Movement

• 1 square = 10 miles on a side, 100 square mile area.
• Foot Travel – Move up to 2 squares or Explore 1 square per day.
• Mounted Travel – Move up to 4 squares or Explore 2 squares or Move up to 2 squares and Explore 1 square per day.
• If the party Explores a map square, it will be marked with a “.” in the bottom left corner.
• If the party Moves through a map square without Exploring it, they will only receive basic information about the terrain they’re moving through, they have a small chance of finding any other contents of that area.
• Difficult Terrain – Movement and Exploration occurs at ½ Speed
• Challenging Terrain – Nature Check DC 18 to find a route at ¼ speed, must pass a Nature Check DC 22 to be able to pass while Mounted. For every day spent traveling through Challenging terrain, players must pass an Endurance Check or bad things can happen. (DMG p.61)
• Short Rest – Party members drink 1 water during a short rest.

Rest and Food

• Extended Rest – Party members drink 1 water and eat 1 ration during an extended rest.
• Foraging and Hunting – can be done with a Nature Check DC 15 to feed/water a single person, Nature Check DC 25 to feed/water the party. The party can only attempt to forage once per square. Depending on the type of terrain, there may be modifiers to this check. (PHB p.186)
• Thirst – After 3 days without water, take Endurance Checks every day or lose healing surges. (DMG p.159)
• Starvation – After 3 weeks without food, take Endurance Checks every day or lose healing surges. (DMG p.159)

Misc

• Extreme Weather – Endurance Check or or lose Healing Surges. (DMG p.159)

I’ll be using the rules listed here to deal with running characters who are absent. PC’s will be converted to SuperMinions (SM’s) with these abilities/stats:

• Absent players should indicate who will play their character before the game, otherwise, the DM will assign a controller. Players can only control one SM in addition to their own character.
• SMs move normally
• Attack Standard, At-will. Melee or ranged, depending on class and equipment. No roll – automatically hits any targeted enemy and deals damage equal to the SM’s level.
• For defense, there are no hit points to track. All defenses are simply the SM’s level plus 10.  The first time a SuperMinion is hit, they’re bloodied. If hit while bloodied, the SM falls unconscious. SMs are automatically stable and are untouchable while they are down. The only way a super minion can die is in the event of a Total Party Wipeout.
• SM’s return to full health after a short rest.

SuperMinions also get a special ability based on their party role:

• Defender: the target of any attack is immobilized until the beginning of the SM’s next turn.
• Striker: attacks cause +2 damage.
• Controller: The target of the controller SM’s attack is marked until the beginning of the SM’s next turn. If the target moves from its square before then, the target takes damage equal to the SM’s level.
• Leader: as a minor encounter action, allow one ally to use a healing surge.

Experience

Absent players will receive 50% experience for combat and minor quests, they’ll receive full XP for major quests and at the DM’s discretion.

If you’re being asked to roll a dice for an individual adventure through email, you should be using the online dice roller blog set up for the Heroes of Blackfield campaign. 

(You will need to register once to have access to the log, using the email I send campaign notifications out, then you should be able to login to the site and give me the roll I’m asking for.)

Whenever the group takes a Short Rest (5 minutes) each player needs to use one of their water rations. Mark it off your waterskin or find an alternate water source.

Whenever the group takes an Extended Rest (6 hours) each player needs to use one of their water rations and food rations. Mark it off your waterskin and ration pack or find an alternate water and food source.

Weapons may be repaired during either short or extended rests. A whetstone is needed to repair bladed weapons, a hammer is needed to repair blunt weapons.

I will be making an effort to come up with some additional ways for characters to adventure outside the standard large group format of 6-7 players. I will be working on a series of solo edventures, as well as adventures for a secondary group if the interest is there.

The moral of the story is that flexibility is the name of the game, and if you’re hoping to get in on some more Heroes of Blackfield goodness, have patience. Also, if you have a particular action that your character is interested in taking, like “I want to try and sneak out of town”, “I want to try and find a way to investigate the mines on my own”, or “I feel the need to do some B&E in my spare time” or even, “Members of my family have been missing for some time and my character wants to investigate the mystery behind it”.. etc.. The more information you have as to the motivations and interested of your characters, the more I have to work with.

Chess Rules

4th edition combat is very specific regarding the positioning and movement of characters on a battlemap. When moving the miniature representing your character on a battlemap, if you remove your hands from a figure after moving them, they’re considered to have made that move. You aren’t allowed to change your mind as to the wisdom of running into that hallway once it’s been revealed that the floor is an illusion and you’re now plummeting into a pit of snakes. If you’re unsure if that’s where you want to move your character, just wait to move the figure, or leave a finger on it while you consider the ramifications of that action.

Combat Rounds

During combat, players should be thinking about what to do while their companions are taking their actions. Although it’s understandable that the actions taken by companions could affect the action you ultimately want to take, there isn’t an excuse for sitting there for minutes at a time (during your turn) staring at a map and trying to figure out what you should do, especially if not much has changed in the past round.

DM Note: If time is being severely abused, in order to keep things moving along, I will institute a maximum 30 second time limit to determining the actions a character is going to take. This does not apply to the resolution of those actions. If the time is exceeded, the players turn is passed over.

Laptops

Sorry guys, I’m going old school with this one for now, the only laptop allowed in the table is the DM’s. Also, if other electronic gear begins to become a major distraction, it’ll be banned as well.

DM’s Goals

This area is to note that my ultimate goal DM’ing this game/campaign is to allow the players to be as immersed in the world/story/environment as much as possible, and spend much less of their time worrying about the rules. Although some metagaming is inevitable, most of the focus of the game should be on determining what kind of a character you’re playing, what their motivations are and how people around you would react to your behavior. Stats and attributes are important in the resolution of outcomes, but they aren’t necessarily more powerful than common sense would attest.

Example: Attempting to intimidate your drill instructor may be an interesting idea (“But I have a +5!”) but you should be prepared for the possible and most likely probable painful experience that would immediately follow such an act.

Very much like my idealistic self believes to be true, creative thinking is almost always a more powerful force than statistics. Experience is just as likely to be rewarded for creative thinking and problem solving as it is for combat encounters.

Items in this campaign will almost entirely be handled with cards. If you don’t physically have the card, you don’t have the gear on your character.

The initial inventory issued to you (listed above, adjusting for weapon/armor variations) as well as any quartermaster issued (non-consumable) gear is the property of the Blackfield Militia. If you break or lose that equipment, you will be responsible for the expenses of replacing it.

Additionally, items located in containers should be sorted behind that container, with any loose/worn/equipped items on the top of the PC’s inventory ”deck”. Contents of a container must physically be able to fit within the dimensions of the container, no storing a 10′ pole in your backpack.

DM Note: I’m not going to be a complete bear about it, but this method should help to keep things organized in a relatively easy manner and allow me to quickly deal with the loss or destruction of a container, as well as determining the ease of accessability for any particular items.

Coins and some loot will be handled as a container with updatable content. (Example: A pouch with a post it note indicating that it contains 5 gold, 3 silver..)

Players create characters per the standard rules with these minor deviations:

The age of your character must be 17. If you choose to be a long lived race (Elf, Dwarf), you will be an adolescent and aged appropriately. Although they live longer lives, the years tend to be tacked on to middle and older age. Although as a Dwarf, your beard may be a tad short and as an Elf, your haughtiness may not have fully developed yet.

Your character is a conscript in the Militia of Blackfield and indebted to serve a term of no less than 2 years of military service.

When creating your attribute scores, roll 4d6 and drop the lowest die, assign the scores to your specific attributes after generating your pool of six numbers. (No Rerolls Allowed)

Tiefling and Dragonborn are currently not playable races, all remaining PHB classes and races are allowed. Races and Classes from official sources will be considered in the future.

If you decide you don’t want to play your character anymore, they become an NPC in the world, and you can create a new character based on the rules listed above.

Replacing the rulebook limitation, multiple action points may be used during a single encounter, however only one may be used per round.

DM Note: This house rule should motivate the party to stockpile action points during Milestones and reduce the number of Extended Rests, when they would normally lose unspent action points.