So after a lot of work and penny pinching, I am slowly managing to assemble a new demo game for Skulldred Skirmish at The Arcade.
The game itself is also coming along, having been partly reassembled from locked PDFs of earlier versions.
The current version knocks size scores down one dice, so human sized models get 2 dice instead of 3. It also limits gangups to 2 dice, with more possible for swarmers (a special ability). This makes the regular game less about just tight clusters, spreading out the combat to give a more RPGesque feel.
To simplify things further, all attacks that land cause a straight line back recoil (unless you have dodge special ability that gives you a 180 arc), and the most drastic change is models with armor get an 'armor save'- the attacker rerolls the damage dice, and any dive that roll equal or less than the armor score gets discarded. This makes it immediate and allows little guys to get lucky shots in on big guys. If this brings the damage down to zero, the model still has to recoil back or be stunned. This also allows for multiple wound scoring attacks for heavy weapons (the remaining damage is how many wounds you score- capped to 3 for heavy weapons and 4 for magic) and extra damage dice attacks (like explosives).
Magic and power attacks are charged by spending pips on power dice- so magicians charge up for bigs spells or keep a steady stream of little ones if you need to. Things like dragon breath, dragon punches, petrifying gaze and spinning attacks are powered by power dice. Power is not just for wizards now!
So those changes are all working nicely.
After six years of hell, it will be finally good to kiss this project and set it free.
