Tunnels & Trolls Conversion Notes for The Ancient Empires Campaign
Races and Classes:
All classes are available in the Ancient Realms. Warriors and Rogues are most common. Wizards are rare, usually of an elite class or reclusive, and warrior-wizards are rare as usual.
Not all races are available; in fact, it is recommended that no non-human races be made available for play. You could allow this in the following situations:
Elves and faeries, often called Alfar in the north or Fae ones and Sidhee in Britania may come from the seelie kingdoms of the deep woods of Gaulish Europe, Germany, and Britania.
Minotaurs might be possible from the bastard descendants of Crete, and tend to be good sailors to boot. In the Ancient Realms, some minotaurs are still around.
Pigmies of Africa would make excellent real-world counter parts to halflings (size-wise, at least).
Centaurs were spoken of by Herodotus and others. The Centaurs are of a strong Hittite-like civilization in the distant lands of North-East Asia, but one could have somehow wandered in to or been captured and brought to the Republic.
Dwarves of the utter north are conceivable, and would be of Teutonic descent.
Dock-Alfar, the dark elves, are also found in the distant north.
The stats for all of these races are standard as described in the T&T rulebook.
New Combat Options (click here)
Ancient Realms Magic:
All magery done by the wizard or other spell caster comes from hermetic mana sources, and is a talent caused by drawing energy from ley lines that criss-cross across the world. Sometimes ley lines are stronger, other times they are weaker, and these strong and weak zones can have an effect on your spell casting. A Weak zone of ley mana will prevent a caster from using any spells higher than his/her actual level in that zone. A Normal Zone will work as normal magic does. A Strong Zone of ley lines will actually amplify the effects of spell casting, and the spell may be calculated for casting purposes as if the wizard were one level higher than he or she is.
Mental Strength:
All spellcasters have a new special stat called Magic Strength, which works like regular strength for spell casting purposes in all ways (including causing unconsciousness if you hit 0 Mental STR). Mental Strength is rolled for like regular strength, and may be increased like regular strength, but it is kept separate otherwise. This insures that you don’t have huge, brutish wizards walking around casting spells.
Wizards and Weapons:
Contrary to popular belief, a wizard may wield a normally restricted weapon, he justs ucks at it when he tries. If a wizard picks up a weapon and tries to fight with it, he does not roll for weapon adds; he always gets the absolute minimum possible (i.e. a Scimitar is 4 dice, so a wizard would always only get 4 HPT with it, no matter what). This will reflect the nature of their class training without violating the laws of reality by always causing the weapon to shoot from the caster’s hands like a watermelon seed.)
Ancient Realms Priests
Priests are a common character in the Ancient Realms. If you do not have the priest class presented in Sorcerer’s Apprentice #10, then I would suggest the following class template:
A priest must have a 12 or better in Charisma to belong to this class.
Each priest must choose a religion or god to serve as his or her patron. This becomes the source of his magic, the divjne force from which ley magic channels. Ley magic still affects priest magic.
Priests do not cast magic; they call upon miracles, and draw from their Piety. The Piety is a point source, which is always equal to Charisma. When Charisma goes up, so does Piety. If Charisma drops, so does Piety. The deity may choose to strip the character of Piety if he or she goes against the dictates of the god or religion.
Priests are allowed to ue weapons and armor like a Rogue, but are expected to use weapons favorable to their god, or they might incur the wrath of that god. Priests gain no special benefits or hindrances in combat otherwise.
Priests can draw upon their Piety to cast magic from the same pool of spells as wizards. Priests do not need to know the spell, but the spell does have to be granted for them to receive it. For priests, every effort at casting a spell requires sacrificing a number of Piety Points equal to the listed STR cost of the spell for the effect. If the priest wants to cast a spell of higher than 3rd level (or pump it up to an effect equivalent to a higher level), he must also make a Saving Roll on CHA at a level equal to the desired spell level divided by 5 (round up here). So, to cast a 4th-5th level effect would be a L1SR CHA; 6th-10th level spells need a L2 SR CHA, and so forth. If the save if failed, then the spell fails as well and the Priest still loses his Piety Points for it! Gods can be greedy....
Priests must make proper morning (or evening, but always daily) rituals for his gods, performing the necessary burning of incense, sacrifices, or prayers. If he is prevented from doing that for the day, then he regains no Piety Points until he manages to do his rituals. Piety Points recover like STR in standard spell casting otherwise.
Arms and Armor:
Tunnels & Trolls has an excellent range of weapons and armor from antiquity. Almost all of the weapons are likely to be found in one form or another, except for crossbows and gunnes, neither of which exist in this time period. Some weapons are commonly known by different names, too, and some variants shall be listed below:
Weapon
Knife
There are a variety of knives are found in the world for use. Any short weapon of less than 3 dice is available in some form, although more sophisticated weapons like a kris or poniarde will be fairly unique or specialized weapons, and not in common use.
Dagger
The Romans used short daggers and punching daggers (katars).
Gladius
The gladius is the most famous of short swords, but the common short sword would simply be a variant of the gladius, as would the sax, which would come to be known in a later period of history by that name.
Spatha
The long sword, known as the broad sword or hald-and-a-half sword in T&T is called a Spatha in this time. Use the Broad sword for this weapon, and other, longer swords would be uncommon or unique variants. Note that the Gauls had lots of more conventional swords identified by common names.
Hasta
The spear of choice in the roman world, this is the common spear listed in the rulebook.
Pilum
The roman javelin, this is a wicked weapon and pretty effective. Common javelins would be found among the Gauls and in Africa. Real romans use the Pilum!
Fuxina
The Fuxina is the trident, popular in the arenas.
Iaculum
The gladiator’s net, also popular in the arenas. A character wielding this weapon would add only his/her own adds in to the group HPT, but the target will be required to make a L1 SR DEX to avoid being entangled (or higher, if the GM deems it). If entangled, the opponent must now halve all HPTs in combat.
Cestus
The infamous spiked gauntlet or the arenas, the Cestus does 2 dice +4 adds, requires a minimum STR and DEX of 10 to use effectively, costs 40 gp, and weighs 15.
Axes
Axes of all kinds were in common use, both in Rome and abroad.
Self Bows and other ranged weapons
The romans were known to use the self bow or composite self bow. There may have been long bows out there, but they were uncommon. Slings were also a common ranged weapon.
Armor Types:
Light Leather Armor
Soft worked leather, equivalent to a full leather suit.
Curbolli Leather Armor
Hard boiled leather directly equivallent to Lamellar.
Bronze Breastplate/Greaves
Partial bronze plate equivalent to a Full suit of Plate.
Lorica Hamata
Partial chain mail equivalent to a Full Chain suit.
Lorica Segmenta
Partial banded mail equivalent to Scale Mail.
Lorica Squamata
Scale mail for cavalry, but equivalent to Ring-Joined Plate.
Thracian Armor
Leather leg bands for protection and not too much else, this suit consisted of greaves only.
Gallic Armor
Gladiator’s armor popular in the arenas, this would be equivalent to a suit of mail.
Samnite Armor
Gladiator’s curiass and metal bands of protection, these would consist of greaves, gauntlets, and Back and Breast plate (curiass).
Legionary Helmet
Pot helms with tighter protection, they work like the Steel Cap.
Gladiator Helmet
Bronze helms that worked like the open-face Greek Helm.
Clipei and Parma Shields
Small round shields that worked like the buckler and target shield.
Scutum Shields
These oval great shields worked like Knights Shields, and were designed to deflect arrow fire.
Roman Deities and their spheres of influence:
Each of the following deities is part of the State Religion or Rome, except for the Mystery cult gods, which include Bacchus, Cybelle, Dianyssos, Isis, and Ceres, and the Judean god Jehovah. Other religions represented at this time include Parthian Zoroastrianism, Armenian religion, African and Egyptian pantheons, Teutonic Gaulish gods, Britonian Celtic faith, and you could always have esoteric hidden cults to much older gods and religions (semitic, for example).
Popular Gods in the Ancient Realms:
Jupiter, Juno, Quirinius, Mars, Vesta, Apollo, Pluto, Orcus, Dis Pater, Vulcan, Mercury, Neptune, Bacchus, Herkules, Mithrais, Cybelle, Dianyssos, Isis, Ceres, Jehovah.
