Other tidbits from Essen (all trying to recall from a demo on Thursday, so possibly a little incorrect):
- The d20 die, though similar to Fallout, has a slightly different distribution of numbers and symbols. There is one each of crit success / auto fail, and crit success / auto fail + potion. The potion symbol is a stand in for the Action Point “cog” in Fallout. He didn’t go into detail about it, but I suspect - given the way the system works - it is actually a way to regain stamina (possibly and/or health/magicka). The numbers are also weighted lower, so there are duplicate 2/3/4/5/6 results rather than the duplicate 6/7/8 results from Fallout. This is intentional to make “standard human” numbers much lower than in Fallout and give “design space” for monsters and things with bigger numbers, without having to go past ratings of 9 so much. E.g. it seemed like “average human” stats were 3-4 and hero characters 4-6.
- Although models still have two actions per turn, they can no longer take the same action twice. To achieve a similar but lesser effect, models spend stamina as part of an action to improve it (e.g. you can increase a move by +3 inches, or add yellow and/or green dice to an attack - both if you spend 2 stamina). This also applies to reactions, so no more attack once then spend second action to prepare, and attack in reaction to opponents attack.
- Speaking of reactions, they now occur before the action they’re reacting to rather than after, making them somewhat more effective.
- As noted above, no more range rulers - everything is in inches, and most/all human models have a speed of 6 inches. From memory (I could be wrong about the first part), heavy armour reduced both your base speed, and the extra distance from spending stamina, by 1 inch each. Movement is also now front to front like most other wargames, rather than front to back like Fallout. Aled mentioned the wargames team didn’t like the front to back movement because it felt foreign to veteran wargamers and it made large base models hard to balance.
- The dice are sort of ranked, with yellow being the weakest and used by both offensive and defensive items. Red is a more powerful die used by offensive items, and black by powerful defensive items. The green die is an accuracy one, largely just making your attacks more likely to succeed (it has a helmet symbol on one face).
- Attacks are now opposed, with one side rolling for their attack, the other for their defense. If the attacker succeeds, they deal damage, if the defender succeeds, they reduce the damage. It seems all weapons and armour add at least one yellow die.
- The symbols are largely like the Fallout ones, though they tend to have some meaning. I.e. helmet triggers weaker offensive and defensive effects, swords triggers more offensive effects, and oblivion triggers more defensive effects. Aled did note this was more guideline than hard and fast rule though.
- Units / non-hero characters can’t equip items (though they can carry them). They instead have “built in” equipment - printed on their (smaller) unit card. Although hero characters are not just the named characters - e.g. the unnamed Imperial Warmage was a hero character.
All in all, it seemed like a more streamlined Fallout experience, despite the use of standard tape measures for movement (which does feel a little like a retrograde step - personally I like the range rulers) and opposed attack/defence. The game felt like it played very smoothly and was a bit less “fiddly” than Fallout, without losing too much in terms of fidelity.