I'm currently playing a couple Forbidden Lands games (usually playing 6 times a month), and as such I am going over the rules and encountering a ton of different situations in the game. What I love about Forbidden Lands is that there is not so much out there that everything is covered, which leaves a lot of space for creativity, home brew rules, new artifacts, new spells, new Talents - just new everything!
With that in mind, I've decided to show some of the stuff I've been working on. This content will be all over the place and isn't meant to be cohesive in theme or genre, but everything here (so far) as worked out quite well, and I don't mind taking a little bit of pride in saying that all of this stuff was designed by yours truly. So without any further delay, let's get into it.
New Stronghold Function: The Fishing Trawl
So, as I said, there's two games I'm playing in. The one in which I am a player is an alternate history game taking place in Denmark (the Journey to Ragnarok campaign, made for 5th Edition but converted to Forbidden Lands), and the one I am running is a vanilla Forbidden Lands. With the Ragnarok game, we are playing Vikings/Norsemen who spend a lot of time on our longship, which we treat as our Stronghold. Since we're finding ourselves in the ocean quite a bit with a sizable crew of NPCs and PCs we have a lot of mouths to feed. To solve this problem, I created the Fishing Trawl. Here's how it works!
Fishing trawl A large fishing net designed to be dragged behind a ship.
✥✥ REQUIREMENT: The Fisher talent, a large boat or a ship
✥✥ RAW MATERIALS: 10 Cloth
✥✥ TOOLS: Knife, needle and thread
✥✥ TIME: One week
✥✥ EFFECT: The FISHING TRAWL can be harvested twice per day by a PC or NPC with the Fisher talent. If harvested during the Morning or Evening, you can harvest up to 10 units of FISH. If harvested in the Day or Night, you can harvest D6 units of FISH. Harvesting the FISH takes one Quarter Day of work and must be done by a PC or NPC with the Fisher talent. Weather, season, and other environmental effects may alter these results. The GM has final say. Additionally, roll one Gear Die per week of use. If you roll a BANE, the net rips and must be repaired by a PC or NPC with the Fisher Talent before using again.
New Spell: Control Undead
One of the players in our Ragnarok game is a Death sorcerer serving the wolf FENRIR. He has quite a few handy spells already, but as our game feature quite a bit of undead, he sought a way to control them (not Raise them, but control them). In an effort to solve this problem, I created a new spell for him. Here it is!
CONTROL UNDEAD
✥✥ RANK 3
✥✥ RANGE: Short
✥✥ DURATION: One Round
✥✥ INGREDIENT: Blood of the dead
This spell allows you to control the “restless dead” while it is within your sight, or within short range. The target obeys your orders for one turn (15 minutes), then falls to the ground, lifeless and inanimate. The “restless dead” can only perform basic tasks such as “attack,” “defend,” “stay,” or other simple commands. For each Power Level beyond the first, the “restless dead” remains under your control for an additional turn (15 minutes).
New Rule: Animal Companion Training
Finally, in my vanilla Forbidden Lands game, I have a Goblin Rider whose mount is a wolf named Spillguts. Although Spillguts is an apt mount and a useful tool in carrying everyone's stuff, he doesn't do much in combat if his master is not riding him. In an effort to offer some more options for our Goblin Rider (and to give our party of 3 another viable combatant), I decided to introduce a new rule: training! Here's how it works:
Animal Training
If you have an animal companion or mount in your party, you may endeavor to teach that animal a Trick. To teach your animal companion a new Trick costs 3xp. It also requires a Quarter Day of training with your animal companion and a successful Animal Handling roll. Once your animal companion knows a Trick, you can activate it by spending one Will Power. Activating a Trick is a Fast Action in combat, and your mount must be able to see or hear you in order to carry out your command. An animal companion draws its own initiative card in combat.
Tricks:
Tricks are basic tasks or commands that an animal companion or mount may carry out if it is sufficiently trained. A Trick cannot be performed if the animal companion is mounted.
Attack: The trained animal attacks an enemy until the animal companion is either broken, commanded otherwise, or the target enemy is broken.
Defend: The trained animal defends a friendly character or area, attacking any enemies that get within Near range of the defended character or area.
Fetch: The trained animal collects a target object within short range that it can carry and brings it back. If the trained animal has no Wits score, it must see the object in question before the command is given. Note that all normal rules for Movement apply to the trained animal.
Flee: The trained animal flees combat following the normal rules.
That's it for today! I do have a homebrew artifact that I posted just a few days ago, which you can find in this post here!
Thanks so much for reading! If you found this article helpful or entertaining, give it a like and be sure to sign up for notifications so you know when I post new blogs!
Happy new year and I'll see you in 2021!
I see every enjoying these....!