This page contains Blood Red Roses' rules for combat, including armour, black powder and healing, magic and skill use.
In combat we need to keep excitement and action balanced with the safety of the individual and the group. To achieve this the following ground rules are in use in this system:
Armour adds extra hit points to the location it covers, the values for armour are shown below, different types of armour can be layered to a maximum of two layers.
| Armour | Value |
|---|---|
| Leather armour | 1 point |
| Thick leather (5mm min) | 2 points |
| Leather with metal | 2 points |
| Ring mail/Bezainted | 3 points |
| Chainmail | 4 points |
| Brigadine | 4 points |
| Plate | 5 points |
Metal armours, (4 points or greater), have an added advantage, against improvised weapons, knives, sticks, tools, etc, they double their armour value. A set of chainmail will count as 8 points of armour against a man with a knife. Against weapons designed to weapons, spears, swords, axes, etc they have no specific advantage.
A recent invention, black powder weapons are loud, messy and occasionally devastating. Caps obtained from the referee's power all black powder weapons, each powder charge or cap is individually wrapped in tin foil to keep it dry and to slow down the reloading process. Caps without such a wrapping should be considered to have been used and should be discarded.
Black powder can be obtained prior to game from the referees, or can be found/stolen/bought in game from players or from NPCs. Initially a player with an appropriate weapon starts with 10 shots.
A man portable black powder weapon does 1 point of damage and ignores all armour; it will literally kill an ordinary outright if they are shot in the chest. Even a person or creature with multiple hit points will be knocked off their feet by the impact and noise of an Aquebuse or Flintlock.
A character with at least Grade 2 in alchemy can produce shots for a weapon. They must be a member of the Alchemists Guild as its recipe is a guild secret. At grade 2 the character can make one shot per hour of work at a cost of 2 pennies per shot for raw ingredients.
At Grade 3 the greater knowledge of the alchemist allows the production of 2 shots per hour of work at a cost of 1 penny per shot for raw ingredients.
At grade 4 a character can produce 4 shots per hour of work at a cost of 1 penny per shot for raw ingredients.
| Weapons | Range |
|---|---|
| Derringer style weapon | 5 metres |
| Flintlock pistol | 10 metres |
| Aquebuse | 20 metres |
| Cannon | 50 metres (see referee for damage) |
| Bombard | Siege ranges (see referee for damage) |
Wounds and injuries are the unavoidable consequence of combat. Healing unassisted is a slow perilous business, wounds take months to knit, bones may heal crooked, and more commonly death follows from the wound going bad resulting in blood poisoning. For these reason healing with assistance is the path of choice for most characters.
The most common form of healing is that practised by the herbalist, every community has someone who has some knowledge of the healing properties of plants. By applying herbs to a wound and bandaging the affected body part the natural process of healing can be accelerated.
Game mechanics: The character healer applies herbs to the characters wound, the healing time of the wound is dependent on the level of the herbalist skill:
Herb quickly lose their potency after gathering, herbs used for healing that are more than a day old cause the herbalist to be treated as a rank lower in the skill than they actually are.
Herbs, although amazingly useful in the healing process cannot set bones, or remove a fragment of an arrow from deep within a lung, to achieve these and other miracles of healing, the new science of Churgery must be used. Taught in Medical schools and the newly founded Universities, this is the scientific approach to healing, or wounding someone more in order to heal them.
Game mechanics: Churgery works like all other skills, the higher your grade the better you are at it.
As can be seen both forms of healing work best in combination. The science of Churgery is so new that few people have experimented, many of the procedures player characters will perform will be never have been performed before. a good living can be made lecturing or publishing once enough skill has been developed and once the character is famous for that skill.
All magic in the game world has its origins in Evil.
To practice magic all that is required is knowledge of the ritual and a familiarity with the words and gestures required to active the spell. A spell requires no magic points, it could be cast thousands of times per day with no loss of power. Instead whenever a spell is cast, the caster draws a bead from the Magic Bag, (in the possession of the referee), depending upon the colour of the bead drawn is the effect on the caster. Some beads will have no effect, others might result in temporary nausea or similar detrimental effect, a few may lead to permanent changes in the character, mutations altering appearance or behaviour.
Once drawn the effects of the bead are immediate with the exception of physical alterations which require the use of prosthetics or props, these can be assumed to have taken effect by the next game.
None of the magic in the game is instantaneous, it relies instead on gathering energies and the correct performance of ritual. Once you have decided to perform a spell either inform a referee who will advise you as to the results, (and provide the Magic bead bag), or failing the presence of a referee, perform the ritual and advise a referee at the soonest possible convenience.
Please note that magic isn't a precise science, on some days the energies flow easier than on others, a certain colour of bead drawn on one day could have a better or worse interpretation the following day.
Skills and talents are an important aspect in defining any character.
No skill list is provided with this set of rules to prevent limiting players during character creation. As such one character could have a skill of metalworking, another might have a skill of smithing, both skills are acceptable and both allow the same tasks. The breadth of the skill should be around the level of the one given as examples below. A skill simply called 'make' is to broad a definition, a skill called 'make chairs' is to narrow a definition.
Skills come in five level of ability, referred to in the system as grades; grade 1 is the lowest level and grade 5 is the highest, representing an almost supernatural talent for the skill.
To successfully use a skill the character must go through the physical motions of using the skill.
For example; to use Surgery the character should go through the motions of performing an operation, preparing instruments and bandages, the actual action of surgery, followed by stitching up the wound. Another example, a character with tracking as a skill should go through the actions of looking for tracks on the ground, checking for broken vegetation and looking for other signs. Simply standing in woodland and asking the referee what you see will get an answer of 'mud and trees'.
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