Hobbits Hole Gladiator

Third Edition

Creator’s notes: In this latest version I have attempted to make the game slightly less complicated, to clarify a few points and to increase the number of skills and weapons which I feel are lacking.

Main Rules

Gladiator is a turn based game in which desperate, foolish or aggressive characters of the fantasy world beat each other up until only one person or side is left standing so as to please the crowd. Gamers, as in you, will control a school of gladiators and attempt to screw as much money out of the crowd well satisfying your slightly masochistic passions. Initially these rules will cover the rules for actual matches and afterwards the creating and managing of a team will follow.  

Turns

As previously described, Gladiator is a turn based game, in which gamer takes it in turns to move and attack each other, the order is determined by gathering the initiative (the I statistic of a gladiator) of all gladiators on one gamers team and finding the mean value, the school with the highest overall mean initiative takes the turn first, followed by the second highest and so on until all gamers have taken their turn, when this happens it is the gamers turn who’s team went first. This process will continue until only ones teams gladiators are left standing or all opponent give up, or an independent judge deems it absolutely necessary to end the game and then it is they who decide is victorious, this is to prevent people having one gladiator running round in circles against multiple strong opponents who cannot catch them and thus making the match a draw, or to end thing quickly if times runs out and competitors must go home. If no character is left alive at the end of the game then both sides loose (the fans hate draws)

Actions

In each turn your gladiators can do a limited number of things, they can move, attack, perform a special skill and call for spectator support. However you are also limited on what you can do within a turn, to find how many actions your gladiator can do you consult the speed of your gladiator (SP: or your characters initiative divided by 20 +1) and roll this many dice the amount of fours or more you roll is how many actions you can perform in a single turn. If you roll no 4’s or more on the dice then you must take a morale test, if this is failed you receive no actions, if this is passed you receive one.

To carry out actions you must declare what actions are going to be attempted, and then roll the dice to see how many you can do and then carry out what each action does. You must declare your actions before your dice are rolled; the only exception to this rule is if the gladiator is in base contact with a foe then it does not need to declare. Each action can be attempted as many times as you wish except for calling for crowd support which may only be done once per gladiator per turn. The following details is what one declaration of each action does

Move: means a Gladiator can move up to 6” in any direction; the direction does not need to be told to the other gamers. Instead of moving normally you may declare a sprint, if you wish to sprint instead of moving normally you must specify this before dice are rolled, this will mean you move 10” rather than 6” however this counts as a risky action and if this is failed the character will fall over. You may also climb or jump 6” up down or over items but these counts as a risky action and if failed your character will become prone. If you are ever prone you must place your model on its side on the table to denote this is so, when in the next gamers turn the character must spend its fist action standing up. When a character is prone it is automatically hit in combat and all attack are counted as being struck from behind.

Special actions: these are all actions which are achievable through the benefit if a special skill and are discussed in the skills explanation.

Call for spectator support: when calling for spectator support you gain three additional crowd favourite points (these are discussed later), however this counts as a risky action and if this is failed you will loose three crowd favourite points.

Attack: There are two types of attack, shooting and combat. To shoot you must have a projectile weapon, it will say in the weapons explanation if the weapon is projectile or not, and be outside of base contact of an opponent. To shoot you must pick a target, this target may not be in base contact with another gladiator, and measure the difference between your model and the target, this amount is taken off your weapon skill stat (WS), also modify the ballistic skill with the accuracy modifier shown in the weapons stat, then you must roll a d100 and achieve under the modified stat, if this is achieved then you have hit the target, if this is failed then your action is wasted. Then you must determine which part of the body you have struck, to find out this you must roll a die and consult the chart below. Where it notes additional numbers after the score of the die it indicates you must roll again and the location struck is the one with the score of your die inside the brackets.

After you have discovered which part of the victim you have hit you must find out how much damage has been done, to find out you must consult the weapon you are using stat, roll the relevant dice for damage then deduct armour modifiers and then make modify the damage in coordination of where you have struck and the modifiers that are coupled with this shown in the table above. When a character reaches their toughness stat line value (T) divided by two then the player has been knocked out and is removed from play.

The same process is also done in combat with a few important differences, you must be in base contact to make a combat attack and it does not matter if someone else is also in base contact, the distance between combatants is not used to modify stats, also gladiators may attempt to parry a blow to do so they need to roll 2d6 and roll under their parry stat (P: the characters weapon skill divided by 20 +1) this may not be attempted if being attacked from behind or to the side and may only be attempted once between each of the gladiators turns. Gladiators receive additional damage if they are being attacked from behind, in which case the damage is multiplied by 2 after all other modifiers. Gladiators also have the damage modified by their strength (S), for every ten strength (S) below 50 they cause one less damage (before all other modifiers) and for every strength above 50 they cause 1 more damage (before all other modifiers), this is only true for combat except in the case of the javelin.

To kill a gladiator you must cause as much damage as their toughness divided by 2, however if you cause as much damage as their toughness divided by 4 you receive crowd favour. The amount of damage caused is recorded and removed from the initial figure so it is possible for gladiators to die after a series of smaller blows.

 N.B When dividing numbers in gladiator and a whole number is not reached then always round up to the nearest whole number, the same is so when measuring distances.

Risky actions

Risky actions are actions that are particularly challenging, dangerous, or too difficult for the braid dead psychotic gladiators to fathom out. All actions are risky are described in the relevant rules. Risky actions mean that if more 1’s have been rolled than 6’s when rolling for actions then the gladiator has failed to perform the task, all actions that are not risky are performed normally until it comes to the risky action when the character suffers the set back described in the rules for failing the action discussed when the action is explained, however in all cases the character stops and perform no further actions and looses three crowd favour points. If the actions is successful however the gladiator gains three crowd favour points.

Armour

Understandably gladiators do not want to take damage and thus wear as much armour as they can afford. There are six different sorts of armour: shields, scutums, bucklers, chain, leather and plate, you may only have one shield or buckler and you may only wear one of three types on any one location. The benefits for each are denoted below. It is possible to destroy armour with a powerful strike; if you hit a location with armour, an opponent parries with a buckler or blocks with a shield you can break the armour by achieving three times in damage the protection provided by the armour (in the case of shields this counts as 4, scutums 5 and bucklers 3) if armour is destroyed then it may not be used for the rest of the match but it will be repaired after the battle and will not be needed to be bought again, for the purposes of weapons modifying the protection bestowed for armour the modifications are made before working out whether the result is three times the protection (making it far more likely to break armour), if an attack for any reason ignores armour then it cannot break it.

The speed penalties sown above are if any location is covered by the type of armour, the penalty is not added per location and where different armour classes are worn the most disadvantageous penalty is the only one applied.

Weapons

Gladiators are violent creatures and doesn’t need much encouragement, giving them weapons usually brings out the glint of madness in their eye that you never wanted to see. Gladiator weapons have stat lines which represent how the weapons benefit or hinder gladiators in their task of daylight murder, the stat line is split into four different sections: name, self explanatory; type, explains whether the weapons is projectile or melee; damage, what needs to be rolled in order to figure out damage before any modifiers; accuracy, what modifier the weapon does to either your weapon skill or ballistic skill (depending on whether it is a melee or projectile weapon) and special, what other additional rules the weapon has. The lists of all weapons are shown below. Gladiators may carry as many weapons as they may choose however in any one turn a gladiator can only use one of these weapons.

 Skills

Gladiators can have any number of different skills, representing traits and techniques of the fighters they have already got, or things that gladiators have experienced and learnt that they can then put to practise. Some skills give gladiators the chance to perform certain actions, these actions may only be performed once per turn however multiple different special actions (actions performed through a skill) may be performed in a gladiator turn, actions that negate the use of a skill or an actions always take precedent to ones that improve it or make it so. A skill may not be taken more than once. The rules for all skills are shown below. A special action achieved adds an additional three crowd favour points to the gladiator

Making a gladiator school

Stats

To account for all the differences found between gladiators not only is their different skills and weapons available but there are also stats, stats represent physical differences between gladiators and there are five in total. Weapon skill (WS) represents how skilled or dextrous a gladiator is, a higher weapon skill makes it easier to hit opponents and also to parry: strength (S) determines how hard a gladiator can hit a high strength means that more damage is caused when a blow strikes: toughness (T) represents how resilient a gladiator and the higher toughness the more damage you can take without keeling over: initiative (I) is skilled a gladiator is to reacting to a situation and how dynamic the gladiator is, a higher initiative means that a gladiator can do more actions and avoid more pitfalls: Morale (M) is how mentally resistant a gladiator is and how timid a gladiator is a gladiator with high morale is resistant to some skills and more likely to always act. There are also two additional stats, speed (S) and parry (P) these are used for performing certain skills and actions but are not independent statistics they are taken from the gladiators original stat line, but should be remembered as they are vital. Speed (S) is found out by dividing the characters initiative (I) by 20 and then adding one. Parry (P) is found out be dividing the Gladiators weapon skill (WS) by 20 and then adding one. Any thing that modifies either of these two stats will not modify the original statistic and the same true of the other way round.       

Making a gladiator

There are five types of gladiator: heavy, medium, light, monster and beast. Heavy medium and light gladiators are different types of human or humanoid sized creatures, these gladiators are meant to function in a similar way to rock, paper, and scissors in that heavy beats medium, medium beats light and light beats heavy, however this is a very broad sentiment and is not always the case, truly a heavy could most likely grind a light to pulp… it just needs to catch him. Monsters represent those creatures in the fantasy world that are not humanoid sized, although they generally fall into a similar category of heavies they are worth twice as much as normal gladiators as they are so powerful, they take up twice as many levels as their actual level would normal indicate (explained later). Beast are animals such as wolfs and hounds, they are generally treated as lights however they have a few exclusive rules only for them.

To make a gladiator you receive a certain number of points, these points are used to buy gladiators stats and skills and weapons, each gladiator may only use the weapons and skills that are defined as usable by them. Stats are bough by the 20 and in the table below it explains how many points are needed to buy 20 points of a stat. Heavy medium and light gladiator receive a total of 39 points to buy all their weapons, skills and stats; monsters receive 67, beasts receive 40. On the following page are the details for buying stats and weapons/skills.