Rules of Play

Contents

Introduction

The Silly Adventure Game for Adults (SAGA) is a game for two or more players. The players pretend to be adventurers in an imaginary world. They enjoy overcoming imaginary enemies and solving imaginary problems. To play the game, you need pencil, paper, and dice with six, ten, and twenty sides. At any moment in the game, one player is always the dramaturgist. The players can take turns being the dramaturgist, but there is only one dramaturgist at a time. The dramaturgist must have a thorough understanding of the rules, but the other players need only their common sense. In the manner of a novelist, the dramaturgist sets the scene for an adventure. She invents characters of her own and gives them roles to play. She introduces the player characters into the drama, and the game begins. A good adventure is one in which the adventurers succeed if they are clever, fail if they are inattentive, and are killed only if they are foolish. The SAGA players are bound by SAGA's constitution, which consists of the following rules.

1. Changes to the constitution require the approval of all players.
2. Changes to other rules require the approval of a majority of players.
3. Additions to the game world made by the dramaturgist take precedence over additions made by other players.
4. Altering self-consistent game history requires the consent of all players.
5. Altering self-contradictory game history requires the consent of a majority of players.
6. Play is either time-in or time-out. During time-in, all actions described by the players occur in the game world. During time-out, no action occurs in the game world unless the dramaturgist obtains confirmation from the players.
7. Whenever there is any question about the occurrence of an event in the game world, or the outcome of an action in the game world, the players will agree to a method of settling this question with a die roll.

We think SAGA's world is better than our own for imaginary adventures. We think imaginary adventures must be life-threatening, or else they are boring. There must be fights and chases. In our world of guns and bombs, even the best soldiers can be killed by bad luck. Anyone can be hit by shrapnel. In SAGA's universe, guns and bombs do not work, while experienced adventurers gain prescience, which makes them hard to kill. In the game, prescience is represented by dodging points. In SAGA's world, people can cast spells. Characters can be physically formidable by mental exertion alone because they are wizards, psionics, or sorcerers. The Laws of Magic aim to be clear and unambiguous, but they are complex. It is SAGA's Laws of Magic that make SAGA a game that appeals to those who want magic to make sense, be self-consistent, and easy to imagine in detail. The dramaturgist does not govern the behavior of magic in the game world. Its behavior is governed by the Laws of Magic, and these laws are available to all players.

The dramaturgist does not have sole authority over the game. The only difference between the dramaturgist and the players is that the dramaturgist has more authority to embellish the game world. Other than that, any player can call a vote at any time to decide any issue in the game. For examplem, the dramaturgist invents and island with a deserted house made of spirit stone. In the house is a demon. One of the players says, "But I believed there were no demons for miles around." The dramaturgist can answer, "You were wrong." In the absence of a vote, the dramaturgist's word is the truth in the game world. The contesting player says, "I want us to vote on it." So the four players at the table vote. Three of them agree that there are no demons for miles around. "Oh," the dramaturgist says, "Well, we'll end the game here for tonight. I'll have to think through the implications of there being no demon in the house." As you can see, the dramaturgist can be overruled, but each time he is overruled, the game is likely to come to a stop. Self-consistency of the game world is of great importance in SAGA, and it takes a lot of work on the part of the dramaturgist to make sure that his inventions are self-consistent.

Dice play an important roll in SAGA. Through use of dice, we introduce chance into the game, and we very often find ourselves using chance to decide what happens in the world. We use chance to resolve disagreements between players about what is going to happen. If three players disagree greately about the outcome of an action by one of the players, we can assign each of their suggested outcomes to two numbers on a six-sided die, and so settle the matter with a die roll. We discuss the use of dice in more detail in our chapeter on Dice.

The only person who absolutely must have a solid understanding of the Rules of Play is the dramaturgist. The other players can simply walk into the game and begin playing a character. The differences between SAGA's universe and ours will become apparent as the game proceeds. The first time a new player's character gets into a fight, the dramaturgist will reveal what is necessary of SAGA's combat system. For example, Mike is a new player, and his character in the game is called Stanley. Stanley is wearing leather armor and carrying a sword when he is attacked by a drunk soldier. The dramaturgist tells Mike that he must roll a six-sided die, and if he rolls higher than the dramaturgist, Stanley gets to make the first move in the fight. They both roll. Mike gets a 4, the dramaturgist rolls a 3. "You can run away, or attack, or just wait to be attacked." Mike chooses to attack. "You need to roll a 14 or higher on a twenty-sided die to hit the soldier with your sword." And so on. There is no need for Mike to know the combat system, or anything else about the game when he starts playing.

Nevertheless, if a player wants a wizard character, she must understand the fundamentals of the Laws of Magic so that she does not waste everyone's time during the game by proposing impossible applications of wizard spells. She need not understand the combat system, but the dramaturgist can require her to give correct answers to questions about magic before using any new spell. There is no need, however, for any party of adventurers to include a wizard. Even if there are no wizard player characters, and they feel they need a wizard in their party, they can always go looking for one to hire. This wizard can then act as their advisor on magical matters, and will be played by the dramaturgist.

Of the human species that live in SAGA's universe, homo sapiens make the most formidable adventurers. Sapiens are not born stronger or swifter than other species, but their minds and bodies respond to conditioning faster and to a greater extent than do those of other species. We assume that player characters will be sapien, but if a player wishes to play a character of another species, the dramaturgist can arrange it. For descriptions of some of the other species, see elf, dwarf, hobbit, and orc.

All SAGA adventures take place in the same universe: the SAGA universe. The planet Clarus is planet in SAGA's universe that happens to share the same gravitational acceleration, length of day, length of year, climate, atmosphere, single moon, and length of month with our own planet Earth. Unlike Earth, however, Clarus is a magical planet. It has a "maeon wind" that generates the prescience and other magic effects. Because Clarus is Earth-like in all respects other than its maeon wind and its geography, it is a convenient place for us to define the rules of our game. On Clarus, we can use our experiences on Earth to inform our drafting of the rules that govern combat. We can assume similar length of day, and we can talk of months and years in the way we are accustomed to. Although all SAGA adventures are played in the same imaginary universe, that universe is vast and varied. Clarus is just one of hundreds of worlds in the Celesti Sector, and the Celesti Sector is just one small part of the Luman Galaxy. Instead of inventing new universes for their games, dramaturgists insert their own places, characters, and local history into the SAGA universe. When adventures take place on other planets, the gravitational acceleration can be half or double that of Clarus, the length of day and year can be dramatically different, as can the climate. The maeon wind can be stronger or weaker. In these Rules of Play, and in the Laws of Magic, we provide guidelines and formulae for adapting the rules to new planets, so as to make adventuring on alien worlds both vivid and compelling.

Inaccuracy

Descriptions of SAGA's universe come in two forms. There are those written from the objective point of view of an omniscient narrator, such as these Rules of Play, the Creature Guide, and the Laws of Magic, and those written from the subjective point of view of a narrator in the universe itself, such as the essays on Summoning, Demons, and Gods. The objective documents must be self-consistent. The subjective documents can contradict one another or even themselves. All descriptions of SAGA's universe should be subjective unless it is impractical for them to be so. Our Creature Guide is an example of a document we would like to make subjective, but which contains, for the convenience of the dramaturgist, descriptions of creatures in terms of the SAGA combat system. No subjective narrator in SAGA's universe is aware of the combat system, so it is impossible for this document to be subjective.

Even maps, such as our Map of Clarus, should be regarded as subjective. They are products of a map-maker in the SAGA universe. Two maps drawn at two different times by the same dramaturgist, or different dramaturgists, are likely to contradict one another. Each set of players can investigate such contradictions and come up with their own answers. Each new adventure in the same area can use pre-existing maps, but the players could at any time find that those maps are inaccurate. The subjectivity and inaccuracy of most information available to players about the SAGA universe is an important part of the game's realism. In real life, we never know the absolute truth, although we may have firmly-held beliefs. Real maps are always inaccurate, especially if they have been drawn by travelers as a guide to other travelers.

Terminology

We use mdn to denote the sum of m rolls of an n-sided die. We use mDn to denote m times one roll of an n-sided die. Thus '2d10' means you roll a ten-sided die twice, and add the rolls together, while '2D10' means you roll a ten-sided die and multiply the result by two. When we "round to the nearest integer" we round halves to the nearest even number. We will quote prices in Ursian Dollars. One Ursian Dollar is roughly equal to one United States Dollar. Some SAGA players prefer to quote prices in gold pieces, gp, also known as guineas. One gold piece is ten grams of gold and worth about $100. But the gold piece is an inconvenient unit for quoting small prices, since it forces us to use fractions of a gold piece. For more about prices and economy see here.

Primary Attributes

Characters have four primary attributes. These are strength (STR), dexterity (DEX), toughness (TOU), and intelligence (INT). Players decide the base values of their character's attributes by assigning a value from −1 to +4 to each attribute in such a way that all four add up to +8. If the character is a female sapien, we reduce STR by 3, and increase TOU by 3. You will find the adjustments to base attributes for other species in the Attribute Variation section, and descriptions of the other species in our Creature Guide. In particular, you might consider having an elf, hobbit, dwarf, half-orc, or orc character.

When a player character enters the game, she has spent several years in training. This training raises her attributes above their base values by a total of 9 points, so that the sum of her attributes is now 17. Her attributes continue to rise as she continues her training, and goes on adventures. Prowess as an adventurer is represented in SAGA by adventurer level (al). The Sum of Attributes with Adventurer Level table gives the sum of a player character's attributes at each adventurer level, assuming they continue the training required to raise their attributes. This training can raise an attribute by at most 8 points above its base value, and no attribute will drop below its base value. For a more detailed discussion of attribute variation, see below. In practice, no attribute my be less than −1 nor greater than 12, and the sum increases from 25 at first level and reaches a maximum of 40 at twentieth leve.

Strength

The following Lifting Strength table translates STR into physical Lifting Strength, which is a force. On a planet with gravity 10 ms⁻², 1 kg has weight 10 N. Add one to STR, and nominal lifting strength increases by ten percent.

For a man, his lifting strength is the maximum weight he can bench press one time. Women with a given STR bench press less weight than men. Their strength is concentrated more in their legs. A woman bench presses the same amount as a man with STR two points lower than her own. The bench press strength converts directly to a ten-repetition squat strength, in which form it applies equally to men and women. The average sapien man has STR=0, bench presses 600 N once (60 kg weight in gravity 10 ms⁻²). He squats 600 N ten times. The average sapien woman has STR=−2, bench presses 400 N once, and squats 500 N ten times. Weight-lifting is the fastest way to raise strength. Drugs can also affect strength. Some increase it for a few hours, and others accelerate the effects of weight lifting. All such drugs, however, have deleterious side-effects. Drugs that increase strength for a few hours leave the body exhausted. Those which accelerate the effects of training make one vulnerable to disease, and disturb the mind.

Toughness

Toughness is a measure of a character's ability to perform well under duress. The most convenient ways to raise toughness are combat training and living outdoors. There are also especially designed exercises which combine meditation, discomfort, and ritualized movement of the body. No drugs can increase toughness in the short term, although they can play a part in exercises. A human adventurer has a number of hit points equal to her toughness plus ten (TOU + 10). When she attains adventurer level ten, her full compliment of dodging points is equal to her toughness plus ten (TOU + 10) as well, provided she is on a planet with maeon wind strength 1 Y, which is the value we assume by default in our SAGA rules. At all other adventurer levels, her full compliment of dodging points increases in proportion to her adventurer level, starting at zero dodging points at zero level. So her full compliment of dodging points at level five is (TOU + 10) / 2 and at level twenty is (TOU + 10) * 2.

Dexterity

Special regimes of exercise are the fastest way to increase dexterity. No drugs or spells can increase dexterity. The most prominent advantage bestowed by DEX is in hand-to-hand combat, where DEX adds to a character's striking accuracy in the same way as does fighter level. Thus a zero-level fighter with DEX = 10 has the same striking accuracy as a tenth level fighter with DEX = 0. Note, however that DEX does not add to firing accuracy.

Intelligence

Intelligence is a measure of a character's ability to extricate himself from unfamiliar difficulties. Intelligence is best raised by disciplined application of the mind under the direction of an expert philosopher. Intelligence may also be raised by academic study under expert direction. Although wizards use nicotine to help them memorize spells, no drugs are known to increase the INT attribute. Drugs do, however, play a part of many schemes for training the mind so as to increase intelligence. The most prominent advantage bestowed by INT is upon wizards, who need INT ≥ 10 in order to increase their wizard level.

Hit Points

The amount of physical damage a creature's body can endure without being incapacitated is indicated by its hit points. Bigger and tougher creatures have more hit points. Damage to a creature's body subtracts from its hit points. An uninjured creature is in possession of its full number of hit points. The full number of hit points for a 60-kg human is 10+TOU. Larger creature's have more hit points: a creature's full hit points increase roughly in proportion to the square root of its mass. A 240-kg animal has 20+2×TOU hit points. For simplicity, player characters are awarded 10+TOU hit points regardless of their size. For example, a 50 kg sapien falling 10 m in gravity 10 m/s/s suffers 20 hp damage. Damage is proportional to impact energy. One hit point of damage is caused by each 250 J of impact energy. A 50-kg sapien, falling 10 m in 10 m/s/s hits the ground with kinetic energy 5 kJ and so suffers 20 hp of damage. Most sapiens have around ten hit points. Any creature dies when it is reduced to less then minus its full number of hit points, so a 10-m fall is likely to kill an adult sapien. Now consider Stephanix the Scurrier Fighting Demon, who weighs 70 kg and has 400 hit points. If he jumps off a 20-m tower, he hits the ground with 14 kJ of kinetic energy and suffers 56 hit points of damage, which he can survive easily, assuming he's not injured already.

A character who has lost one or more hit points, but still has at least one point left, is injured. Healthy, well-rested sapiens recover one hit point per day without help, although black eyes, bruises, and scabs may remain for longer. We ignore the affects of injuries upon a character's performance. A character reduced to zero or fewer hit points is wounded. Unlike injuries, wounds are each treated separately. A wound is classified either a cut or a bruise, depending upon whether it was delivered by a sharp or a blunt weapon. Each wound has a severity determined by a roll of 1d20. The wounded character remains conscious only if a second roll of 1d20 is greater than or equal to the severity minus the character's toughness. A wounded fighter who is still conscious can continue to fight until the end of the combat round in which he was wounded, but thereafter he will be unable to fight. A wounded wizard who is still conscious can cast spells. A character dies when reduced to less than minus his full hit points.

Cuts bleed, causing an additional one hit point of damage per ten minutes, until the wound is properly bound, or until a number of hit points equal to the cut's severity has been lost through bleeding. Once a cut has stopped bleeding, it is lumped in with injuries for the purpose of hit point recovery. Bruises are less dangerous than cuts. We lump them with injuries for the purpose of hit point recovery. But a bruise with severity ten or greater indicates a broken bone. It will take a number of weeks equal to its severity to heal if it is set properly, but will never heal if it is not set properly. Therefore, it is possible for a character to return to full hit points, but be maimed by a severe crushing attack.

Experience Points

On magical worlds, characters receive prescient sensations from interactions between their nervous systems and the maeon wind. These sensations give warning of shocks to the nervous system. If a character is sensitive to prescient sensations, knows how to move so as to avoid the cause of a prescient sensation, and is free to move, she will be able to avoid such shocks. It is not that the experienced adventurer feels a prescient sensation of a shock, and dodges out of the way. That would be paradoxical. If she avoids the shock, there cannot have been a prescient sensation. Instead, some coincidence occurs to resolve the paradox. The adventurer bends down just as an arrow flies past. It looks like the adventurer is lucky, but it is impossible for her not to be lucky.

Player characters start out as first-level adventurers. After that, the dramaturgist awards experience points to the character as the character succeeds in her adventures. For each hundred dollars the character earns as an adventurer, the dramaturgist is free to award one experience point. That's the same as one experience point per gold piece earned. In practice, however, adventurers will often forgoe accepting payment for their services, and they may find it repugnant to plunder their vanquished enemy's possessions. Adhering to a rule of "one experience point per gold piece" would put pressure on adventurers to behave in a certain way with respect to money and so distort their roll-playing. Furthermore, adventurers advance by surviving mortal danger, not by earning money. And the danger must be dangerous to them personally. An adventure that advanced a character from forth to fifth level, if repeated at tenth level, will cause hardly any advance at all, because what is dangerous to a fourth-level character will be much less dangerous to a tenth-level character. Likewise, if the adventure is dangerous to some members of an adventuring party, but not to others, only those who are in danger will advance. A low-level adventurer protected by a high-level adventurer may not be called upon to overcome mortal danger during the course of their adventures together, and so advance very little. In practice, the dramaturgist should award levels at a rate that seems justified to him, and neither too excessive nor too miserly in the eyes of the players. For example, at the end of a one-week adventure containing four difficult combats, two long trecks, and a climb up a mountain, the dramaturgist might decree that everyone gets to advance by one adventuring level. Another way to manage the sharing of an adventure by a party is for the dramaturgist to awards a total number of experience points for the adventure, and then divide the total up between the members of the party. Here, we suggest that each member of the party gets a share proportional to the square root of his existing number of experience points. We make an exception to this rule when a member has fewer than 200 experience points, in which case we perform the calculation as if this member had 200 experience points.

Dodging Points

As an adventurer gains experience, she is better able to identify and react to prescient sensations. Her capacity for preescience at any point in time is represented by her number of dodging points. In the rules of the game, her dodging points are determined by her toughness, TOU, and by her adventurer level, al. In the game world, a character's prescience is determined by her fortitude under duress, her familiarity with mortal danger, and by how fatigued she is at this precise moment. In the rules of the game, her toughness, TOU, is an attribute and her adventurer level, al, is a function of her accumulated experience points, xp, and experience points are awarded by the dramaturgist. In the game world, familiarity with mortal danger is accumulated during the course of her life-threatening adventures. In the rules of the game, her full compliment of dodging points is 1+TOU/10 per experience level, rounded to the nearest integer. A character with fewer than her full number of dodging points is said to be fatigued. In the rules of the game, a character recovers her dodging points whenever the dramaturgist awards experience points, and also when the dramaturgist is convinced that the character has slept and rested without concern for her safety. The test we use in the game for "rested without concern for her safety" is if she goes to sleep without any fear of being attacked. For a party of adventurers, "rest without concern for safety" would be going to sleep without posting even one guard. Or the party might stay up all night keeping an overwhelmingly effective guard over one one particular character who they want to "rest without concern for her safety". The dramaturgist decides if the precautions taken amount to the characteer believing they are safe. Whether or not the resting characters actually are safe is unimportant. An anxious party might decide to get drunk, stop worrying, and pass out so that they get their dodging points back, even though there is a one in ten chance of being attacked by their enemies in the night, because they know they will have to fight tomorrow, and fighting without their full compliment of dodging points will be fatal.

Prescience is generated by a magical planet's maeon wind. It is strongly a function of the planet's maeon wind strength. The number of dodging points is proportional to the square root of the maeon wind strength. The Maeon Wind Strength and Dodging Points table gives the maximum number of dodging points a character has in different maeon winds. One might be inclined to say that characters need to become accustomed to a new maeon wind before they can attain the full compliment of dodging points in the new wind, and the players can certainly vote for such a rule if they feel so inclined, but arriving on a new planet is a fun part of the game and rules slowing the players down as they proceed with their adventure are not particularly fun. So we just keep things simple and adjust dodging points the moment the players arrive.

The following calculator will tell you the number of dodging points a character will have at full compliment on a new planet as a function of toughness, TOU, adventurer level, al, and the maeon wind strength, M, of the new planet, where M is in Yardley. The formula is round((√M) * (1 + TOU/10) * al).

Assaults

An assault upon a character is any threat to her well-being. Three types of assault are recognized by SAGA's rules: "shocks", "hazards", and "risks". During play, we try to classify all assaults as one of these three types. We are almost always successful. In the rare occasions when we feel that none of the three types is satisfactory, we make up our own roll that we do find satisfactory.

A shock is an assault whose ill effects cause a direct prescient sensation. Each shock has a formidability and a power. The subject can dodge a shock by deducting its formidability from her dodging points, so long as her dodging points are not reduced below zero in the process. Alternatively, she can take the shock by deducting its power from her hit points, but she may then have to contend with further, secondary, assaults as well. The SAGA player controlling a character decides whether the character shall take or dodge a shock. The dramaturgist must tell the players the power and formidability of each shock, but the players need not know the secondary assaults that may occur as a result of taking a shock. For example, your opponent has scored a hit with his sword. Either you must lose one dodging point or two hit points. If you chose to take the blow, you lose two hit points. But if there is poison on the blade, you will suffer from it. You can be sure of avoiding poison only by dodging the blow. During combat, the combatants are deliberately trying to administer a shock to their opponents. Combatants with sufficient intelligence can allow a third option to the recipient of a shock that they administer: they can offer to withold the shock on the condition that the recipient performs some action or chooses some alternative outcome. For example, an intelligent attacker might give her opponent the option to drop their weapon instead of dodging or taking the shock. By this means, combat can be used to compel people to submit.

A hazard is an assault whose ill effects cause no direct prescient sensation, but which can be avoided by attention to detail and presence of mind, such as comes with experience. Each hazard has a level. If 1d20 plus the subject's adventurer level is greater than or equal to the hazard level, the subject avoids the ill effects of the hazard. Otherwise, he does not. The ill effects cannot be immediate injures, nor any physical sensation or constraint that causes immediate astonishment or dismay, or else the assault would be a shock, not a hazard. If a hazard is less dangerous to those with higher intelligence, we call it an intelligence hazard and the target of the assault adds his INT attribute as well as his adventurer level to his roll of 1d20. We also have toughness hazards, strength hazards, and dexterity hazards. For example, a wizard tries to beguile a character. The character faces an intelligence hazard level 15. She has INT=3 and al=5, so she needs to roll 7 or greater on 1d20 to resist the spell.

A risk is an assault whose ill-effects give no warning and cannot be forseen. Each risk has a level. If 1d20 is greater than or equal to the risk level, the subject escapes the ill effects of the risk. Otherwise, he does not. The ill effects can be immediate injures, or they can be further assaults. For example, a character has been bitten by a mosquito. There is a level 3 risk that he contracts malaria as a result. He must roll 3 or greater on 1d20 or he will contract the disease, regardless of his experience or attributes. Alternatively, suppose character has been bit by a poison arrow and suffered at six hit points of damage as a result. There is a level 6 risk that the poison enters his blood stream and takes effect.

Burdening

The burdening of an item of equipment is the amount by which its encumbrance reduces its user's effective dexterity. We are concerned chiefly with armor, shields, and weapons, which encumber a character in combat. For most types of armor, shield, and sword, the item's encumbrance is equal to it's mass. We quantify the effect of these three types of burden by means of three parameters: armor burdening (ab), shield burdening (sb), and weapon burdening (wb). Most often, characters will choose armor, shield, and weapons such that these parameters are all zero, so their encumbrance is ignored by the combat system. Associated with armor, shield, and weapon burdening are armor, shield, and weapon encumbrances, which are approximately equal to the mass of each article, and denoted wenc, senc, and wenc respectively. A character's armor burdening, ab, is the extent to which his dexterity in combat is reduced by the mass of his armor. When a character carries a well-distributed load other than armor, we add its encumbrance to the encumbrance of his armor to calculate armor burdening. Armor burdening is zero if the encumbrance of the armor is not greater than 15% of the mass he can lift in gravity 10 ms⁻². For heavier armor, ab is equal to one for each 1.5% excess over the 15% threshold. We can look up aenc in the Types of Armor table. The following calculator will determine ab for you. On planets with gravity significantly different from 10 ms⁻², we leave it to the players to modify the formula: burdening from weight will be different, but inertia due to mass will be the same.

A character's shield burdening, sb, is the extent to which her dexterity in combat is reduced by carrying a shield. Shield burdening is zero if the shield encumbrance is not greater than 7% of the mass she can lift in gravity 10 ms⁻². For heavier shields, ab is equal to one for each 0.7% excess over the 7% threshold. We can look up senc in the Types of Shield table and use the following calculator to determine sb. On planets with gravity significantly different from 10 ms⁻², we leave it to the players to modify the formula: weight will be different, but inertia the same.

A character's weapon burdening, wb, is the extent to which his dexterity with the hand carrying the weapon is reduced by wielding the weapon. Weapon burdening is zero if the encumbrance of the weapon is not greater than 1% of the mass he can lift in gravity 10 ms⁻². For heavier weapons we have, wb is equal to one for each 0.1% excess over the 1% threshold. When a character wields a weapon in double-handed, its encumbrance is divided between the two hands, so the burdening is reduced. We can look up wenc in the Types of Weapon table and use the following calculator to obtain wb for one-handed and two-handed use. Note that we enter the encumbrance in grams, not kilograms. On planets with gravity significantly different from 10 ms⁻², we leave it to the players to modify the formula: weight will be different, but inertia the same, and in the case of weapon burdening, inertia is the dominant source of burdening.

Most often, players choose the heaviest armor, shields, and weapons they can wield with zero burdening. The only time a player will do otherwise is when they are picking up discarded equipment in the middle of a conflict, or improvising with materials they have at hand when faced with a need for arms. The table below gives the maximum encumbrance for zero burdening versus strength in gravity 10 ms². We round burdening values to the nearest whole number. If a man with STR = 4 picks up a sword with encumbrance 900 g, his burdening will be 0.24, but we will round this to zero for the purpose of combat. The numbers we give in the table above are the maximum encumbrances for which the rounded burdening is zero.

Disciplines

A discipline is a collection of skills grouped together for the sake of SAGA's rules. The proficiency with which a character can exercise the skills in a discipline is quantified in the SAGA rules by the character's level of proficiency in the discipline. When we say "figher-level" or "wizard-level" we are referring to a character's level of proficiency in the disciplines "fighter" and "wizard" respectively. Under SAGA's rules, each discipline must be defined in such a way that we can take a character's level of proficiency and use it to obtain a probability of success in exercising the skills of the discipline. In the case of "fighter", the rules of the discipline are the rules of Rules of Combat. In the case of "wizard", the rules are the laws of Laws of Magic. In the case of thieves, the rules are those of the Thief Skills table. Our List of Disciplines table, we present what we believe are the most important disciplines for player characters, as well as a selection of sundry disciplines. The discipline rules support the advance any skill for which success and failure can be determined in a well-defined test. All disciplines are defined in such a way that someone with level −5 will perform as an absolute beginner and level zero as a graduate of initial training. The time taken for initial training depends upon the discipline. Initial training time for "fighter", for example, is one thousand hours, while initial traning for "wizard" is twenty thousand hours. A newly-composed, first-level player character will have received initial training in at least three disciplines. In principle, the player can choose any three disciplines, but in practice, the back-story of the adventure will restrict which disciplines are realistic. A character who has never sailed, for example, cannot be awarded level zero as a sailor without raising questions of self-consistency in the game world. There are some practical restrictions to the choice of disciplines as well. Wizards, for example, must maintain INT ≥ 10 in order to advance their wizard level.

Each time a player character earns a new adventurer level, including the first level, the player picks three disciplines in which her character will advance her level of proficiency. Her character must have level-zero or greater in each discipline, and the disciplines must not "overlap". When two disciplines have a skill in common, we say they overlap. For example, "climb" is part of "thief", "commando", and "mountaineer", so all these disciplines overlap. The SAGA rules forbid choosing overlapping disciplines for simultaneous advancement because doing so creates unecessary complications. To keep things simple: the player must pick non-overlapping disciplines for advancement. She picks one discipline as her first choice, another as her second choice, and another as her third choice. For each discipline we specify the amount by which level of proficiency in the discibline increases when the discipline is picked as the first, second, or third choice for advancement. For example, a player character has just completed her training and is advancing from zero-level adventurer to first-level adventurer. She has level-zero in the disciplines assassin, fighter, and sailor. She picks assassin as her first choice for advancement. Her assassin-level increases to one. She chooses fighter as her second choice. Her fighter-level increases by one half. She chooses sailor as her third chhoice. Her sailor-level increases by one. Another character is advancing from fifth to sixth level. He picks burgler as his first choice, wizard has his second, and singing as his third. He goes up two levels as a burgler, half a level as a wizard, and one level as a singer. Another character is a tenth level adventurer who has fighter-level ten, ranger-level ten, and rider-level ten. He has just attained mountaineer level zero, and wishes to make mountaineer his second choice and ranger his third choice. But mountaineer and ranger overlap: they both contain the disciplines camp and navigate. So the SAGA rules forbid choosing both ranger and mountaineer for advancement. But that's no problem: the character's objective is to increase his proficiency as a climber, and he has level-zero as a climber, as part of being a mountaineer. So he separates climber from mountaineer and chooses it second, leading to an advance of two in his level of proficiency. He chooses ranger third, which advances his ranger-level by one half.

The disciplines that a character picks as their first, second, and third choices for advancement can be different every time she earns a new adventuring level. Furthermore, the dramaturgist can award her level zero in new disciplines at any time. If, for example, the she does a lot of sailing in one of her adventurers, the dramaturgist will be justified in awarding her level zero in sailing. Once she has level zero in a discipline, it is entirely up to her whether she advances her proficiency in that discipline from that time forward. In our List of Disciplines, we give the amount by which proficiency in a selection of disciplines increases when they are picked as first, second, or third choices for advancement. A tenth-level adventurer who chooses Locksmith first, fighter second, and rider third every time she goes up a level will, by the time she is a tenth-level adventurer, be a twentieth-level locksmith (10 * 2), a fifth-level fighter (10 * 0.5), and a tenth-level rider (10 * 1.0). She will be able to open almost any lock in a matter of minutes. She will have plenty of dodging points, and she will have raised her attributes so as to be strong and quick. She will be specialized for adventures that require locks to be picked. Thanks to her prescience, she will be able to escape from catastrophic accidents that no ordinary person would have any hope of surviving. In SAGA's world, whenever the profession of a non-player character places him in frequent danger that he must survive through prowess, he will earn adventuring levels. He may not be a fighter, a wizard, or an assassin, but he is nevertheless formidable and equipped with exceptional skill in his profession.

Most of the disciplines we present in our List of Disciplines are defined for the purpose of the game in terms of reference cases and reference difficulties. The reference case is an example of the exercise of the skill and the reference difficulty is the minimum roll on 1d20 that a practicioner of the skill with proficiency zero and no other advantages or disadvantages must roll to succeed in the reference case. The reference case for the skill pick pockets, for example, is stated in the rules below to be, "Take a wallet from the back trouser pocket of an adult sapien walking down a crowded street, taking no more than one minute to do so." The difficulty of this reference case is stated to be "20". In practice, the exercise of a discipline will rarely be identical to the reference case. Suppose, for example, that our pick pocket is following a man at night on a nearly-deserted street with occasional gas lamps, and the man is drunk. What is the difficulty of picking his pocket? We start with our reference case, for which the difficulty is twenty, and make adjustments. The man is drunk, so subtract 5. The street is nearly-deserted, so add 10. The only light is from gas lamps, so subtract 5. We are back to 20. A zero-level thief with DEX = 0 will need to roll a 20 on 1d20 to succeed. But a tenth-level thief with DEX = 8 will need to roll only a 2, so if almost certain to succeed. The reference cases for disciplines act as a starting point from which we derive the difficulty of each exercise of the discipline in the game. So long as the players agree that the difficulty is sensible, the game can proceed to everyone's satisfaction, and a die roll eventually decides the matter.

Fighter

The rules defining the skills and probabilities of success for the "fighter" discipline consist of the rules of combat. Initial training takes one thousand hours. Each fighter level adds one to both striking accuracy and firing accuracy.

Wizard

A wizard generates and uses magical effects with her mind alone. She spends a great deal of effort prepares a number of specific magical effects, and she generates them at a later, at a time of her choosing, with minimal effort. We describe wizards and their spells in more detail in Laws of Magic, but we will provide an introduction here. A player who wants to play a wizard must read and understand the fundamentals of the Laws of Magic. Before his wizard can cast any spell, the dramaturgist has the right to ask the the player a number of questions about the spell to demonstrate that he understands how it works in the game. Before initial training, wizards must be well-schooled in mathematics, logic, chemistry, biology, and drawing. Initial training takes twenty thousand hours if the wizard begins in adolescence. Otherwise it takes forty thousand hours, because the wizard's brain has developed without guidance. Wizards usually start preparing their minds for spell-casting at age eleven, and graduate as first-level wizards at age twenty-four.

A spell is any magical phenomenon generated by a biological neural network. Wizards generate magical phenomena using a part of the brain they call the casting region. They partition their casting region into spell slots. A wizard starts off at first level with two spell slots. She creates two new ones every time she earns a new wizard level. The neurons within a spell slot generate the effects of a single spell. A wizard configures these neurons before-hand, and triggers them when the spell is needed. We say the wizard prepares the spell in a spell slot, and casts it by triggering the spell slot. Many months may separate preparation and casting. Once the effects of a spell have faded, the spell slot that cast it is of no use until it has been prepared again. Wizards prepare spells by looking at pictures called runes and speaking words called charges. They must prepare spells in a place free of distractions. A wizard can carry cards with her runes drawn on them, or she can draw them anew for herself.

There is a difference between knowing how to prepare a spell and being able to prepare it. To know how to prepare a spell is to know the order in which runes and charges are to be presented. To be able to prepare it is not only to know the order, but also to be adept enough with the spell slot in which the spell is being prepared. A wizard's oldest spell slots are the ones in which she is most adept. Each spell a has a level of difficulty. The level of a spell is a measure of how difficult it is to prepare, and each wizard has a spell capacity determined by his wizard level, as shown in the Wizard Spell Capacity table. Each row of the table tells us the number of spells of each level the wizard can prepare simultaneously at each wizard level. He can substitute a lower-level spell for a higher-level spell, but not the other way around.

A wizard of level −5 can't cast any spells at all. A wizard of level −4 can prepare one spell of level minus three. At level 0, she can prepare one spell of level one. To prepare and cast a spell successfully, a wizard must study it, practice preparing it, and practice casting it. Such work is part of the initial and continuing training necessary for advancing as a wizard. For simplicity, we require that a wizard player character have INT ≥ 10 in order to raise her wizard level. Furthermore, a wizard cannot learn to prepare a spell whose level is higher than his intelligence at the time he learns to prepare it. Spell preparation and casting are affected by maeon wind strength, as we describe in Spell Level. By default, we assume that the wizard is on a planet with maeon wind strength 1 Y, which is the maeon wind strength of Clarus, where wizardry was invented.

Sorcerer

A sorcerer generates and uses magical effects with the nervous system of their mind and body in a way that requires practice, but does not require preparation for any particular magical effect. The sorcerer casts one spell at a time, but it can be any spell in his repetoire. We describe the abilities of sorcerers in the Sorcery chapter of The Laws of Magic. Initial training as a sorcerer takes ten thousand hours.

Thief

Thieves are trained to climb, pick pockets, open locks, find traps, disarm traps, move silently, hide, and disguise themselves. They use climbing shoes, suction cups, lock picks, black cloaks, daggers, garrotes, ropes, grapnels, pencils, paper, magnifying glasses, pliers, screwdrivers, wire cutters, and metal files. Initial training takes four thousand hours. Any time a player character attempts a feat of thieving, the dramaturgist assigns it a difficulty. The dramaturgist or the player rolls 1d20 and adds the numbers specified in the Thief Skills table. If the sum is greater than or equal to the difficulty, the character is successful. With each skill we associate a reference case, which is an example of how the skill might be applied. The Thief Skills table gives the difficulties of the reference cases (the reference difficulties) as well as the additions that are to be made to the roll of 1d20. The final column in the Thief Skills gives the addition that applies in absolute darkness. In dim light, apply a smaller adjustment. If the creature looking for the thief has exceptionally good night vision, the darkness will have to be absolute to obtain the full benefit of darkness when hiding.

The climb reference case is a ten-meter high brick wall that provides one-centimeter deep footholds, the climb being made with only climbing shoes and chalk, and taking no longer than ten minutes. Failure in a climb constitutes a shock of power 1d10 per five meters of the fall, and formidability one. Aside from climbing shoes, thieves climb with the help of suction cups, pitons, ice picks, and grapnels. Climbing down is harder than climbing up, so the same climb going down has difficulty 5 higher. The players can apply similar penalties for poor equipment, but take care not to duplicate the effect of armor burdening upon dexterity.

The pick pockets reference case is to take a wallet from a back trouser pocket of an adult sapien walking down a crowded street, taking no more than one minute to do so. If the victim is an adventurer, the difficulty of the attempt is increased by one for each of the victim's adventurer levels. If a thief fails by a margin of five or more points, the victim notices the thief in the act. For example, a fifth level thief with effective dexterity +8 needs to roll seven or above on 1d20 to pick the pockets of a third level adventurer. If the roll is two or below, the thief is caught by the adventurer. The same thief has a far greater chance of cutting the purse off a non-adventurer who is drunk. (The dramaturgist might subtract three from the difficulty because the victim is drunk, and another two because a purse is an easier target than a pocket. With these adjustments, the thief is guaranteed success.)

The open locks reference case is to open a common padlock in ten minutes. If a thief fails to open a lock, he may try again after a number of hours spent studying the lock. This number of hours is equal to the amount by which the roll of 1d20 fell short of indicating success. For example, a first level thief with intelligence +4 and dexterity +7 must roll eight or above on 1d20 to pick an common padlock. It she rolls a three, she can attempt to pick the lock again after five hours. If she fails again with a seven she must study the lock for another hour before attempting to pick it for the third time, and so on until either she gives up or succeeds. Consider Ping, a fifth level thief with intelligence +10 and dexterity +4 attempts to pick a dwarf-made lock in the dark. It is a +5 lock, and working in the dark adds +3 to the difficulty. She must roll 9 or higher to pick the lock. She rolls a 1. She must study the lock for eight hours before she gets to try again with the roll.

The find traps reference case is to discover a spring-loaded needle in a lock after ten minutes of searching. Trap doors, collapsing ceilings, and other large contrivances tend to be easier to find than a needle in a lock. The dramaturgist always rolls secretly to determine whether a thief finds traps. The dramaturgist rolls 1d20 even if there are no traps. The chance a thief has of finding a masterfully concealed door is the same as the reference chance.

The disarm traps reference case is to disarm a spring-loaded needle in a lock after ten minutes of preparation. Trap doors, collapsing ceilings, and other large contrivances tend to be more difficult to disarm than a spring-loaded needle in a lock. The chance a thief has of discovering how to open a masterfully concealed door is equal to the reference chance.

The move silently reference case is to sneak across ten yards of old floorboards, in soft shoes, taking no more than one minute, without making any sound audible to a human ten yards away. If a thief fails to move silently, the loudness of the noise he has made is proportional to the margin by which the 1d20 roll was greater than his chance of success. A roll five points greater than that required for success indicates that the noise made was equal in volume to someone coughing.

The hide reference case is to hide from a pedestrian in broad daylight by standing in the shade beneath a tree whose trunk is just wider than the thief's body. This requires the thief to move around the tree trunk as the pedestrian goes by. Thieves can also hide by camouflage, or by standing in shadows at night.

The disguise reference case is for a male thief is to dress up as a woman, chat with the doorkeeper of the women's baths, and be let in. For a female thief, the reference case is the same, but they dress up as men and get into the men's public baths. During their training, thieves are taught the basics of picking up new accents and languages, so as they see more of the world, they get better at disguising their voices and mannerisms.

Dazer

Prescience allows experienced adventurers to escape injury. If, however, an adventurer is distracted, it is more difficult for her to notice and respond appropriately to an attack's prescient forewarning. A assassin following close behind an unsuspecting victim can wait until the victim stubs her toe, or nearly gets hit by a cart, and then attack moments later, so that the prescient forewarning of the blow is obscured by pain, or the surprise of a close call with a cart. Defeating prescience with distractions is called dazing. To daze a victim, an assassin must first put himself in a position to launch a surprise attack with a hand-to-hand combat weapon. Missiles don't work, because dazing requires contact with the victim before and during the attack. For the details, see below, in which we refer to an attacker's dazing level. Initial training takes two thousand hours.

Assassin

An assassin is a combination Dazer and Thief. At level zero, an assassin has level zero as a dazer and as a thief. When he raises his assassin level, his dazer level rises by the same amount, as does his thief level. Initial training takes six thousand hours.

Healer

A Healer is a doctor, surgeon, and therapist. He also has license to administer divine medicines, on worlds where these are available. Initial training follows a schooling in arts and sciences, and takes two thousand hours. Healers set broken legs, cure diseases, accelerate recovery from wounds, perform simple surgery, and provide counseling. If more than one healer is on the scene, the higher of the two healer levels applies to their combined efforts. See Hit Points for definitions of the terms injured, cut, and break. The healer can make multiple attempts to bind cuts. The success of setting a break becomes evident only after the cast comes off a month later. Broken bones arise from a bruise of severity ten or greater. We present healer skills and their difficulties in the Healer Skills table.

Ranger

A ranger knows how to track, hunt, forage, camp, and navigate. Initial training takes four thousand hours. We have the following reference difficulties for the ranger abilities. In the Ranger Skills table, we list the skills of the ranger, which are each in themselves a discipline, along with their reference difficulties. Each skill is accompanied by a reference case, which we describe in its own paragraph.

The reference case for the the ranger "track" skill is to follow at walking pace the trail of a running man for one thousand meters across a forest floor one hour after his passage on a dry day, with no effort made by the man to hide his trail. If the man tries to hide his trail, the difficulty increases by his own tracker-level. If he does not know what he is doing, he will make it easier for him to be followed. If he has no experience as a tracker, his tracker-level is −5, so the difficulty falls from 15 to 10. We note that a novice tracker, when faced with the reference task, must roll a 20 on a 1d20 to succeed. The Tracking Difficulty Adjustments table suggests adjustments to the tracking difficulty by comparison to the reference case.

To illustrate the ranger track skill, suppose a ranger is tacking a cart on a gravel road. We decide that a cart on a well-traveled gravel road leaves ten times fewer signs of passage per meter than a man in a forest. Difficulty increases by ten. The cart might leave the road at any time, but let us consider the ranger being able to tell it the cart is still on the road by tracking along the road, in which case the radius of curvature of the road is ten times higher than that of a man running around obstacles in a forest. Difficulty decreases by ten. The ranger wants to stay out of sight of the cart, so difficulty increases by five. The result is a feat of difficulty 20 per 1000 m length of road. The novice ranger must concentrate on looking for tracks the cart makes when leaving the road, in which case a cart leaves ten times as many signs of passage as a man when passing over un-traveled dirt, so difficulty is 5 looking for such trackes over a thousand meters. A twentieth level tracker can be confident of tracking a cart along a gravel road, without being seen from the cart, and without slowing down to look for side tracks. A first level ranger can be confident of seeing where the cart leaves the road.

The reference case for the ranger hunt skill reference case is to obtain in one eight-hour day hunting alone in a forest well-populated with deer, a single shot at 50-m range on an adult deer. With a bow, a zero-level fighter would need to roll 11 or higher on a 1d20 to hit (an adult deer is approximately man-sized). In hunting, a good shot is one in which a zero-level fighter with a medium-sized bow has a 50% chance of scoring a hit. When a ranger sets out to obtain a good shot on the first edible animal that presents itself, in a forest well-populated with animal life, he attempts a feat of difficulty 10. If he halves the amount of time he allows himself to hunt, the difficulty increases by 4. If he doubles the time he allows himself, the difficulty decreases by 4. Thus a ranger trying to get a good shot on anything he can find in a one-hour interval attempts a feat of difficulty 10 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 22.

The reference case for the ranger forage skill is to obtain enough food and water to sustain the forager for one day during one day's foraging in a temperate forest in summer-time. The reference case for the ranger camp skill is to construct, in the rain in one hour in a forest, a shelter that will keep him dry through a night of rain. The reference case for the ranger navigate skill is to site from a hill-top at dusk a deserted castle 20 km away, and after dark, with a compass and a flashlight, navigate through 20 km of forest and find the castle before the sun comes up.

Rider

The rider discipline encompasses riding living creatures, such as horses, hippogriffs, camels, and wyverns. Each species of creature is a new creature in which a rider must become proficient, in the same way that a fighter must become proficient in a new weapon. But a good rider will quickly master a new mount, and bring his skill to bear. Initial training as a horseman takes one hundred hours. A zero-level rider proficient with horses can travel comfortably all day on a horse. He knows how to care for his animal as well, for riding includes care for the creatures he rides. When a rider attempts a feat of riding, he rolls 1d20 and adds his level. If the sum is greater than or equal to the difficulty of the feat, he succeeds. In all cases, failure by 1 to 9 points means refusal by the mount, and failure by 10 or more points means the rider will suffer some riding accident, such a fall. Horse riders rarely strap themselves on, but hippogriff riders usually do. We provide a list of feats of riding and their difficulties in the Riding Feat Difficulty table.

In our Riding Feat Difficulty table, we use the phrase "unfamiliar with mount species". By this we mean the rider has never ridden this species of mount before, and the mount is significantly different from any other he has ridden. It takes five hours riding a new species to become proficient. We note that sentient mounts will not allow themselves to collide with heavy objects. A horse will not run into a tree. A hippogriff will pull itself out of a spin before it reaches the ground. The trick is to get the hippogriff into the spin in the first place. For example, Zar has never ridden before. He jumps on a horse and tries to gallop down the road. Galloping is difficulty 5. He has rider level −5. He is unfamiliar with this species of mount, so whatever he's doing becomes more difficult by 5. He must roll 15 or above on 1d20 to succeed, and if he rolls a 5 or lower, he falls off. Now consider Ping, who has rider level 1 and learned to ride on horses. She jumps on her orse and gallops across a field. Galloping is difficulty 5. She must roll a 4 on 1d20 to get galloping first try. If she fails, she can try again in ten seconds. When she is galloping across the field, she encounters a 1-m fence. She must roll a 4 or higher to jump it. Thristen, on the other hand, has rider level 16. He has ridden horses and hippogriffs, but never wyverns. He jumps on a wyvern for the first time in his life. Taking off has difficulty 0 on a griff, so on a wyvern it is 5. But he is unfamiliar with this species which brings the difficulty of take-off to 10. And this wyvern is unfamiliar with him, so it won't want to cooperate. The difficulty is now 15. But he has rider level 16, so he jumps on and takes off immediately. Suppose John, a horse-rider with rider level 1, jumps on the back of a wyvern, trying to emmulate Thristen's success. John must roll a 14 or above to take off. He rolls a 2. Not only does he fail to take off, but if he's not strapped in, there's a chance he will slide out of the saddle and land on the ground.

We use the strength of the horse to calculate the striking power and weapon burdening of a charging attack with a lance. The rider does not need to move the weapon himself, he merely holds it in position. He aims the blow by steering the horse. The same goes for a charging attack with a sword, or any other weapon. When the attack is not a charge, however, the rider must wield the weapon himself, so his weapon burdening is calculated using his own strength. The effective encumbrance of armor is halved for all combat from horse-back. The horse is assumed to carry the other half of the weight. When a horse is stopped, and the rider is fighting infantry, the infantry suffer a to-hit roll adjustment of minus three against the rider. The charge of a heavy horse, the use of armor for both horse and rider, and the elevation of the saddle, make well-trained cavalry formidable in battle. Firing a missile while riding is a feat of riding, as shown in the Riding Feat Difficulty table. In addition, firing from the back of a moving horse incurs a to-hit roll penalty. This penalty is 3 from a standing horse, 10 from a trotting horse, and 15 from a galloping horse. The penalty is 15 from the back of a flying griff also. These penalties assume that the target is stationary or moving independently from the rider. If the target is moving along with the rider, the penalty will be less severe.

Torturer

A torturer applies himself to a constrained or defenseless victim, and tries to extract information or confession from his victim by application of pain. The reference case for torture is to persuade someone to reveal the whereabouts of one year's salary in ten minutes without causing any injury. The difficulty, in this case, is 11 plus TOU of the subject. The torturer must roll 1d20 greater than or equal to the difficulty minus his torturer level. If he fails, he may try again in one hour per point by which he failed. If the torturer is prepared to injure the victim, the difficulty decreases in proportion to the severity of the injury he is willing to inflict, culminating in a decrease of 10 when the torturer is prepared to kill his subject. Other than that, we leave the variations to the judgement of the players.

Combat

Our rules describe three types of combat: hand-to-hand, missile, and surprise. A Hand-to-Hand combat is one in which two or more combatants attack one another with what we call "hand-held weapons". A hand-held weapon is any weapon held securely by a combatant, or a hand itself, or a foot, elbow, hip, jaw, horn, claw, or any other body-part that can be used as a weapon. In a hand-to-hand combat, all combatants are defending themselves against attack, but some may be refraining from attacking. A Surprise combat is one where the target is attacked unawares with a hand-held weapon. The target is not defending himself. A Missile combat is one where objects fly through the space dividing the attacker and the target. We will describe each in turn. Note that there is no surprise missile combat. The purpose of surprise combat in SAGA is to allow dazers to overcome their target's dodging points. The SAGA combat system is simple to use during a fight, yet realistic and flexible enough to provide long-lasting satisfaction. It takes a couple of minutes to calculate the parameters that define a combatant, but once calculated, these parameters change only rarely. These parameters are striking accuracy, striking power and armor protection. Learning to use the combat system effectively is a matter of learning how best to compromise accuracy for power.

In all forms of combat, at least one person is trying to harm another or force them into submission by administering a what we refer to in our rules as a "shock". We defined the word "shock" in our chapter on assaults: a shock is an assault that can be dodged or taken. Each shock has a formidability measured in dodging points and a power measured in hit points. By default, the formidability of all attacks is one, but in hand-to-hand and surprise attack, we can increase the formidability of attacks by accepting a decreased likelyhood of success. In order to dodge the assault, the recipient must use a number of dodging points equal to the formidability of the assault. If the recipient takes the assault, he loses a number of hit points equal to the power of the assault minus his armor protection. In all three forms of combat, an intelligent attacker can give her target a third option: submit to her will in some way. Suppose an attacker delivers a shock of formidability one and power seventeen to a defender with no armor, no dodging points, and only ten hit points. The defender cannot dodge the attack, and if he takes it, he will be severely wounded. The attacker can give the defender the option of dropping the book he is carrying in place of being wounded. If the defender chooses to drop his weapon, he suffers no other ill effects from the assault. What actually happens in the SAGA world is the attacker threatens the defender and convinces them that they will be wounded if they do not submit, and, furthermore, makes it easy for the defender to submit.

Hand-to-Hand Combat

By hand-to-hand combat we mean combat up close, with weapons that will be in the attacker's hand when they strike their opponent, and where the opponent is aware that he is being attacked, and is attempting to avoid being hit. When one party makes no effort to avoid being hit, either because they are unaware of the attack, or because they choose not to defend themselves, we use the surprise combat system. Hand-to-hand combat assumes that both parties are active in their efforts to defend themselves. They are both wielding weapons of some sort, even if their weapons are their bare hands, or nothing more formidable than a fork.

In hand-to-hand combat, each combatant always wields a primary weapon and has the option of wielding a secondary weapon as well. Her striking accuracy (sa) is fl + DEX + sd + wd − ab − sb − wb, where fl is her fighter level, sd is the shield defense of any shield she wields, wd is the weapon defense of any secondary weapon she wields, ab is the armor burdening of any armor she might be wearing, sb is the shield burdening of any shield she wields, and wb is the sum of the weapon burdening of both her primary and secondary weapons. A combatant's striking power (sp) is wp + STR where, wp is the weapon power of his primary weapon and STR is his strength. The secondary weapon does not add to his striking power. It serves only to increase his striking accuracy by its weapon defense. Only the primary weapon contributes to striking power.

Combats are divided into rounds. A round has no fixed duration. It is merely a punctuation of the combat for the combat system. In a duel, a round might be ten seconds, in an infantry battle, a full minute. In a frenzied skirmish in the street, a round might be two seconds. The combatant whose striking accuracy is five or more greater than his most skilled opponent strikes first. If no combatant has such an advantage, each side rolls 1d6 and the side with the highest roll strikes first. We call this the roll for initiative. When the initiative rolls are equal, the attacks are simultaneous. Either combatant may choose to miss out on an opportunity to attack so as to escape the combat if an escape route is available.

Each attack can either be a hit or a miss. A attack is a hit if a roll of 1d20 is greater than or equal to to-hit roll established by the rules of combat. Otherwise, the attack is a miss. The to-hit roll, thr, is 11 − (saa − sad)/2 − thra, where sad is the striking accuracy of the defender, saa is the striking accuracy of the attacker, and thra is the to-hit roll adjustment. Note that the to-hit roll adjustment is subtracted from the to-hit roll, not added. A negative adjustment is a negative thing from the point of view of the attacker, and a positive adjustment is positive thing from the point of view of the attacker. When the to-hit roll adjustment is +5, we say that the combatant "gets +5 to hit" and their to-hit roll is reduced by five. If the adjustment is −5, we say she "gets −5 to hit" and their to-hit roll increases by five. The to-hit roll in prior to adjustment is what we call the base to-hit roll, bthr. We have bthr = 11 − (saa − sad)/2. We see that the difference between the base to-hit rolls of the attacker and defender is equal to the difference between their striking accuracies. We have a term for the difference between the striking accuracy of the attacker and defender: we call it the attacker's advantage, aa, where aa = saa = sad. If the attacker's advantage is zero, the base to-hit roll for both parties will be 11, regardless of the absolute value of the combatant's shared striking accuracy. If the attacker's advantage is 20, the base to-hit rolls will be 1 and 21, regardless of whether the two striking accuracies are 40 and 20, 35 and 15, or 15 and −5. It is only the difference in striking accuracy that affects the base to-hit roll. When this difference is even-valoued, our formula immediately yields integer values for the to-hit rolls. But if the difference is odd, we have to round one way or the other, and our tradition is to round up. If the difference is 5, the to-hit rolls are 9 and 14. We do not provide a table relating attacker's advantage to base to-hit rolls. Instead, we use the base to-hit roll formula directly, because it is so simple.

Our To-Hit Roll Adjustment table provides examples of to-hit roll adjustments, thra, for hand-to-hand combat. In particular, it provides the adjustments for outnumbered defenders, striking for increased formidability, and striking for decreased damage. To-hit roll adjustments apply only to an attacker's to-hit roll. If multiple adjustments are called for by the circumstances of the combat, we add them together. We use to-hit roll adjustments to separate the calculation of to-hit rolls for each combatant. After the initial comparison of striking accuracy, the choices made by combatants affect only their own to-hit rolls. One might argue that it is more realistic to adjust striking accuracy instead of the to-hit roll when accounting for circumstances such as "poorly-made weapon". But adjusting striking accuracy forces us to re-calculate the to-hit roll of the defender, and if the defender makes some choice that requires an adjustment, we would be adjusting the defender's striking accuracy, which would require re-calculating the attacker's to-hit roll. This interaction slows down the game and offers little in return. It is important to have to think about tactics in a fight, but it is not important that the tactics be implemented with perfect realism. Thus, we calculate the base to-hit roll from the difference in striking accuracy, and once we have this base to-hit roll, we adjust it in view of choices made by the attacker. Suppose we have two attackers wielding daggers coated with paralysis poison, the defender is wearing no armor, and all three combatants have the same striking accuracy. The two attackers outnumber the defender, so they get a to-hit roll adjustment of +5. Their to-hit roll is 11 − 5 = 6. They must roll 6 or greater on 1d20 to hit. But they decide to strike for double formidability, which introduces a to-hit roll adjustment of −5, so now their to-hit is 11 − 5 + 5 = 11. Their to-hit roll has increased, but their opponent must use two dodging points to dodge their attacks, rather than the usual one dodging point. In order to reduce their to-hit roll again, the two attackers choose to strike for half damage, which introduces a to-hit roll adjustment of +5. So now their to-hit roll is 11 −5 + 5 −5 = 6. If either rolls a 6, they hit. Suppose they both hit. Now the defender must use four dodging points or be hit by at least one poisoned blade. The objective of the attackers in this case is not to wound their opponent, but simply to administer poison through a small cut. Not that, in this particular case, because the attackers have opted to strike for half damage, they will not score a critical hit if their roll is 16 or higher: the attacker gives up the possibility of a critical hit when she strikes for reduced damage.

Negative to-hit rolls are significant in SAGA's combat rules, because we can combine them with to-hit roll adjustments to make our attacks more formidable, or with critical hits to make our attacks more powerful. Negative to-hit rolls can occur when one side greatly outnumbers the other, or when one side is far more skilled than the other, or when a skilled archer is shooting a nearby target, or when an assassin is executing a surprise attack. When a to-hit roll is negative, we are certain to hit, but it is still worth rolling the to-hit die because the power of our attack will be increased if our die roll exceeds the to-hit roll by ten or more. In hand-to-hand combat and surprise combat, but not in missile combat, we can increase the formidability of an attack at the cost of a negative to-hit roll adjustment. When we increase the formidability of an attack, we make it harder to dodge. If, for example, we accept an increase of 5 to our to-hit roll, we can increase the formidability of our attack from one to two, so that the defender must use two dodging points to dodge our attack rather than just one. Critical hits and the option to increase the formidability of an attack mean that it is always to our advantage to enter a combat with a lower base to-hit roll, even if the base to-hit roll is negative.

Oue To-Hit Roll Adjustments table declares that a combatant will suffers a −1 to-hit roll penalty for each five full rounds of continuous combat. He can overcome this penalty by striking for half power. That is to say: he is tired, so he cannot hit as hard, or he can try to hit just as hard, but he is less likely to hit because he is tired. To recover from the exertion of combat, a fighter must rest for one minute per round he fought. We usually forget to apply this rule during long fights, but the rule can make certain fights a lot more interesting. We note that some of the to-hit roll adjustments in the To-Hit Roll Adjustment table apply to sapiens more than they do to other races. For example, sapiens don't see well at night, but orcs do. An orc suffers no to-hit roll penalty even in only starlight. Conversely, an orc without sunglasses is at a disadvantage during bright daylight when fighting a sapien. Sapiens infantry suffer a penalty when striking at calvalry, but an ogre, being three meters tall, suffers no such penalty. And of course, a merman will suffers no penalty striking a swimming sapien, because the water is their natural element. Ultimately, we leave it to the players to agree upon the to-hit roll adjustments they will apply in each combat. All the players should feel that the adjustments are an adequate representation of the circumstances.

If an attack is a miss, it is either wide or parried. It presents no further problems for the defender. If the attack is a hit, it subjects the defender to what we call a shock in our rules of play. A shock has "formidability" and "power". The formidability of a combat attack is one by default, which means the defender must use one and only one dodging point to dodge the attack. A dodged attack is one that misses thanks to some fortuitous event that favors the defender. If the defender chooses to take the shock rather than dodge it, or is forced to take the shock because they do not have sufficient dodging points to dodge it, they will suffer a number of hit points damage equal to the power of the attack minus their armor protection. The power of the attack is decided by a die roll called the damage roll. The damage roll is a randomly generated value governed by the attacker's striking power, sp. Damage rolls require one die only, usually a ten-sided die. We use the "D" notation in the Damage Rolls table to indicate the multiplication of a single roll, as distinct from the "d" notation, which indicates the sum of multiple rolls. When we roll "4D10" we roll a ten-sided die and multiply the result by four. When we roll "3D10+3" we roll a ten-sided die, multiply by three, and add three to the product to obtain the damage roll. An attacker can always opt to decrease their striking power for the purpose of an attack, and a result obtain a different damage roll. For example, an attacker might reduce their striking power from 10 to 9 so that their damage roll is 1D10+4 rather than 2D10. Sometimes, minimum damage is more important than average damage. The average of 1D10+4 is 9.5, and the minimum is 5, while the average of 2D10 is 11 and the minimum is 2. The power of the attack will usually be equal to the damage roll, but sometimes we multiply the damage roll by a power factor to obtain the actual power. The power factor will consist of only one term, and this term will be an integer power of two. There are only two sources of power factors: critical hits and striking for reduced damage. We never combine these two: when an attacker strikes for reduced damage, their attack is no longer eligible for a critical hit. Having obtained the power of the attack by multiplying the damage roll by the power factor, the result power is applied to the defender. We subtract the defender's armor protection, ap, and the result is what we call the damage of the attack. If the defender does not take the attack, he must subtract the damage from his current number of hit points. The damage cannot be negative: if the armor protection is greater than the power of the attack, the damage is zero.

The power factor of an attack will be an integer power of two. It is 2⁻¹ = 1/2 = 0.5 when the attacker is striking for half power and 2⁻² = 1/4 = 0.25 when striking for quarter power, as described in the To-Hit Roll Adjustments table. No further reductions in power are supported by the rules. There is, for example, no additional to-hit roll adjustment for striking for one eighth power. Provided the target of an attack has mass 20 kg or greater, we round the power to the nearest integer. If the one-quarter damage produces a result of one half, and the creature has mass at least 20 kg, we round down to zero. If the attacker's die roll exceeds her to-hit roll by ten or more, and provided that she is not striking for reduced power, the attack is a critical hit. A critical hit indicates an attack that has struck a vulnerable point in the target. We multiply the damage roll of a critical hit by a critical hit multiplier. When the die roll exceeds the to-hit roll by 10, the critical hit multiplier is 2. We say the attacker has scored "double-damage". When the die exceeds by 15, the multiplier is 2, and the attacker has scored a "quadruple-damage" hit, and so on, with a doubling of the multiplier for each additional full five points of excess until we reach a maximum multiplier that depends upon the nature of the target being attacked. We have different maximum multipliers for creatures, devices, and shields. The Critical Hit Multipliers table provides critical hit multipliers verses die roll excess for these three types of target.

A critical hit is not one that has struck with greater force, it is on that has made contact with a vulnerable point in the target. Complex targets are more vulnerable to critical hits than simple targets. We divide targets into three classes: creatures, devices, and shields, in order of decreasing complexity and therefore decreasing vulnerability. The maximum critical hit multiplier for shields is ×2, or "double damage". It is possible to score double damage with an arrow fired at a wooden door held up as a shield: the arrow might penetrate a defect in the door and cause it to split. But it is not possible to score quadruple damage against the door. We classify the door as a "shield". A lantern hanging over a tavern doorway might be solid enough to resist the throw of a stone, but a stone in just the right place would shatter the glass and extinguish the flame. We allow critical multipiers of up to ×8 for devices, and a lantern in an example of a "device". Creatures are particularly vulnerable to critical hits. It is possible for a pencil to kill a sapien instantly if the pencil is applied vigorously in exactly the right place. We allow critical multipiers up to ×32 for targets who are creatures. Demonds, gods, dragons, humans, horses, incubuses, and all others with a central nervous system are "creatures" for the purpose of critical hits, but not things like a green slime, which have no central nervous system.

Surprise Combat

A combatant is said to be surprised when he is caught so unawares that he is unable to defend himself, or if he chooses not to defend himself. Surprise does not affect missile combat, other than that the target does not take deliberate evasive action, but it affects hand-to-hand combat so greatly that we have separate rules to describe it. A surprise combat is a hand-to-hand combat when one party is surprised by another, or takes no action to defend himself. A surprise attack is a guaranteed hit, provided the attacker strikes for formidability one. The to-hit roll on 1d20 is 1. Neither the attacker's nor the victim's striking accuracy affects the likelihood of a hit, nor does any form of burdening affect the roll. If the victim has one or more dodging points, however, the surprise hit can be dodged, which is to say that the victim is warned by a prescient sensation and can use to avoid the attack by an efficient and effect movement of their body. Below are the four scenarios in which an attacker can launch a surprise attack under the rules of our game.

1. Attacker within range, weapon ready, victim is unaware of attacker.
2. Attacker within range, weapon ready, victim cannot see the weapon, victim does not suspect an attack.
3. Attacker within range, weapon ready, victim trusts attacker and is not the least bit wary.
4. Defender chooses to ignore the attacker, despite knowing the attack is coming.

The art of dazing is the art of striking by surprise so as to defeat a victim's prescience. The surprise attack to-hit roll sthr, is given by sthr = −9 − 2dl − thra, where thra is a to-hit roll adjustment, and dl is the dazing level of the attacker. When dl=−5, which it the case for everyone who has no training as a dazer, the equation reduces to 1−thra, which is to say: most people need a 1 to hit in a surprise attack. Surprise hand-to-hand combat shares the same reduced-damage and increased-formidability to-hit roll adjustments as hand-to-hand combat, as in the To-Hit Roll Adjustments for Hand-to-Hand Combat table. Assuming the attacker is not striking for half-damage, the surprise attack will receive a critical hit multiplier using the same rules as for hand-to-hand combat, as in the Critical Hit Multipliers for All Types of Combat table. Armor, weapon, and shield burdening of the attacker does not affect the surprise to-hit roll. This is because it is assumed that the attacker has overcome all the handicaps associated with these burdens while positioning himself for the surprise attack. Assassins often work in the dark, and in that case we must consider the greater ease with which a victim can be surprised, and compare this to the greater difficulty with of striking a vulnerable point on the victim's body in the dark. In general, we assume these two phenomenon balance one another, but if the victim is an orc, who sees well in the dark, we might apply a penalty to an sapien assassin attempting to surprise the orc.

Let us illustrate surprize combat with a series of examples. A first level assassin sneaks up beside her sleeping victim. She is within striking distance, she has her sword drawn, and her victim is unaware of her. She has a surprise attack. Her victim is a guard wearing ring armor, who probably has one or two dodging points. She strikes for triple formidability, so that the guard must use three dodging points to dodge her attack. Her assumption is that the guard does not have three dodging points. Her to-hit roll is minus −10 − (2 * 1) + 10 = −2. She is certain to hit. She rolls a nine, which exceeds her to-hit roll by 11, so she scores a critical hit with multiplier ×2, which we call "double damage". She has STR = 5 and she's wielding the sword two-handed. She rolls her damage roll, which comes out to be 16 and multiplies this by 2 to arrive at the power of her attack, which is 32. The damage of the attack is 32 minus the victims armor protection, which in this case is 10 for ring armor. The guard must take 22 hit points damage or lose 3 dodging points. He has only one dodging point. He is badly wounded. She kills him with a second blow. A fourth-level assassin sneaks up behind a woman in the dark and surprises her. He has his knife drawn and she is not wearing armor. He estimates that she has no more than 4 dodging points, so he strikes for formidability 5 with his dagger. His surprise to-hit roll is −10 −(2 * 4) + 20 = 2. He rolls a seven: he has scored a normal hit. He rolls for damage and gets power 14 hit points. But it turns out that his victim has more than five dodging points. She uses five of her dodging points to dodge the attack, and turns to defend herself. A fifteenth level assassin walks up behind his victim in a crowded room. He has a sharp pencil in his hand. The victim sees the pencil, but does not expect to be attacked with it. The assassin estimates that his victim has no dodging points, so he strikes for formidability one. But he wants to deliver the blow without it being noticed by the people around him. The players agree that this requires a to-hit roll adjustment of −10. The surprise to-hit roll is 1 − (− 10) − (15 * 2) = −19. He rolls a 11, exceeding his to-hit roll by thirty. He gets a critical hit with a power multiplier thirty-two. He is a strong man wielding a sharp pencil. He would normally do one hit point of damage with such a diminutive weapon, despite his strength, but with the power multiplier, he does thirty-two. The victim has no dodging points and she has only nine hit points. The assassin kills her instantly, with no immediate evidence of the wound. He walks away as the victim collapses.

Another interesting application of the surprize combat system applies to hand-to-hand combat when one of the combatants completely ignores the attacks of his opponents, for in this circumstance, his opponents must use the surprize combat system, not the hand-to-hand combat system. Suppose we have four fighters with striking accuracy 15 attacking a single ogre with striking accuracy, sa = −5 and armor protection, ap = 25. If the ogre chooses to defend himself against these four using the hand-to-hand combat system, his to-hit roll will be thr = 11 + 20/2 = 21. Even striking for one half damage he needs a 16 to hit. His opponents, meanwhile, need only thr = 11 −20/2 − 15 = −14 to hit, because of their superior accuracy and outnumbering the ogre four-to-one. Even if they roll a 1 they will get quadruple damage. Thus the ogre ignores three of his four enemies and engages the fourth in hand-to-hand combat. The three who are ignored are now forced to use the surprize combat system. They need to roll a 1. They are unlikely to get through his armor unless they roll an 11 for double damage. The ogre, meanwhile, concentrates upon one enemy. He needs a 21 to hit for normal damage, or 16 for half damage. Given that he has striking power 40, half damage is still 4D10, and he can kill a man in armor with a single blow. The opponent he is attacking needs a 1 to hit, because he no longer receives an out-numbering advantage. Thus, by refusing to engage the other three, the ogre does far better. Consider a fifteenth level fighter who sneaks up behind a victim, earning a surprise attack. He strikes with his mace. He has no skill at dazing, so his dazing level −5 and his to-hit roll is 1. He rolls a 3. The victim uses her only dodging point to dodge the blow, and turns to fight. Her striking accuracy is −4, while the fighter's striking accuracy is 21. The fighter gets the initiative automatically, and needs a −1 to hit. The fighter is so much more skilled in hand-to-hand combat than his victim that the victim only makes things worse for herself by attacking. The victim takes a mighty swing at the fighter, and in doing so, breaks his elbow on the fighter's mace. What we see here is something fundamental expressed in the SAGA combat system: when one combatant is sufficiently superior to another, the very fact that the inferior combatant is trying to harm the superior combatant makes the inferior combatant easier to hit. The movement of the inferior combatant creates momentum that the superior combatant can use to generate greater damage and more devestating precision.

Missile Combat

By missile combat we mean any effort by one party to harm another from a distance by throwing or firing something sharp or heavy, or even projecting with their mind a magical effect. Thus wizards use the missile combat system when trying to hit the mind of a targe with the Beguile Spell, just as a fighter will use the system when trying to shoot an enemy. Missiles can be thrown by hand or they can be propelled by a mechanical devices. Bows, crossbows, slings and catapults are available to adventurers. On the surface of magical worlds, exploding gases dissipate before they can do much work, escaping from the high pressure of the explosion through tiny space bridges made by the maeon wind. The same phenomenon prevents the proper operation of internal combustion engines, steam engines, and cannons; not even explosive charges are effective. Hundreds of meters below the surface, however, such as in a dwarf city beneath a mountain, these tiny space bridges are less common, and guns and cannons are possible, although they will never be as powerful as they are on non-magical worlds. We concern ourselves here only with missile weapons that are useful on the surface of magical worlds.

The outcome of a missile attack is determined by a roll 1d20. A combatant's firing accuracy for device-propelled missiles is equal to their fighter level minus their armor burdening, or fa = fl − ab. For hand-propelled missiles, firing accuracy includes weapon burdening as well, so we have fa = fl − ab − wb. The missile attack to-hit roll is 1 − fa − thra, where thra is the missile attack to-hit roll adjustment, which we can look up in the To-Hit Roll Adjustments for Missile Combat table. The to-hit roll adjustments are additive. Missile attacks are similar to hand-to-hand attacks in that they are represented by a formidability and a power. Unlike a hand-to-hand attack, however, a missile attack cannot have formidability greater than one, not even if it is an assassin launching the missile attack. The target of a missile attack can always dodge the attack by using one dodging point. If the target does not dodge the attack, the target is subject to the power of the attack in the same way as for hand-to-hand combat. The target suffers damage equal to the attack power minus the target's armor protection. Nor is it possible with a missile to strike for reduced damage and obtain a more favorable to-hit roll adjustment. Attempting to cause less damage with a missile attack instead incurs an unfavorable to-hit roll adjustment. It is possible, however, to score a critical hit with a missile. We manage critical hits in missile combat using the same rules as for hand-to-hand and surprise combat, as presented in the Critical Hit Multipliers for All Types of Combat table.

Each missile has a missile extent in meters. The to-hit roll increases by one per full extend range to the target. Each missile weapon has a normal firing rate. For bows, this is one missile per four seconds. The duration of one round of hand-to-hand combat is around four seconds, so we usually allow one bow shot at the normal rate per combat round. Crossbows have a slower rate: one shot every sixteen seconds. We list the firing rates in the Missiles section. Firing at double the normal rate incurs a penalty of −10 to hit. At eight times the normal rate, which is two shots with a bow per second, the penalty is −40 to hit. Motion perpendicular to the direction of the missile makes the shot more difficult. At long ranges, however, when the missile follows a high arc, any horizontal motion of the target will increase the to-hit roll. As a general rule of thumb, the missile descends almost vertically at a range of fifty extents, which marks the maximum range of the weapon. The extent of a crossbow is 4 m, for example, so its maximum range is 200 m. At this range, the bolt is coming down vertically. The extent of a heavy bow is 6 m, so its maximum range is 300 m.

Let us illustrate the missile combat system with a series of examples. Suppose a man with fighter-level zero takes a shot with a bow (extent = 5 m) at a 50-cm straw target 50 m away. His to-hit roll is 1 − 0 (firing accuracy at figher-level zero) + 50/5 (range divided by extent) + 5 (50-cm target) = 16. He hits 25% of the time. He advances to fighter level 10 and his to-hit roll for the same 50-cm target at 50 m drops to 6, so he hits 75% of the time. Considering the 25-cm center of his target, he hits 50% of the time, and the central 12 cm he hits 25% of the time. The rules also suggest that he will hit the central 6 cm of the target 0% of the time, but rules are clearly inaccurate in this case. The chance of hitting the central 6 cm should be one quarter the chance of hitting the centerl 12 cm, which would be 6%. But this inaccuracy has no practical impact upon the game, so we accept the rules as they are. Suppose a man with fighter level zero picks up a loaded crossbow for the first time and fires at a charging bear ten meters away. His to-hit roll is 1 − 0 + 1 (crossbow has difficulty 1 and he is not proficient) + 10/4 (range divided by extent) − 5 (2-m target) + 0 (motion towards attacker) = −1 (when rounded up). He cannot miss. In fact, he is likely to score a critical hit. Consider a woman with fl = 10 who is proficient with a bow with extent 5 m and normal firing rate 4 s. She fires at double-speed at a man 40 m away, who is fleeing away from her and dodging as he goes. Her to-hit roll is 1 − 10 (firing accuracy at fighter-level ten) + 10 (firing at double rate) + 40/5 (range divided by extent) + 4 (dodging at 2 m/s across the line of fire) = 13. She fires twice in four seconds. She is likely to hit once. Now the same woman shoots at a pheasant taking off at 2 m/s at range 20 m. She has her bow drawn when the pheasant takes off, so she has one or two seconds to aim, which is plenty. Her to-hit roll is 1 − 10 + 20/5 (range divided by extent) + 10 (25-cm target) + 8 (target widths per second lateral movement) = 13. She has a good chance of hitting. If she gets three or four such chances in an evening's hunting, she is likely to eat pheasant for dinner. Suppose we have a twentieth-level fighter is proficient with the long bow. He shoots at a woman walking one hundred meters away. His to-hit roll is 1 − 20 + 100/5 (range divided by extent) + 2 (walking) = 3. We roll a 14. He has scored a critical hit with double damage at range one hundred meters. High-level fighters are dangerous with bows.

The power of a hit with a missile is decided by dice rolls in the same way as it is for hand-to-hand attacks. The missile attack has a firing power, fp, which we convert into a die roll with the Damage Rolls for All Types of Combat table. Devices that fire missiles have a "normal" firing power when used with "normal" missiles. The firing device can be better than normal, and so have increased firing power, and the missiles can be better than normal, and so further increase the firing power. See our chapter on Missile Weapons for the firing power and firing rate of normal missile devices. Critical hits in missile combat indicate that the missile has hit a sensitive area, or penetrated a weak spot. They do not indicate that the attack was more powerful than the damage roll indicates. If the damage roll gives power 10 and the to-hit roll gives quadruple damage, the power of the attack will be 40, but only if the target has weak spots to hit. A shield will suffer no more than double damage. A normal medium bow has firing power 10 with normal weapons. The damage roll is 2D10 regardless of the strength of who wields the bow. A +5 medium bow combined with a +10 arrow has firing power 25. The power of a normal hand-hurled missile launched by a person with strength ten is given below. To obtain the firing power in practice, we add the person's strength and any advantages the weapon itself may have due to superior construction. A normal javelin, for example, thrown by a man with STR = 5 has firing power 6 (javelin power) + 5 (strength of thrower) = 11. But a +5 javelin thrown by the same man has firing power 6 + 5 + 5 = 16.

Mass Combat

By mass combat we mean combat between forces numbering hundreds or more. We present three ways to determine the outcome of such battles, and leave it to the players to pick the one that best fits the encounter in the game. In the military system, we divide the opposing forces into continguous groups called armies, and we divide each battle into rounds. In the representative system, we use the individual hand-to-hand combat system to work out the experiences of ten or twenty soldiers on each side of the battle, and assume that these, in combination, represent proportion of casualties on each side. In the statistical system, we assign a small probability of hitting a target when the missile combat system dictates a to-hit roll greater than twenty, and combine the small probability with a large number of shooters to give us a probability of the target being hit.

Let us begin with the military system. We divide the opposing forces into armies. The size of each army, S, is measured in army units, where one army unit represents a fixed number of soldiers. When armies contain tens of thousands of troops, a unit size of one thousand soldiers works well. Battles are divided into battle rounds. During a battle round there may be many armies fighting one another. Each pair of armies fighting do so along a battle front. One army might be fighting two or more armies, in which case there will be two or more fronts. By default, a battle round is ten minutes, but the players can change the length as they see fit. The battle round should be the same for all battles taking place at the same time, or managing the war will become impractical.

The two armies on a battle front each have a number of soldiers engaged in fighting on the front. This number is the engagement of each army on the front, E, and is measured in army units. The engagement of each army is by default equal, as when two shield walls facing one another along a front with natural obstacles on either end. So long as each shield wall holds, he engagment is the same, and the troops at the front are fighting one-on-one. They can rotate out of the shield wall to rest, and they can support one another in places of weakness. Being outnumbered in a fight is a devastating disadvantage, as embodied in our hand-to-hand combat system. There are many ways an army can obtain engagement greater than its enemy, and it is the objective of every general to defeat all such maneuvers on the part of his enemy, while executing such maneuvers himself. If the line of army A is longer than the line of army B, army A can move soldiers around to attack the side of B's line. The engagement of A might increase by 50%. We leave it to the players to figure out how the disposition of armies affects their engagement.

The soldiers themselves are compared by their relative strength, S. The soldiers of one side have relative strength 1.0, and those of the other side have relative strength greater than one. The relative strength of the superior soldier is the average number of opposing soldiers she can kill before she herself is killed. We like to determine relative strength by fighting one round between an example of a soldier from each side. When one soldier wins, we are able to estimate how many more enemies she could kill before being killed, or we could continue with another opponent until the first soldier is finally killed. As one army suffers from hunger or exhaustion, we can repeat these trial fights to adjust the relative strength. But if we use a combat trial to decide the strength, we must adhere to its results, even if they go against our intuition. The trials to determine relative strength introduce a day-to-day element of fortune and morale into the war.

The discipline and organization of the two armies are compared by their relative discipline, D. We figure this out by discussion, and we include in it a factor to represent the quality of the army's leadership. The relative discipling of one side is 1.0 and of the other side is greater than 1.0. When an army suffers 20% casualties in a battle, its front will collaps. If there is more than one front, the player directing the army will decide which front collapses. If both sides of a front collaps, the battle pauses for at least one battle round before resuming. If only one side collapses, the other side can pursue, moving some distance forward as agreed by the players, continuing the battle with their relative strength doubled. Thus, if two shield walls face one another, eventually one might break, and the opposing shield wall advances to great effect. When the pursuing army suffers 20% casualties, the pursuit ends, and their relative strength returns to normal.

Each battle round on the front between two armies A and B, army A destroys 1D10 × S_AD_AE_A ÷ 100 units of army B, rounded to the nearest tenth, and army B destroys 1d10 × S_BD_BE_B ÷ 100 units of army A. For example, suppose the engagement of A is 100 units, its relative strength is 4.5, and its relative discipline is 1.4. It destroys 1d10 × 630 ÷ 100 opposing units per battle round: a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 60. Meanwhile, army B has engagement 100 also, and relative discipline and strength 1.0 by construction, so it destroys 1d10 × 100 ÷ 100 opposing units per battle round: a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 10. This battle round has a length in seconds that is equal to the number of rounds required by the trial battle that established the relative strength of the two types of soldiers. Now suppose that army A contains 90 units and army B contains 400 units. The objective of army B is to somehow increase its engagement from 100, because army A cannot increase its engagement above 100. The objective of army A is to break the enemy's shield wall and double its relative strength for a few battle rounds before withdrawing.

The representative system uses the hand-to-hand combat system to resolve fights between individual soldiers in a battle, and then extrapolates the results of these individual conflicts to the larger body of combatants involved in the battle. We decide ahead of time the nature of the individual combatants. Suppose we have a battle between one thousand orcs and two thousand sapiens. We determine an average orc soldier, assign armor protection, striking accuracy, and so on. We do the same for the sapien soldiers. We imagine the circumstances of the actual fighting. The fighting might take place along a shield wall, where the orcs are two deep and the sapiens are four deep. We figure this out from the point of view of four sapiens facing two orcs and roll it out. We do this ten times. At the end, we add up the casualties on each side. We have determined the outcome for twenty out of one thousand orcs, or one in fifty of the orc force, so we multiply the casualties by fifty and that's the result of the first phase of the battle.

The representative system is a good choice when the battle consists of a large number of individual skirmishes. It is useful when the players are in doubt as to which side has the advantage. We used the representative combat system to determine the outcome of a battle between four hundred hippogriff riders attempting to bomb some ships with thunder-eggs, and two hundred hippogriff riders with long-bows trying to defend the ships. We played out ten encounters between attacker and defender and used them to determine the proportion of each side killed, wounded, or shot down.

The statistical system is designed for use when a large number of missile weapons are aimed at a single, hard-to-hit target. When an archer needs a 21 to hit his opponent, the usual missile combat system assume there is no chance of him hitting. We expect the archer to make some adjustment to his shot so as to make a hit more likely. But if a hundred archers each need a 21, there is a chance that some of them will hit. The Mass Missile Combat table relates the to-hit roll to the percentage chance of hitting, which we can apply to a large group to obtain the expected number of hits. To use the table, we determine the to-hit-roll from the missile combat system, and multiply the number of attackers by the fraction the table provides.

Example: A hippogriff rider in the Ursian Army dives down out of the sky upon a boat load of Endan Infantry trying to cross the Fen River. The rider will drop his thunder-egg at an altitude of a hundred meters, hoping to hit a boat immediately in his line of flight. At 100 m he makes a sharp turn and starts to ascend again. This is the point at which he is most vulnerable to shots from below. There are ten boats each with ten medium bow archers, so 100 archers in all, each with fighter level 1, firing up at him at this moment, when he is 100 m up (−20), moving at 10 m/s across their field of view (−10), and his his griff is roughly a 3-m diameter target (+7) so that the archers need a 23 to hit. We expect 2% of them to hit, which would be 2 of them. At altitude 100 m, we have looked at the velocity of an arrow, and concluded their firing power will be reduced to 1D10. So we expect the griff to get 2 hits of 1D10 each. Now we can estimate how often it will be four hits, and how often the total damage will be sufficient to bring the griff down (hippogriffs are fragile, despite their size, having only 20 hp, and their wings are not armored). We estimated that the chance of bringing the griff down was around one in twenty.

Proficiency

To be proficient with a combat tool is to know enough about it that you are not hampered by ignorance when you use it. Some weapons are easy to use, others are difficult to use. Lack of proficiency manifests itself in SAGA as a to-hit roll penalty. When a question of proficiency arises in the game, we leave it to the players to decide these to-hit roll penalties. We could ignore proficiency alltogether if we wanted to, but doing so can introduce scenes that later appear absurd in the adventure diary, so we think it's best to keep in mind that there are weapons that cannot be picked up an used effectively without practice. In this section, we offer suggestions as to how these decisions might be made.

For someone who has no prior experience, a crossbow is easy to use, a bow is hard to use, and a sling is almost impossible to use. As a rule of thumb, we figure we need one hour to master the crossbow, ten hours to master the bow, and one hundred hours to master the sling. We further decided that practicing for more than one hour a day is a waste of time, so it takes one day to master the crossbow, ten days to master the bow, and one hundred days to master the sling. A penalty of −10 seems to us the most severe that we can apply without violating the general principle that a game of SAGA should be a good time, so we assign the penalty in proportion to the number of days the character has spent practicing. For example, a woman picks up a bow and tries to shoot a deer with it. She has practiced on two separate days with a bow, but other than that, she has only thrown rocks. She suffers a to-hit roll penalty of −8. She drops the bow. She spent a day throwing rocks at trees once. Rock-throwing takes only one day to master. She picks up a rock. She suffers no penalty.

We note that proficiency with a weapon is distinct from skill. To be proficient is to be able to use it with no penalties. A stick is an easy weapon to use. One session of practice fighting is sufficient to learn how to deliver a blow with a stick, and in any case, nobody is going to find themselves unable to hit something with a stick if that something stays in the same place, regardless of how clumsy or incompetent they are at hand-to-hand fighting. The same is not true of a morning star, which is a lump of metal with spikes on attached by a chain to an iron rod. The morning star is a weapon so complicated and nasty that the a person could do themselves an injury with it if they are not careful. When it comes to armor, there is some skill to strapping it on and moving around in it, so the idea of proficiency with armor is not absurd, but rarely comes up in the game. For example, a man picks up a flail, which is a weapon that takes ten hours to master. He has never used a flail before, but he has used a morning star, so we credit him seven of those ten hours, and his to-hit roll penalty is −3.

Armor

The Normal Armor Designed for Humans table gives the properties of normal armor, which is armor that has been well-made with good leather and high-quality steel, and fitted properly to its wearer. We judge the quality of a suit of armor by comparing the protection it offers to the protection offered by the normal version of the same type of armor. A suit of +n armor offers n more points of protection than the normal suit of the same type. A suit of armor can be inferior to a normal suit, in which case, the value of n would be negative. There are light versions of each type of armor, and these offer reduced protection in proportion to their mass as compared to the normal varieties. Their cost is also reduced in proportion to their mass. There are two popular forms of light armor: light plate and light ring. We assume that characters who wear armor have with them what tools they need to keep their armor operational. When they return from an adventure, they take their armor to be repaired by a professional. Poorly-maintained armor, or damaged armor, will offer less protection.

Let us consider some examples to illustrate armor burdening. A suit of normal sapien plate armor has mass 30 kg and offers armor protection 20. It is made of carbon steel plate 2 mm thick. A suit of bronze plate armor will have mass 30 kg, but might offer protection only 15. It is −5 plate armor. A suit of adamantine plate armor might offer 25 points of protection, so that it is +5 plate armor. A suit of light plate might be made of 1 mm plate instead of 2 mm plate, and so has mass only 15 kg instead of 30 kg and offer armor protection 10, which is the same as that of ring mail. The suit of light plate will cost 150 gp, but the suit of ring mail will cost only 75 gp. Thus people usually prefer to wear buy full-mass ring mail instead of half-mass plate. But light plate can be decorated, and has an impressive appearance. The breast plate can be shaped to deflect lances with more effect than ring mail, making light plate better for formal jousting contests. A suit of light ring is made of thinner wire so that it weighs only 12 kg, which is the same as studded leather. Normal ring weighs 15 kg. The light ring protection is 12/15 × 10 = 8, which is also the same as studded leather. The cost is 12/15 × 75 = 60 gp. The cost of studded leather, which offers just as much protection with the same mass, is only 48 gp. But many people prefer to buy light ring because it lasts longer than leather armor. With daily wear, but ignoring damage done by battle, leather armor will last for five years. But ring armor will last for a hundred years. A suit of ring armor taken from the body of a man killed in battle has seven cuts in it and three broken straps. It is now −3 ring armor, offering only 7 points of protection instead of 10.

Cloth armor is thick clothing and a hat. Canvass armor is thick canvass clothing and a hat. Padded armor is a shirt, trousers, and cap made of thick, padded cotton. Leather armor is the same as padded armor, but with leather on the outside. Studded leather adds metal studs and plates to leather armor, offering more protection at the cost of more mass. Ring mail is made of interlaced rings of metal. Typically, ring mail consist of a long-sleeved mail shirt extending down over the thighs, leather greaves covered, and a metal helmet. Suits of scale and chain mail are similar to ring mail, except scale mail is made of small overlapping metal plates, and chain mail is made of intricately interleaved, small, angled, metal rings. Banded armor is leather armor with overlapping strips of metal attached horizontally in or upon the leather. Plate mail is plates of metal with chain mail acting as the flexible parts of the joints. Plate armor is made only of solid metal plates held together by leather straps, and made flexible at the elbows, hips, and knees by intricate joints constructed out of overlapping plates of metal. The helmet that accompanies a suit of plate armor comes with a visor that may be lowered over the eyes in combat.

When a character wears every piece of a suit of armor, she can be sure that every hit she takes will have her armor protection deducted from its power. But if she only partly covers herself with armor, there is a chance that any given hit will land where there is no armor. Her efforts to take hits on her armor rather than her exposed parts will be counter-balanced by her opponent's efforts to the contrary. The cover of a suit of armor is the probability of a hit landing upon the armor. The cover of a suit of armor is the sum of the covers of its parts. Armor for the head, such as a helmet, provides 10% cover. Armor for the torso, such as a jerkin, provides 50% cover. Armor for arms and legs, such as bracers, greaves, and gauntlets, provides 10% cover per limb. The encumbrance of a partial suit of armor is its cover multiplied by the encumbrance of a full suit. For example, a long-sleeved chain mail shirt with gauntlets provides 70% cover and weighs 15 kg. A full suit provides 100% cover and weighs 21 kg. When a soldier wearing only a chain mail shirt suffers a hit, we use a roll of 1d10 to determine whether the hit lands upon the shirt. If the roll is 7 or less, it does so, and the shirt's armor protection is subtracted from the hit's power. Otherwise, the hit's power is undiminished.

One must become accustomed to wearing metal armor before one is effective using it in battle, but we offer no rules for deciding how long it takes to learn to use heavier armor. We assume that characters train in their armor, and this time is adequate for them to become used to it. While heavy metal armor may more getting used to than light leather, it conducts heat well, and so can be less uncomfortable in hot weather. Your dramaturgist will have rules to determine how long your character can wear a suit of armor before he begins to lose strength because of discomfort. For example, a character with toughness five can wear cloth armor or ring mail continuously in up to 30°C. Superior construction increases the protection offered by a suit of armor, but also increases the cost. The costs we give in the Normal Armor Designed for Humans table are calculated from a formula. The same formula allows us to calculate the costs of superior and inferior suits of armor. We present the formula and examples of other suits of armor here.

Shields

A shield is something whose value in combat lies primarily in blocking an opponent's attacks, rather than as a separate threat with which to distract an opponent from his attacks. Thus a 50-cm diameter board covered in leather is a shield, with a shield defence for its weilder, while a small sword held in the same hand would be a secondary weapon with a weapon defence for its weilder. A shield is effective it is simply held in place. A secondary weapon is effective if it is used to launch attacks of its own. A bracer is a metal covering along one forearm with a gauntlet. It acts as the simplest and lightest form of shield, and can be duplicated by wrapping a blanket around one's hand and arm. A buckler is 25 cm across and is designed chiefly to parry in hand-to-hand combat. A small shield is 40 cm across. A medium shield is 50 cm across, and 70 cm high. It is designed both to parry in hand-to-hand combat and to protect its bearer from missiles. A large shield is 70 cm across and 100 cm high. It weighs 13 kg, but is effective as protection and as a weapon in itself when used by formations by infantry.

The Normal Shields Designed for Humans table gives shield defense (sd), shield encumbrance (senc), and suggested cost for normal shields. The normal shields are each made of a single sheet of carbon steel 2 mm thick. The steel is not hard, but is instead tempered for toughness. The shield defense is the value we use when the shield is used in isolation from other shields, as in a duel or a skirmish, but not in an infantry shield wall.

The larger shields can be used to deflect blows, block missiles, and as a battering weapon. They may be arranged arranged into formations that multiply their effect, and shields offer protection against missiles as well, by reducing the effective size of the target. Shields are popular with infantry formations, but less so among skirmishers. In a skirmish, each combatant's shield acts on its own. In this case, the shield defense is as given in the Normal Shields Designed for Humans. For a medium shield, the defense is four. Now suppose a line of a hundred solders form up and overlap their shields to form a shield wall. Every man holds his shield in his left hand, and protects his left-hand neighbor's right side with his shield, and trusts to his own neighbor to protect his own right side. When these hundred soldiers have practiced jogging forwards together in perfect step with their line of shields locked together, with no man flinching back even in the face of the enemy, we have the shield wall of the ancient Greeks. To stand in its way is to face a wall of metal with hardly any openings. The shields are cooperating to prevent the enemy passing around either flank. The wall itself is battering ram from which there is very little chance of escape. We describe the effect of a shield wall in our combat system by increasing the defense offered by combined shields. An expertly-executed shield wall of a ten soldiers multiplies the defense of the individual shields at the center of the wall by a factor of ten.

Let us illustrate the use of shields with a few examples. Consider a line of a thousand well-trained infantry carrying medium shields gain shield defense forty (40) all along the length of the wall, except at the ends, where the wall is weakest. Suppose the soldiers in the middle have striking accuracy 5 without a shield. Now their striking accuracy will be 45. Suppose their enemies come on as skirmishers. Their enemies have the same shields, but these shields are not cooperating. Their enemies have striking accuracy 5 plus 4 for their shields, which is 9. Those in the shield wall have an attacker's advantage of 31. Their to-hit roll is −4. They can strike for double formidability and still need only a 1. They are guaranteed to hit. They are likely to get double or quadruple damage. The skirmishers, on the other hand, need a 27 to hit. They must strike for quarter damage or they have no chance of hitting at all. If most of the skirmishers have only one or two dodging points, we see that in the first clash, the shield wall will kill a quarter of the skirmishers, and the skirmishers will turn and run. In this way, the combat system makes manifest the well-established power of the shield wall in infantry combat. Now suppose the same shield wall faces a heroic fighter with striking accuracy 45. Does this fighter have to flee from the shield wall, or is there some other possible outcome? Can he penetrate the wall? Here we see that the hero and the soldier are on equal footing. This means that the soldier cannot force the hero back with the wall. The soldier might hit the hero and take a dodging point off him, but the fact that the hero can withstand the attack means that the hero can get between the shields with his great skill, and be left standing behind the shield wall after it rushes past. Suppose that beside the hero is a woman with many dodging points, but no combat skill. She stands in the way of the wall. There is no way for her to escape the wall, other than by luck. She might dive under the feet of the soldiers and escape harm. The chances of this happening are one in a hundred. But with dodging points, such unlikely events become possible. The attacking soldier strikes for triple formidability and hits. The woman must lose three dodging points. But at the end of the round, she is on the other side of the shield wall with the hero, and uninjured.

Magical materials and fine construction do little to improve over the normal shields we list above. To some extent, it is the mass of a shield that gives it its impact-absorbing power, not its hardness. The carbon steel plate out of which the normal shields are made is tough enough and hard enough for the job of blocking and deflecting. Nevertheless, there are times when we must consider the blocking power of a shield against missiles, because there is no other opportunity for the missile to strike its target other than going through the shield. All normal shields are made of 2-mm carbon steel plate, except those that are called "light", which are made of 1-mm plate. Plate armor is made of 2-mm plate and offers protection 20 points. Better steel would offer better protection, but at tremendous cost, so shields superior to the normal shields are rare. If a soldier is hiding entirely behind his large shield, we give the archer −10 to hit, as if the target were 25% of its normal size, and we add 20 to the target's armor protection. The smaller size given to the target models the fact that the archer cannot see the target's body, let alone the chinks in its armor that will allow an arrow to penetrate. For example, a man with +4 Banded Armor, ap=20, crouches entirely behind is large shield. An archer with a medium bow and firing accuracy 4 is 20 m away fires upon him. The archer needs to roll 1 + 4 (extents) + 10 (target hiding behind large shield) − 4 (firing accuracy) = 10 or higher on 1d20 to hit. Then he needs to penetrate the 20 points of protection offered by the shield and the 20 points of protection offered by the target's armor, a total of 40 points protection. He rolls a 20 for double damage and rolls maximum damage, for 40 points. The arrow penetrates the shield and sticks into the target's armor, but does not draw blood.

A shield has vulnerable points at which a blow will cause up to double the normal amount of damage, which is why we allow an attacker, with a high roll, to attain double damage. But no higher damage multiple is allows against a shield, be it made of metal or conjured wood or stone. We discuss superior shields and their value in Economy. But the Light Large Shield is an example of a variation upon the normal shield. This shields is made of 1-mm plate and offers 10 points of armor protection.

A bow held in one hand makes a poor hand-to-hand weapon. Its mass is concentrated at the center, and its outer parts have barely any inertia with which to strike the enemy's body. At the same time, a bow makes a poor shield also, because it is not build to resist crushing or cutting. A sharp sword will cut right through a bow to the arm that holds it. Under some circumstances, however, the bow is superior to the sword as a weapon in close combat. A thirtieth-level fighter facing ten lightly-armored fifth-level fighters is one such circumstance. A bow can be turned into a shield by the addition of one-millimeter steel plates to the front side of the shaft. The plates do not bend with the bow, but are fastened to the handle. They extend half-way up and down the length of the bow, with forward-facing flanges at the ends to catch weapons and direct them away from the vulnerable tips of the bow. By adding 300 g of steel plate to a medium bow, we create a shield of mass 1300 g and defence 2. By adding 500 g of steel plate to a heavy bow, we create a shield of mass 2000 g and defence 2. Held in one hand, the armored bow acts a shield, leaving the other hand free for fist-and foot combat. This establishes the enemy's to-hit rolls. But the bowman can then give up his fist and foot attack to use his bow instead. A thirtieth level fighter might take four shots in one round at his opponents, while they are attacking him at close quarters.

Weapons

The properties of normal weapons are given in the Normal Hand-to-Hand Weapons Designed for Humands table. Weapons that are not normal are referred to by the amount by which their power exceeds that of a normal weapon of the same type. Poorly made or damaged weapons have powers lower than those given in the table, and their poor balance may also result in a negative to-hit roll adjustment. While blunt weapons require little or no care, edged weapons must be kept sharp. An edged weapon loses one point from its power for every ten rounds of combat it goes without being sharpened (magical weapons included). Sharpening takes ten minutes per point of weapon power to be restored. Part of learning how to use an edged weapon is learning how to sharpen it with a whetstone. The encumbrance of a weapon is equal to its mass. Magically strengthened alloys can increase the weapon power of an edged weapon, but cannot increase the damage limit of a blunt weapon. The Power (wp) is the striking power of a sapien adult with STR = 0 wielding the weapon in one hand. If the weapon is 80 cm or longer, it can be wielded effectively with two hands, and its weapon power is increased by five, although the magical addition remains the same. The Defense (wd) is the weapon defense if wielded by a creature roughly the size of a sapien adult. The weapon defense is zero for weapon power less than or equal to zero, one for weapon power one or two, two for weapon powers three to five, three for weapon powers six to nine, and four for weapon powers ten or greater.

The difference between a club and a mace is that a mace is made of metal, while a club is made of wood. We note that the power of a sword is proportional to the square root of its mass. We list blades of various sizes, but not all possible sizes. A character might prefer to use a 1000-g blade rather than one of those listed. In Economy of Blades we can enter the power of a normal blade and calculate its mass, accoring to the square root relationship.

Missiles

The missile power of a projectile fired from a firing device depends only upon the device and the missile. The strength of the wielder does not increase the power of the attack. Nevertheless, a stronger character can use a larger, stiffer firing device with greater power, hence the Min STR column in the Normal Missile Firing Devices Designed for Humans table. The table gives the properties of normal missiles fired by normal devices. The cost we give in the table is the cost of normal firing devices, not their missiles. The cost of twenty normal missiles is the same as the cost of a single, normal firing device. Thus a heavy bow costs 12 gp and twenty normal arrows to fit a the bow cost another 12 gp.

The maximum range of the weapon is fifty times its extent when the target is at the same altitude as the attacker. At maximum range, with the target at the same altitude as the attacker, the power of a missile is half its power at short range. At intermediate ranges, and in cases when the target is at a different altitude, the players should decide how to reduce the power of the missile. When the target is less than ten extents away, we recommend any reduction in power be ignored.

Bows take more strength to use for the same missile power, and we can carry a loaded crossbow in one hand. But we can fire four times more quickly with a bow than a crossbow: once every four seconds is the normal rate for a bow, and once every sixteen seconds for a crossbow. Both weapons must be unstrung when they are not in use, or else their strings lose tension. It takes a trained user thirty seconds to string either weapon. The most difficult missile weapon to master is the sling. But a sling is inexpensive, easy to hide, easy to carry, and makes less noise than either a bow or a crossbow. Superior construction can increase the power of a bow, as we describe in Bows. Superior construction can increase the power of an individual missile, as we describe in Spikes. When a superior bow and a superior missile are used together, their benefits are additive. For example, a +2 Medium Bow firing a +3 Arrow has firing power 5 greater than a normal long bow firing a normal arrow, or 15. The superior bow and arrow are many times more expensive than the normal ones, see here.

To get an idea of what it is like to fire a bow, and how fast the arrow will move, we provide the following estimates. Suppose we draw back the bow string a distance x. The ideal bow would present uniform draw force until we come close to x, then drop the force to zero so that we can take aim at leisure. But we assume a simple bow whose drawing force increases linearly from zero at the start of the draw to F at distance x. The work we do drawing the bow is Fx/2. Let the arrow's mass be m. If we assume all the work we do pulling back the string is transferred into the arrow when we fire, the velocity of the arrow upon release will be: v = √(Fx/m). The Mechanics of Missile Weapons table gives the launch velocity for a selection of bows, assuming all the bow energy is delivered to the arrow. The value E is the kinetic energy of the missile when first fired from the bow. The value p is the momentum of the arrow.

Suppose we fire a long-bow straight up in a vacuum. The arrow starts at 63 m/s. In gravity 10 m/s/s, the arrow ascends for 6.3 s, turns around, and falls down. It hits the ground at 63 m/s/s. If we fire it at 45°, the arrow reaches its highest point after 4.4 s and hits the ground after 8.8 s. During this time it travels 387 m. In practice, air friction slows them down an arrow, but at the same time, arrows can glide through air. The maximum range of an arrow in air is more than twice its maximum range in a vacuum. Turkish bows a thousand years ago could occasionally fire an arrow over 1000 m, if the wind was right. Although arrows can fly a long way, they slow down as they fly. They may be moving at only 10 m/s when they reach the end of their flight, in which case they have lost over 95% of their kinetic energy. Thus the effective range of a bow for combat is much less than the greatest distance it can fly. If we tried to represent exactly the effect of gliding and slowing down, along with the greater difficulty in aiming at greater distances, we would be faced with the effect of wind and moisture as well, and our missile combat system would become too complicated for enjoyment. Instead, we rely upon the to-hit roll to preclude impossible shots, while at the same time allowing the very best archers to be effective at hundreds of meters.

In missile combat, the to-hit roll calculation puts a limit upon the effective range of a bow in the hands of a particular archer. The greater the skill of the archer, the farther the effective range. With firing accuracy zero, the effective range of the medium bow for man-sized targets is 100 m. With firing accuracy twenty, the effective range is 200 m. After an arrow has been fired, it may be re-used. If it has been aimed deliberately at a straw target or any other such object that guarantees not to damage the arrow and allow it to be retrieved without snapping the shaft. Otherwise, however, the chances that the arrow will be worth recovering are small. We recommend that the recovered arrow be given a firing power 1d20 lower than its previous value. For example, a man fires twenty arrows at squirrels in his garden. He recovers the arrows later. When new, these arrows had weapon power 10. Now they have weapon power 10−1d20. One quarter of them are likely to be useful. A few of them will be almost new.

The Normal Hand-Hurled Weapons Designed for Humans table gives the properties of some hand-hurled weapons. We calculate the power of a hand hurled weapon just as for hand-to-hand combat, by adding the thrower's strength to the power of the attack. Just as with missile firing devices, the range of hand-hurled missiles is limited by the to-hit roll. Thus the most skilled stone-throwers are effective at greater ranges.

Attribute Variation

For the interested dramaturgist, or the dramaturgist wondering how a player character might drop one attribute and raise another, we present our principles of attribute variation. These principles lie behind the simplified system of adding to attributes with each new adventurer level. We also present the base attributes for several species other than sapiens that players might be interested in selecting for their characters. Every attribute may be changed to some degree by suitable effort. For each prime attribute, the following equation determines its rate of, A, in terms of useful effort and base attribute.

where t is time in years, C is the current value of the attribute, B is the base value of attribute, E is useful effort applied to raising the attribute in hours per week, g is the gaining period in years, h is the holding effort in hours per week. This is the attribute variation equation. The holding effort is the number of hours per week of expertly-directed training required to maintain an attribute one point above its base value. When a character embarks upon a new regime of exercise, each of his attributes begins to change from its initial value, C, towards a new value B+E/h. The gaining period is how long it takes a character's attributes to move most of the way from C to the new value B+E/h. Drugs and spells are accounted for in the above equation only in so far as they are part of a regime of exercise intended to bring about enduring change in attributes. Other drugs and spells can bring about temporary increases in attributes. Time and holding constants depend upon character species, as shown in the Attribute Holding Effort and Gaining Time table.

Example: The holding effort for sapiens is one hour per week, and the sapien gaining period is two years. A man with base STR of 0 begins to lift weights with the advice of an expert STR trainer. He trains for six hours a week. His strength begins to increase at 6 points per year. After two years, his strength has increased to 4 (63% of 6 rounded off). He now relaxes to a schedule of 3 hours training per week. His strength drops to 3 after a year and stays there.

Characters' attributes can change with time, but always the variation is decided by referring to their base attributes. We assume player characters spend their free time between adventures working out or studying, and we save time administering the game by assuming that these efforts on the part of the player character increase her attributes by a total amount dependent upon her adventurer level. In the rules above we give the total addition to a player character's attributes as a function of adventurer level for sapien adventurers. We can do the same for orc, elf, dwarf and hobbit characters. As can be seen from the Attribute Holding Effort and Gaining Time table, human attributes are most readily changed, while elf attributes are least readily changed. At any adventurer level, a dwarf, orc, or hobbit will have three quarters of the addition that a sapien of the same level would receive, rounded down. An elf gets only half as much as a sapien, rounded down. Expensive drugs can decrease the holding effort and gaining time for non-sapien races, just as longevity drugs can overcome the effects of aging in sapiens. We discuss both types of drugs below.

The useful effort a character puts into increasing one of his attributes is determined by his activities, as we shall describe below in the discussions of each attribute. Much of the time characters spend raising their attributes will be overseen by expert trainers, or using special equipment. The amount of useful effort a character can put in each week towards raising his attributes is limited by several rules. The first rule is that the availability and cost of trainers and training equipment must be considered when characters try to accrue useful effort. When free of responsibilities in a well equipped city, characters with plenty of money can accrue up to 30 hours of useful effort per week, but the useful effort accrued for any one attribute must be at least −2 hours per week and at most 10 hours per week. Characters out on adventures can accrue up to 15 hours of useful effort per week, but the useful effort accrued for any one attribute must be at least 0 hours per week and at most 5 hours per week.

Our model of attribute variation is a first-order dynamical one. As you can see, we do not want to have to deal with it all the time, but when characters are in exceptional predicaments, such as being chained up for months, we need to have an agreed-upon way of deciding how fast they lose strength. A man with strength ten above his base, allowed to get no more than a little walking exercise every day, will lose two points of strength in the first five months. After a year, he will have lost four points. If a player character is of a species other than human, or is female, we adjust his or her base attributes according to the Adjustments to Attributes According to Race. We include also the natural lifespans of the various races.

To these average attributes, we add eight when we form a player character, with no more than +4 to any one attribute, and no less than −1. This addition of eight is independent of species. It indicates the advantage we give player characters over other members of their species. The resulting values are the character's base attributes, which are the values that would apply if the character lived the life of a gardener. (We don't say "farmer" because farmers do a lot of hard lifting and they would be stronger than a gardener.)

First level adventurers of all species add to their attributes to represent the effects of their training. Players get to decide how to allocate the addition, but there is a maximum amount by which they can raise an attribute above its base value. Sapiens cannot increase by more then 8, elves by 4, and the others by 6. At first level, sapiens add a total of 9, elves 4 (half of 9 rounded down), and the others 6 (three quarters of 9 rounded down). With increasing level, the characters add more points to their attributes according to the Primary Attributes table, with the same fractional amounts for non-sapien species.

Non-sapien species are to some extent compensated for the difficulty they face when they try to increase their attributes through useful effort. The sum of their attributes is slightly higher when they start adventuring, but sapien characters overtake them by tenth level, assuming they survive. As sapiens age, however, they start to suffer a loss of attributes that is not suffered by elves nor by orcs. Although orcs die at around 44 years, they are at full-strength until the day they die. To represent the effects of aging, sapiens must subtract 1 from their attribute total for every five full years older than 30. At 35, they subtract 1, at 40 they subtract 2, and at 90 they subtract 12. Longevity drugs can stop the effects of aging, but likewise, elfroids give elves greater ability to train their bodies.

Let us illustrate the use of elfroids with the example of Quayam Srae and Thristen Alomere. Quayam is a male elf. If sapien, his base attributes would be STR=+1, TOU=0, DEX=+4, INT=+3. Because he is an elf, his base attributes become STR=−1, TOU=0, DEX=12, INT=+3. He is a fighter and a sorcerer. At first level, he adds 4 points to these base attributes, to give himself STR=−1, TOU=2, DEX=14, INT=+3. The sum of his attributes is 18. Thristen, meanwhile, is a sapien. His mother tells him that his father is an elf, but because elf genes are recessive, he has no way of knowing whether his mother is telling the truth or not. His base attributes are STR=4, TOU=2, DEX=2, INT=0. At first level he adds nine to get STR=8, TOU=6, DEX=3, INT=0. He needs to maintain INT=0 or higher so as to preserve his license as a cleric, but otherwise he's a fighter. His attributes add up to 17. Already, he has almost caught up with Quayam's natural ability. Twenty years go by, adventuring together, and they reach twentieth level. As a twentieth-level sapien, Thristen adds 24 to his base attributes. The base attributes themselves add up to 8. But he is now 40 years old, and as a sapien, he must subtract 2 from his total attributes, making his attribute total 30. But he wishes to avoid the effects of agin, so he takes longevity drugs, starting at the age of 30 to make sure he will be able to stay strong until he is 80. Thus his attribute total, at age 40, is 32. Quayam, meanwhile, has not aged, but he has added only 11, so his total is only 25, which is 7 less than Thristen. Thristen has STR=+12, TOU=+10, DEX=+10, INT=0. Quayam has STR=+3, TOU=4, DEX=16, INT=3. The years go by, and it is clear that Thristen is a stronger fighter, although Quayam is still quicker, and his sorcery is formidable. Quayam starts to take elfroids. These bestow upon him three-quarters of the total addition received by sapiens, instead of his previous half. He now gets to add three quarters of 24, which is 18, to his base attributes. After a few years of taking the drugs, he finds that he has STR=+5, TOU=+6, DEX=+18, INT=+3, and his attribute total is 32, exactly the same as Thristen's. Both are spending 100 gp a month on their drugs. Thristen's hair is going white and his eyes are starting to get sensitive to the sun. His skin is getting pale and burns easily also. These are side-effects of the longevity drugs. Quayam is irritable in a way he was not before. He has to shave every other day because he grows a beard. These are the side-effects of the elfroids. But they are content.

Sufficient fatigue will reduce any character's attributes. We rarely penalize characters for being exhausted or sleep-deprived in the game, but sometimes, when in extreme cases, the adventure is improved for having to pay attention to this detail. The need for rest or a cure becomes the quest. They must find shelter to sleep or they must procure a drug that will keep them awake. We do not offer any particular rule to govern the effects of sleep depravation, but we suggst that for every night of sleep missed, all attributes are reduced by two, so that going more than three nights without sleep is unrealistic, unless drugs are brought into play, but the drugs will always have a price to pay in the end.

Dice Rolls

The SAGA rules require ten-sided, twenty-sided, and six-sided dice. We ourselves use twelve-sided, eight-sided, four-sided, and even thirty-sided dice. We combine two ten-sided dice to make a hundred-sided die: one die is for tens the other for ones. We usually want 1 to 100, so the roll 00 is 100. When we combine two ten-sided dice in this way, we call them percentile dice. Here we discuss various ways to use dice to represent random numbers and decide the course of events in a game.

Uniform Distribution

When we roll a single die, we obtain a uniform distribution. Each possible value of the roll is equally likely. In the case of a ten-sided roll, each possible value is 10% likely. The average value of a large number of such single die-rolls, which we also call the expected value of the single roll, is (n+1)/2, where n is the number of sides on the die, and we assume that the sides are numbered 1 to n. The standard deviation of the roll, is the average square of the deviation from the expected value. We expect half the rolls to lie within one standard deviation of the expected value.

The single die-roll gives us a uniform distribution, so if we want to use a 20-sided die to give us a 75% probability of success, we say we need to roll 6 or above, because 15 out of the 20 possible outcomes are 6 or above. But the single die-roll gives us a large variation, so if we want to roll to determine a quantity, we use the single die-roll only if we want the quantity to have a large variation. This is the case with the roll for the damage caused by a hit in the combat system. When the hits have a greater variation in power, the combat system is more exciting. Thus we use 6D10 instead of 6d10 for the damage roll for a hit of power 30, so that the roll goes from 6 to 60, with 6 being just as likely as 60. (Recall that we use notation mDn for m times the outcome of a single roll of an n-sided die.)

Binomial Distribution

When we want a quantity we roll for to have less variation than a single die roll, we add the rolls of several separate dice together. Suppose we find a bunch of jewelry and then sell it. What is it's total value? We might prefer to roll 6d10 for the total value instead of 6D10. Recall that we use notation mdn for the sum of m rolls of an n-sided die. With 6d10, the average will be 33, just as it is for 6D10, but the standard deviation is much smaller, as we show below. We calculate the standard deviation of a sum of die rolls by multiplying the standard deviation of one die roll by the square root of the number of die rolls. This rule is approximate, but adequate for our purposes.

Normal Distribution

There are times when neither the single die-roll nor the sum of multiple die rolls will give us a satisfactory distribution of values. When we are rolling for the speed of the wind, for example, we know that most days are calm, some are breezy, a few are windy, and now and then it blows a gale. We can't get a distribution like that with a sum of die rolls alone, unless we use a large number of dice, subtract their expected value, then take the absolute value of the difference. The resulting distribution, as we use more and more dice, is the normal distribution. Indeed, the central limit theorum implies that the sum of an infinite number of die rolls will be distributed with exactly the normal distribution. We could try to obtain a normal distribution by subtracting the expected sum from the actual sum of many die rolls. Consider 10d10−55, that is the sum of ten rolls of a ten-sided die, with the expected sum of 55 subtracted from the actual sum. The average of 10d10−55 is 0. The standard deviation is 9.5, so roughly 67% of the time, 10d10−55 will be in the range −9.5 to +9.5. We could use 10d10−55 for wind speed in kilometers per hour and obtain a reasonable result. But the wind can blow from any direction, although it blows more more often from the west on any rotating planet, and in certain geographies it might blow almost exclusively from one direction. We would like to separate wind speed from wind direction, and determine the wind speed with a separate roll subject to the normal distribution. And so we arrive at our one-sided normal distribution for SAGA. One way to get this distribution is to roll a bunch of dice, subtract the expected value, and take the absolute value of the result, in which a negative results become positive. But maybe we do not have enough dice of the right number of sides, or we don't want to add them all up and subtract the expected value, because we are in a hurry. In such cases, we can use the One-Sided Normal Distribution table. We start by estimating the standard deviation of a quantity we want to determine in the game. We might say the standard deviation of wind speed is 10 km/hr. Now we roll percentile dice, 1d100, and look up the scaling factor in the One-Sided Normal Distribution table. We multiply our standard deviation by the scaling factor and so obtain the quantity we wanted to generate randomly. If you roll 99, roll 1d10 to determine the first decimal. If you roll 9 again, roll 1d10 again, and so on, to obtain successive decimals for extremely rare events.

We obtained the One-Sided Normal Distribution table using a normal distribution function, with slight alterations above 99% to allow us to add extra 1d10 rolls to obtain the very unlikely events. For example, the player characters want to fly on their hippogriffs to a point one hundred kilometers to the north. What speed is the wind? We decide that the standard deviation of wind speed is 30 kph. In other words, we think it reasonable that once in every 10000 days, there will be a wind that is 120 kph, once in every 200 days there will be a wind of 90 kph, once in every 20 days there will be a wind of 60 kph, and most days the wind will be less than 30 kph. We roll percentile dice and obtain 36%. In the table, we select the 31% line, with scaling factor 0.4, giving us a wind speed of 0.4 × 30 kph = 12 kph. We like the one-sided normal distribution when applied to the weather because we often make ten or twenty weather rolls in a single night's play. The normal distribution generates extraordinary weather every twenty rolls or so, but most of the time gives us weather that causes few problems.

Challenge Rolls

Suppose a character attempts something, such as jumping a creek. We think he has a 75% chance of getting across. We could roll percentile dice, and if 75% or less, he makes it. Or we could say that it the result is 25% or less, he fails to make it. Or we could use the Challenger and Defender Die Rolls table. The first roll in each cell is the challenger roll and the second the defender. The table shows which dice a challenger and defender roll when the challenger has a certain chance of success. A challenge is successful if the sum of the challenger's value is equal to or greater than the defender's. Otherwise, the challenge fails. With a 75% chance of success, one player rolls 1d6 for the character jumping the creek, and another rolls 1d4 for the creek, which we see as defending itself against being jumped. The chance of 1d6 being equal to or greater than 1d4 is 75%. Alternatively, we could make the creek the challenger, with a 25% chance of success, and so the creek rolls 1d4 and the character, defending against falling in the water, rolls 1d10.