Beacon 4th Draft

Today I'm officially posting the 4th draft of Beacon which is the one I'll be using to play test in the upcoming months.  What's changed since the 3rd draft?  Well last month I put up a list of the expected changes... and actually I didn't do many of those.

• add in an explicit speed stat (derived) for movement;
• make a more formal table for combat modifiers;
• write up something about wands and maybe some other magic items;
• add a table for water travel to go with the overland travel table; and
• something just friggin awesome.

I did however do the following:

• an introduction to the basic D20 mechanics for those who haven't had one;
• change to silver standard and adjusting all the prices accordingly;
• reformat the monsters section to use variable hitdice types for hp and damage;
• reformat some lists as tables;
• modify and/or tweak a lot of rules, especially magic resist and the dexterity penalties from armour; and
• add in some short race descriptions, skill descriptions and lots of other minor text fixes or clarifications.

I figure that all this falls under the friggin awsome line item above although some might suggest that it's actually more friggin adequate as updates go.

So if you use Beacon in your game or have looked over the rules before and considered using it I suggest you carefully review this version because there are a few subtle differences that are intended to make things more internally cohesive but perhaps not as D20/Microlitey as before.  You may notice that armour is a lot more expensive than before for example and the way it impacts dexterity has changed (for the better I believe).  Or you may notice that spells have become slightly harder to cast as their level goes up.

As usual I'll leave the old draft up for a few weeks in case you were using it and need a reference.