I’ve renamed my new “no level advancement” project. It’s now Astounding Tales of Swords and Sorcery which should have even less chance of being confused with Matthew and Jeffery’s upcoming Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea RPG.

The Fighter is one of the two classes in Astounding Tales and it is intended to represent both pure warriors and physical professions like burglar, woodsman, witch hunter, etc. All Fighters have a background, a general area of expertise representing their pre-adventuring background or training. Some examples would be archer, swordsman, knight, barbarian, burglar, hunter, seaman, and witch hunter. The archer, swordsman, knight, and barbarian backgrounds are pure warrior backgrounds. The others are examples of physical profession backgrounds. The player and GM need to agree on the basics of what expertise the selected background provides. The GM will take this expertise into account when the character does things within that expertise.

All fighters have 6 hit dice. Those with a pure warrior background roll D10s. Those with a physical profession background roll D8s. As will be explained when I cover hit dice, hit dice are rolled every day when the character awakens from sleep. Assuming a fighter gets a full night’s sleep and hasn’t taken any Long Term Damage Points, he will roll either 2d10+40 or 2d8+32 to determine his hit point total for the day. Some days you wake up with more energy than others. If the character had to stand watch for one-third of the night and had no Long Term Damage Points, he would roll either 3d10+30 or 3d8+24. More details on how hit dice are rolled in a future post.

Pure warriors have a base armor class of 5. Those with a physical profession have a base armor class of 7. They can wear any armor, but some physical profession abilities may be less effective in some types of armor (e.g. it is hard to move silently in metal armor).

Fighters can use any weapon and know how to most effectively use weapons to do the most damage. In a fighter’s hands weapons do the following damage:

2d6–Two handed weapons
1d10–Heavy weapons
1d8–Medium weapons
1d6–Light weapons

Fighters have good saving throws against physical things and fair saving throws again magic. Fighters have a good chance to hit, a THAC0 of 15. Fighters can use combat stunts to trade accuracy for damage or the like. Fighters can command warrior hirelings, giving those hirelings a bonus in combat and to morale when they lead them into combat.