Let's Read: Knave 2e Kickstarter Preview (Post #3: Inventory, Wounds, Advancement, Rolling Checks)

 Ok, let's keep going with this Let's Read for the new Kickstarter Preview of Knave's forthcoming 2nd edition. There are several subtle but consequential changes to the core Knave 'engine' to note here. 

ITEMS AND WOUNDS

These two are in the same category now, by design. We'll see why shortly. 

I've noticed that the "new Knave" contains some small but helpful quality-of-life/"user interface" improvements. These are just little tweaks to the way some rules are worded that should only save you half a second of time, but will save that half-second over and over again. We hit one immediately in the inventory section. Whereas 1e says PCs have inventory slots equal to their "Constitution Defense" (which = 10 + CON modifier), 2e just says "PCs have 10 + CON item slots" - Boom. Done. You may skip the half-second to try to remember what the Defense means. 

In other ways, more than the phrasing has changed. I am pedantically glad to see that 1e's "100 coins fill an inventory slot" policy has now made way to "500 coins fill a slot." I believe I've ranted about this issue before, probably on Reddit somewhere. For one thing, OSR modules end up throwing a LOAD of coins at parties, so a more liberal allowance for hauling off treasure is just helpful. Secondly, in many historical periods, the more common precious-metal coins were so small that treating 100 of them as an inventory slot just seems ridiculous (if I remember correctly, I think I ran games for a while where 1,000 coins would fill an inventory slot. Most late Roman/early medieval western coins are lightweight, yo!). So. Dr. Nerdbrain is happy about this tiny change. 

DAMAGE - here comes a really interesting change from 1e to 2e. In Knave 1e, you fall unconscious at 0 hp and then die at -1 hp. In 2e, characters will be sticking around longer, but players will have to make more interesting and meaningful choices to deal with harm. 2e now says that once damage drops your hp to 0, each additional point of damage beyond 0 instead "fills an item slot with an appropriate wound (stabbed, frozen, burned, etc.) from the highest slot to the lowest. Items in a wounded slot must be dropped, or the PC will be immobilized." PCs die not at -1 hp, now, but once their inventory slots have ALL been filled up with Wounds. Because monsters don't track initiative, they just die at 0 hp the good ol' fashioned way. The rules also allow for "Direct Damage" - which bypasses HP and just adds Wound tags directly. As the rules note, a GM might apply Direct Damage in cases like a bad fall, a sneak attack, etc. (Direct Damage can target monsters, too, but the Direct Damage deals 3x the usual HP damage instead of inventory slot effects). Oh, and PCs can recover all their hp whenever they get a solid, single night's rest; you also heal 1 Wound if your good night's rest was in a Safe Haven (like back in town). 

I will have to see this in play, but on first glance I really dig this new approach! 

Presumably, the inspiration here is from Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland, which makes damage past 0 hp apply directly to character Stats. ItO tends to produce a play arc with characters getting in scrapes that they can bounce back from quickly - but as they start to take more serious damage, it snowballs, so that characters get a little more desperate as each session progresses. Even so, however, ItO PCs can still do their normal damage and can still fight if they need to risk it, even when wounded. 

I think the new Knave damage rules allow for something very similar, albeit fine-tuned more towards the 'OSR resource management game' and less toward 'desperate survival horror now.' Knave really puts ability score modifiers front and center - you depend on them as your bonuses to every kind of check - so damaging ability scores (as ItO does) would nerf knaves too quickly. By adopting a similar dynamic to ItO, but relocating the damage on the inventory table, these rules should allow characters to stay fit and able to keep fighting if they really need to - but they'll get less and less able to perform with the peak gear they like using the most. Characters will ablate gradually in their ability to toss off that extra spell, wear that heavy armor (oooh! it presses on the wound...take it off!). 

I'm looking forward to trying the new version of these rules. 

LEVELING UP

By default, 1e used accomplishment-/milestone-based advancment. 2e defaults to gp-for-xp (you gain experience by returning treasure from dungeons to settlements). Notably, the xp costs for advancement have changed - for the better. 1e granted a new level every time any PC gained 1000 xp. This can lead to a problem in campaign play - since the cost to advance is flat, if a PC dies and is replaced by a starting character during a campaign, the new character will never, ever catch up to the rest of the party. In 2e - as in B/X and most OG old school campaign systems - there is now a progressive/graduated scale of xp needed to advance to each level. There's one scale for all characters, who will need (e.g.) 2000 xp to reach level 2, but a fresh 8,000 to move from level 4 up to 5. 

CHECKS

These were 'Saving Throws' but have been renamed. By my read, the rules haven't really changed, but we do get one of those little quality-of-life improvements I mentioned. In 1e, you generate a target number for a saving throw, and then the player has to roll ABOVE the target number. Target numbers (or Defenses) were 10 plus an opponent's relevant modifier, or 15 for default situations. Now, in 2e, the rules haven't changed but they are presented in a way that looks different - and simpler. Instead of adding 10 to a modifer and then rolling over the result, you now add 11 - and roll EQUAL TO OR ABOVE the target number. The math hasn't changed, but the new rules save you that constant half-second (this happened sooooo often when I ran a Knave campaign) of saying, "ok, you need a 15. No, wait, I mean you need to roll over a 15, so I guess you really need a 16." By moving up the baseline from 10 to 11, that's done away with. Nice. 

Advantage and Disadvantage is a thing, but instead of rolling more dice, you add +5 or -5 for each relevant Adv/Disadv (which of course means that pairs of contrary factors cancel each other out). 

This page closes with a few "how to handle ____" paragraphs that offer simple and helpful advice. The game clarifies that a Lore check should never, ever be necessary; PCs should know lots and have ready access to common information - or they should have to dig around in the setting to find someone/thing with the knowledge they need. A similar philosophy, it seems, will inform the game's approach to searching in dungeons, though I don't think we have those rules yet in this preview. 

Still more to come.