Quantum Dungeons Preview 0: Rules Summary

Omer Golan-Joel of Stellagama Publishing sent me a draft of his new project, Quantum Dungeons, which uses the Quantum Engine for dungeon crawling. Quantum Dungeons uses only six-sided dice but aims to remain compatible with OSR and Classic D&D dungeons.

The rules have changed quite a bit in the past few weeks, so I’m going to update this summary as the rules change or I find an error in my description.

The Quantum Engine

To determine the success or failure of an action, players and the Referee throw two six-sided dice (2d6), add any modifiers, and try to meet or exceed a Target Number determined by the situation. Quantum Dungeons introduces Advantage and Disadvantage dice: throw 3d6 and total the highest two if the player has Advantage, or the lower two if the player has Disadvantage. Advantage and Disadvantage cancel each other out.¹

As in other Quantum Engine games, characters in QD consist primarily of Skills and Talents. A beginning character can distribute three points among six skills: Combat, Craft, Lore, Physical, Social, and Stealth. Human characters can choose one Talent from among 50 or so; a Dwarf, Elf, or Lizard-Kin character has only their innate species-specific talents like an Elf’s night vision or a Dwarf’s knowledge of stonework.

With those chosen, the player determines their character’s Stamina by rolling 1d6 and adding the character’s Physical skill to the result. Physical damage comes off Stamina; when a character is out of Stamina the character is Wounded and typically out of the fight. After the battle, all Wounded characters roll on the Triage table to determine how Wounded, they are, from “just a flesh wound” to dead.

Players next pick their character’s starting equipment, which includes a random amount of gold to buy it with. Characters can carry only so many items, as determined by equipment slots; each character has only (10 + 2 × Physical skill) equipment slots. Equipment, in turn, determines Defense Value, Damage Dice, and Parry Dice.

Each player has two Hero Points, in addition to a shared pool of Hero Points equal to the number of players. Players can spend a Hero Point to reroll any die roll, ask the Referee to reroll any die roll, or activate certain talents.

The Dungeon Game Parts

Levels

So far, Quantum Dungeons reads a lot like Barbaric!, another Quantum Engine fantasy game. Unlike that game, however, QD characters have levels. Gaining a level gives a character 1d6 of additional Stamina. Every even level gives the character another skill point; every odd level after the first allows the character to take another Talent. At 9th level a character is a lord; at 10th, they hit their peak and retire.

Characters advance in level by accumulating experience points (XP). How do characters gain XP? By acquiring treasure and slaying monsters.

Defense Value

Armor has an “Defense Value”, scaled to 2d6. An unarmored person is DV 7; Leather is DV 8, Chain (mail) is DV 9, Plate is DV 10. Unlike in other Quantum Engine games armor makes the wearer harder to hit. Shields do not increase DV; they add a Parry Die.

Magic

Characters with the Sorcerer talent know two First Circle spells. Those who take the talent multiple times know higher circle spells, up to Fifth Circle. Casting a spell requires a throw against a Target Number proportional to the Circle of a spell. If the player rolls a natural 2 (“snake eyes”) or a total of 4 or less, not only does the spell fail, the sorcerer suffers a randomly rolled Spellcasting Mishap.

Characters with the Priest talent gain a supernatural Patron who answers their prayers and gives them special abilities.

Monsters

Finally, an appendix to the main rules includes a set of tables to translate OSR and Classic D&D monster statistics – Hit Dice and ascending or descending Defense Value – to their Quantum Dungeons equivalent: Stamina Dice / Points, Combat Skill, and QD Defense Value. There’s also a table that helps the Referee determine XP based on the Monster’s Hit Dice and how many special abilities they have.

The Unique Bits

Damage Dice

Instead of d4s, d8s, etc., damage dice use Advantage and Disadvantage as well. “1d6A” means throw two dice and use the higher die; “1d6D” means throw two dice and use the lower die. Since none of my posts is complete without a probability chart, the probabilities look like this:

The average for Disadvantage and Advantage are very close to the averages for a d4 and a d8, respectively.

Monsters that do higher damage use 2d6, 3d6, 4d6, etc. based on an appendix that converts monster damage from D&D and OSR sources.

Parry Dice

Characters can parry incoming attacks. Each round, a character can expend a maximum of their Combat skill in Parry Dice, plus 1 if they carry a shield. Each parry can expend one, two, or three dice. The defending character rolls one, two, or two dice with advantage, respectively, and adds their Combat skill; if the total is equal to or greater than the attacker’s attack throw, the blow is Parried and does no damage.

If the defender has a parry die left over after a successful parry, they can Riposte and launch a free attack against their attacker. (Which may itself be subject to a Riposte.) This has the potential to slow down combat, but it may also keep low level characters from getting knocked out of the fight if the enemy gets a lucky hit.

Patrons

The Priest Talent reads thus:

You worship a Patron – and the Patron answers your prayers! The Patron may be a deity, nature spirit, or even a demon. See the Patrons chapter for details.

According to the latest rules draft, priests gain three benefits from their Patrons, one at 1st level, one at 4th level, and one at 8th level. So, for example, a Priest of a God of War gains the following benefits:

• At 1st level, they gains Advantage on Social throws to command others in battle.
• At 4th level, they may bless one weapon per day; blessed weapons can damage creatures otherwise immune to mundane weapons. The blessing lasts for one combat.
• At 8th level, they may sanctify one weapon per day; sanctified weapons can damage creatures otherwise immune to mundane weapons and gain Advantage on attack and damage rolls. Sanctification lasts for one combat. A priest may bless one weapon and sanctify another.

Character Creation Example

Let us create a Quantum Dungeons delver named Ragnar Ragnarsson. Ragnar is a burly barbarian warrior from the Northern Lands. Of his three skill points, two go into Combat and one into Physical. He is human, so he chooses one Talent, Armor Training (armor occupies one less equipment slot than normal).

Next we roll Ragnar’s Stamina, which at Level 1 is 1d6 + Physical. We roll a 3, so Ragnar has 4 Stamina.

Ragnar starts with food and water for 3 days, a backpack, a waterskin, a knife, and 110 (3d6×10) gold coins of equipment. He can carry 12 (10+Physical×2) equipment slots worth of gear. We will allocate his money and equipment slots as follows.

Ragnar, 3rd Level

Let’s now assume Ragnar survives to third level. He gains the following benefits:

• 2d6 more Stamina; I rolled 8.
• +1 skill point, which we’ll add to Combat
• one more Talent, for which we’ll choose Heavy Hitter: once per combat he can do maximum damage.

He also upgrades his armor to Plate (DV 10).

Combat

Combat in Quantum Dungeons uses abstract range bands instead of exact feet or meters:

• Close: within melee range.
• Near: within movement or throwing range.
• Far: within bow-shot.
• Distant: beyond bow range, out to about a kilometer.

Combat first starts with Initiative, in which all participants throw 2d6+Combat; highest goes first, followed by next highest, etc. On each combatant’s turn, they throw 2d6+Combat to meet exceed their target’s Defense Value; if they succeed, they roll weapon damage which subtracts from the target’s Stamina. At 0 Stamina, a combatant takes a Wound and is usually out of the fight; a throw of Physical 6+ (2d6+Physical, 6 or more is a success) allows them to fight on, but further damage produces additional Wounds and requires another Physical 6+ throw to remain standing. A character who takes more than twice their Stamina in damage is simply dead.

As alluded to earlier, after combat all Wounded characters must make a Triage roll to determine how wounded they are. Each Wound after the first imposes a -1 penalty; the presence of someone with a Healer talent grants Advantage. Based on this roll, otherwise unmodified by any other Skill or attribute, a Wounded character may be mostly OK, due for a short convalescence, due for a long convalescence, maimed, or dead.

Exploration

Wilderness

Exploration of the wilderness typically uses a scale of 10km (6 mile) on a hexagonal grid map. Characters typically travel 30km (3 hexes) per day.

The travel rules cover terrain effects, getting lost, camping, encounters while camping, and foraging for food.

Underground

Exploration underground, e.g. in dungeons, uses a scale of 3m (10 ft) and “Turns” of about 10 minutes. The typical rate of exploration is 120m per ten minutes.

The underground travel rules cover light sources, fatigue while exploring, and of course the presence of traps, monsters, and other hazards.