War Gear Starting heroes can choose one weapon for each Combat Proficiency for which they have a rating, and their preferred selection of Armour, helms, or Shields.
Players should record their chosen weapons, armour and shields on their character sheets, paying attention to the following notes:
- The PROTECTION score of a coat of armour is recorded separately from that of a helm (as sometimes, during combat, a hero might resort to dropping it to reduce the carried Load and avoid becoming Weary too soon).
- Shields do not offer direct protection, but make a hero less likely to be hit, by providing a bonus to Parry.
- A shield’s rating is recorded separately from the main box devoted to Parry, as a shield can be smashed by an opponent’s blows.
Travelling Gear A hero’s travelling gear includes the belongings that adventurers carry when on a journey, in addition to their weapons and armour. In winter, this includes boots and thick, warm clothes — a jacket, a fur-lined cloak, woollen hose (trousers), and blankets. During the warmer months, the adventurer may do away with the heaviest items, and just include light clothes and cloaks.
Travelling gear does need to be annotated in detail on a character’s sheet only if a player wishes to do so, and is not given a Load rating.
Useful Items Any tool, instrument, or device carried by a Player-hero to perform one or more specific tasks is a useful item. Things like a hammer, or a hunting knife, a coil of good rope, a lantern, or flint and steel to start a fire, and so on.
These are items that may gain the Player-heroes an advantage in game terms, but that also may allow them to do things that could not be done at all without them — for example, digging a hole in frozen ground can hardly be accomplished without a pickaxe.
Players are free to choose their useful items, possibly inventing a reason why a particular object is so handy — options include a particular craftsmanship, or another exotic feature. The item can also be some form of consumable or perishable goods, like a bottle of liquor, or a balm — in that case, the Player-hero is considered to always have a supply that will last for the length of the Adventuring Phase.
Useful items are listed on a Player-hero’s character sheet. To determine if they gain a Player-hero an advantage, they must be associated with a Skill, possibly along with a brief definition of their use
If a Player-hero is making a roll outside of combat using a Skill associated with a useful item, and the Loremaster deems that this should grant the hero an advantage, the Player-hero gains (1d). Only one item can benefit the same die roll.
Ponies and Horses The best asset of an efficient travelling Company is an appropriate number of ponies or horses to ride or to employ as baggage-carriers. The number and quality of the mounts available to the Player-heroes depends on their individual Standard of Living (see the table below) but are kept track of as a shared asset.
Ponies are sturdy little beasts; they cannot go much faster than a normal walking pace, especially when loaded with stores and tackle, but are good to help the Player-heroes cope with the toil of spending long hours on the road. Horses can go faster (see the Journey chapter, page 108), but few such animals are seen in the North, and most are used as pack animals or draught beasts.
The usefulness of ponies and horses as far as journeys are concerned is based on their Vigour rating.
- While travelling, all Player-heroes gain a number of points of Travel Fatigue, as a result of journey events. At the end of a journey, Player-heroes travelling with a mount reduce their Fatigue total by their beast’s Vigour rating (see the rules for journeys, on page 108).
Additionally, ponies and horses can be laden with those riches the Player-heroes discover in the course of their adventuring (see Treasure, on page 158).
- Each pack animal can carry Treasure up to 10 points of Load.
