Ask Jiro presents an assortment of kobold scribes and sages to clarify Tales of the Valiant RPG rules and confirm errata sleuthed out by the ToV community!
Since the announcement of ToV, the dynamic community on the Kobold Press Official Discord has been a vital asset. They’ve helped shape the direction and momentum of the game. If you haven’t already joined this diverse, dedicated, lively community, head over and get involved! Your voices, ideas, and opinions are welcome!
This month’s list of questions is all about the Game Master’s Guide, which is getting great reviews!
Pelimar’s conflation clarification on chase rules
I have a question about the chase rules. On page 191 under the Resolve Obstacles header, for Medium Chase (5 Locations), it says to increase the DCs for the second and third locations by 1. Then the next sentence says to increase the DCs of the third and fourth locations by 2.
Is it supposed to be fourth and fifth locations by 2? Also, the Obstacle Progress table doesn’t seems to be missing a row for check results of 1 to 4 over the DC.
ANSWER!
You’re right. For the Medium Chase, it should say, “The DCs for the second and third locations after the first each increase by 1. Then the DCs for the fourth and fifth locations each increase by 2.” We have noted that correction for future errata.
As for the Obstacle Progress table, a result of 1–4 above the DC isn’t different from a result that is equal to the DC. But we agree that leaving that information off the table might cause confusion. We’ve made a note for this as well.
Thank you for bringing these issues to our attention, Pelimar!
Lore Captain Brapollo’s Bloodied condition query
On page 72, according to the description of bloodied, the condition requires that a creature drop below 50%. Would that mean that technically PCs also get the bloodied condition under the same circumstances as monsters can?
ANSWER!
Bloodied is an variant rule that a GM can use on whichever side of the table they want. That means it’s optional, and up to the GM. Many of the optional rules in the Game Master’s Guide, such as the bloodied condition, are written to be open enough to apply to monsters or PCs or both.
The text for bloodied says that some creatures might experience this condition. So, it’s even possible that the bloodied condition only triggers for certain creatures and not all creatures (be they PCs or monsters) within the game.
MrLou contemplates the mathematics of Angry Mobs and public Brawls.
In the Brawls and Mobs section (pages 68 and 69) it says the mob swarm total hit points are increased by 25 percent. Is this based on the hit points of one creature or the total of creatures? In the same paragraph, it says a mob swarm is comprised of roughly fifty creatures.
For instance, a commoner has 8 HP. Does this mean that fifty commoners in a mob swarm only have 10 HP (8 x 1.25%), or do they have 500 HP (8 x 50 x 1.25%)? And are fifty commoners still dealing only one attack with no increase in damage?
ANSWER!
The swarm mechanic is intended to be an on-the-fly way for the GM to manage a large group. It helps a GM not have to run fifty stat blocks at once.
When you use these swarm rules, start from the creature’s base statistics. Make all your changes from there rather than multiplying anything by 50.
In your example, a swarm of angry commoners would have 10 HP, and it would have all the same actions as a standard commoner. For the commoner specifically, I could see a GM ruling that Angry Mob would deal ~51 damage (49 members + the starting member who deals 2) since all the commoners in the swarm are within 10 feet of each other.
This gives a GM guidelines for making an epic “mowing down hordes of goblins with each swing” scene, while keeping it a reasonable challenge and without adding too much extra bookkeeping.
Frogprince392 asks about NPC and monster lineage conversions in TOV
So, I noticed that the NPCs appendix of the Monster Vault had none of the lineages from the Player’s Guide in the NPC Features tables. No humans, elves, or smallfolk, and none of the standard villainous Humanoids such as drow, duergar, kobold, orc, or even satarre. Was this left out on purpose? Some player lineage traits don’t exactly line up when moving to the monster stat blocks. I did notice in the lycanthrope template in the Game Master’s Guide used an elf for the were-elk Stat. It has Magic Ancestry and something new, “Elvish Senses.” Were these NPC traits left out in error, or could we possibly see them in the future?
ANSWER!
The NPC Features table in the NPC Appendix references only Humanoids that appear in the Monster Vault—specifically, where a GM might want a hand in discerning which traits to incorporate into an NPC stat block. PC lineages were purposefully left out because those are relatively straightforward in what they would add to a stat block versus something more complex like a grimlock or wyrdling.
As for the example of lycanthrope in the Game Master’s Guide, we included the “Elvish Senses” trait because “Heightened Senses” is a very specific monster trait. Elves in the Player’s Guide also have “Heightened Senses” as a lineage trait. So that we didn’t have one term mean tow different things in the GMG, we renamed the elf’s lineage trait from Heightened Senses to Elvish Senses.
PCs and monsters are very different, so there will be situations where PC lineage traits don’t always translate one-for-one to monster statistics. Some finesse might be needed to fully make an NPC of a specific lineage work!
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SEE WHAT THE NOISE IS ABOUT!
