass an opposed check and then continue to pass the opposed check every round and you can't move or weapon attack. Monks (Vowed) are really the only character that would do well if they could grapple since their unarmed strike laughs at weapon attacks being gone, and natural AC would have basically no resistance unless it's a mage, beast, or another vowed.
Good analysis overall, but I have a few disagreements with the nits you pick. The usefulness of skills depends greatly on the type of challenges the players look for. A wilderness exploration game will see a lot of Survive being used, whereas on an urban campaign it's not going to come up nearly as often. The opposite is true of Perform Enemies (or NPC allies) shouldn't check for Morale every time one of their allies drop. "PCs never check Morale. NPCs do so when *an ally first is downed,* when *half of them are down,* or when *shaken by some great reverse or terrifying foe.* Even on a successful Morale check, *NPCs will not continue to fight when it is obviously futile or not worth the risk.* " (page 59, Quick Reference Sheet, Morale Checks). Page 49 also suggests that being ambushed may be one such great reverse if the NPCs are undisciplined or "unmilitary", at the GM's discretion, and of course there's the _Phobic Storm_ spell. You are right that the monster section is kind of bare-bones and needs a bit of effort to get useful enemies, but once these are set up, they can be stored away and recycled, like we used to do in DnD with orcs and goblins and other civilization-y monsters. Alternatively, use stat blocks for monsters from any of the 20th century Dungeons and Dragons editions. As for the lack of mechanism for building balanced encounters, that's not one of the default premises of the system, so it's not there. If you want to have a campaign that feels more heroic, where the PCs can afford to just go into the enemy lair without preparation or planning, consider springing for the deluxe version and using the rules from the "Heroic Classes and Characters" section, starting on page 356. Alternatively, the currently-under-construction Cities Without Number system has a "Judging Combat Difficulty" section on page 199 of the current beta (0.23), which could be adapted for WWN use and serve as a yardstick for creating "balanced" encounters, but it's going to take some work, since CWN has deviated quite a bit from the WWN and SWN chassis it is built upon.. On-Turn actions could be limited to a fixed number per round, but then you'd be in a situation where one cannot open a door and draw their weapon in the same six-seconds interval. Infinite uses of on-turn actions would also mean being able to open as many doors as you could reach and drop as many items as you have readied, and speak as many short phrases as you like, all in a six-second interval. It gets to a point where it's just silly. _Snap Attacks_ are often a desperation move, and makes no sense if one has won Initiative, but consider that an 8th level Warrior wit a -4 to hit has at least the same odds of hitting an opponent as his 8th level Expert fellow, and probably more since the Expert is much less likely to spring for Punch-3, Shoot-3 or Stab-3, and it costs one only their Main Action; Move and On-Turn actions should still be taken on their turn, as Initiative mandates. Unlike in D&D5e, _Hold an Action_ cannot cross the end of Round boundary, so it can't be used to preempt an opponent's action. Dual-wielding does indeed suck, but it's not unusable. It's a lot easier to sneak a pair of daggers through that door guard than to do the same with a two-handed sword, and it's better than wielding just one against opponents with relatively low AC. Grappling does suck in general, although you can build a character around it by picking the Unarmed Combatant and Shocking Assault foci. For everyone else, it's occasionally useful when trying to keep an opponent from moving, such as when ambushing scouting parties, or when trying to keep that pesky cult leader from reaching the sacrificial altar.
Remember that WWN is more closely related to the Old School Renaissance play style. Encounter balancing is not a thing there and it is more about creating a consistent world and telegraphing potential danger to players so that they can turn around before facing something that will kill them. There are also the reaction and morale systems for this purpose. There is a document/ set of documents called the Principia Apocrypha by Matt Finch that I suggest you read and have your players read to understand the context of a system like WWN.
So happy to see this system getting the love it deserves! I bought the book for the insanely valuable worldbuilding tools and to my joy found the entire book packed with insights on planning and running sandbox adventures. A lot of sage advice on adventuring procedures that is sorely missing in modern rule books. The actual system is one I always wanted to try running with my friends, but never got round to! These two videos so far have rekindled my love and resparked my desire to run this system. You've made a subscriber of me! I hope this does well and continues!
Nooooooooo why does this video only have 7k views!?!?!? This is such a good video serving as an intro into the series. I hope this blows up and you make this into a series!
It's nice to see some WWN content! I had a blast playing an Expert in a campaign. I wish I had more friends that would jump into this system, so here's hoping your videos inspire some more people to check it out and give it a try. :)
Very glad you are covering this, i found it by chance before seeing your videos and fell in love with the system and setting, it fits exactly what i wanted out of a ttrpg
you are wrong about snap attack. It sacrifices the main action. You use snap attacks when you want to move, attack, and then move again. Or if you want to attack before it's your turn.
I bought this book for the world building tables, but after reading the combat and action mechanics, I will probably be home brewing this into my 5e campaigns.
From the wording of Snap Attack, I think it's closer to a readied action than an extra attack? Since it requires you to *not do* your main action that round...
God I wish you continued with this. Sucks that 5e is still so popular when its not nearly as tight and well made as people believe it is. Thanks for what you did anyways.
Been GMing Godbound lately and played a session of someone else's campaign. It's fun but the feel is different because it's tough to have combat encounters in between "helpless mook" and "ancient elder god with an army". You have to approach it with a focus on PCs making major changes to the setting quickly, like taking over a province and rapidly turning it into a fiefdom of super-fertile fields and golem laborers. I'd like to see the channel talk about the adventure design tools in WWN, Godbound, and SWN.
Would love to see a follow up on the armour, weapon and spell crafting systems, and maybe a spotlight on the monsters for the GMs? You dont screw with WWNs giants and dragons, let me tell you that. Arratus, and deeps are both cool features too - plus the outsider influences and the effects on demihumans for slaves/labourers/foodstock? Just more pls XD
@PackTactics WWN does not mention grid rules because it assumes the use of tape measure on an open table in the tradition of table-top war games. This makes positioning much more nuanced and requires frequent GM adjudication for edge cases (e.g. cover, reach).
Feels like either approach totally work, as the table prefers (or the GM at least)! Although I always assumed Kevin was thinking of the "theater of the mind" scenario; providing a bit of structure for a game, the table's imagination create the story.
7:43 Shouldn't it be 1d20+4, not +3? You didn't add the Base Attack Bonus. The example on page 46 shows Kham getting a +4 with effectively the same stats (just melee instead of ranged).
@@LaMirah the spells names are all like 4 or 5 word phrases that are very flavorful, but not memorable snappy stuff like Magic Missile. I've read the spell selection twice and I couldn't tell you the name of a single spell in it.
Are there mechanics for non-combat stuff? I feel like that's one of D&D's weak points and something like ICRPG's effort mechanics for things like picking a lock sound interesting when applied in situations with time constraints.
