Contents
The following additional rules apply in the Old World campaign setting.
- Wilderness exploration & travel: Rules for timekeeping by watches, rest, travel, navigation, and foraging in the wilderness.
- Alchemical crafting: Rules for making potions and other alchemical items.
Rolling ability scores
Ability scores for player characters in the Old World campaign setting are to be generated as follows:
- Roll 4d6, discard the lowest of the four dice, then add up the rest: that’s the ability score. Do this a total of six times, recording the scores in order.
- If none of the scores you’ve rolled are above a 13, or the sum of all of your ability modifiers is 0 or less, reroll the entire set of scores from scratch.)
- Roll one more ability score; replace any existing score with it, if desired (otherwise, discard it).
- If desired, swap any two scores.
Note: Players who do not wish to roll their ability scores may instead choose to take the following standard array of ability scores: 16, 14, 13, 13, 10, 8. These ability scores may be arranged (i.e. assigned to the six attributes) as the player chooses.
Note on XP awards
Player characters in the Old World campaign setting receive experience points for new experiences.
So, killing a monster (or otherwise overcoming it—driving off an enemy is generally as good as slaying it, as is negotiating with it to make it an ally, or otherwise “converting something which is a dangerous obstacle to achieve your goals, into something which is not that”) does indeed yield XP, and a good bit of it, too—but only the first time. Do the same thing again, and you get less XP for it. Killing your twentieth goblin, for example, gets you nothing.
Finding unusual or unique treasure likewise yields XP, as does exploration, the discovery of new places (if they’re different from what you’ve seen before), learning previously-unknown lore, figuring out new ways of doing something, etc. In short: have new experiences, and you will earn experience points.
Note: Characters in the Old World campaign setting, regardless of which rule set they are built with (D&D 3.5, the Beyond Ragnarok rules, Pathfinder, etc.), use the D&D 3e XP track to determine how much XP is needed to advance to the next character level (see table at right).
| Hit Points for Bigger Creatures | |
|---|---|
| Size | HP Multiplier |
| Large | ×11⁄2 |
| Huge | ×2 |
| Gargantuan | ×3 |
| Colossal | ×4 |
Creature hit points
Creatures that are larger that Medium-sized multiply their hit points from Constitution bonus by a factor based on size; see Table: Hit Points for Bigger Creatures. (Note that this multiplier does not apply to hit points gained from hit dice, only to hit points gained from a creature’s Con bonus.)
Stealth & combat
The rules that describe how the Stealth skill interacts with making attacks are modified, in the following way.
The “sniping” rule no longer exists.
When a character who is currently hidden makes an attack, the target of the attack (as well as anyone else who is in a position to see the hidden character) may immediately make a new Perception check to notice and locate the hidden character (against a DC equal to the hidden character’s existing Stealth result). This Perception check gets a bonus depending on how obvious or noticeable the act of attacking is. (Generally, this is +20 for melee attacks, and anywhere from +0 to +10 for ranged attacks, depending on weapon: +10 if the hidden character is attacking with a bow, +5 for a crossbow, +0 for a blowgun.)
Regardless of whether such Perception checks (if any) are successful, a hidden character who had to move out of hiding in order to make an attack is automatically noticed and located at the end of his turn, if he has not successfully hidden again by then. A character who moves out of hiding, then moves back into hiding (i.e., into an area where he has cover or concealment) before the end of his turn, may make a new Stealth check (at his normal Stealth modifier, with no special penalty); if this check is successful, then the character’s stealth remains un-broken (assuming that he wasn’t noticed and located due to making an attack, or taking some other action that caused him to be noticed).