Maladum introduces a whole new concept and phase of play to our rules. Put your feet up, make yourself comfortable and read on to learn about Resting in Maladum.
In game
Take a few hits in Core Space, and you only need to use a med stim and you’re good to go, but that’s not a luxury available to your Adventurers. Much of the time they will need to make do with a quick breather and an apple. This adds a delicious dose of tension to encounters, asking you to balance your quest goals against the need to stay alive.
Resting requires two consecutive actions and provides these benefits:
- allows you to stand up if you were Prone,
- removes Fatigue and allows you to recover from a Wounded or Poisoned status,
- restores up to two Magic pegs,
- restore up to one Health peg or Skill peg.
It’s a good idea to take some food with you too as it can be used during a Rest to increase the number of Heath pegs you can restore. Even a humble apple lets you add an extra Health peg and, if all else fails, you can chuck it at enemies during a fight.
Resting can make a life-or-death difference. It restores the potency of your magic users, heals your wounds, and changes a skill from a once-per-quest option into a renewable resource.
The tricky part is the inhabitants of the dungeon don’t honour time-outs, so you’ll need to find a room with no enemies inside or nearby. Easier said than done when the inhabitants of the dungeon are eager to remove you!
This is where spells can really come in handy. This could be using the Barricade spell to erect a barrier across a critical junction or block up an Entry Point to buy you a few precious moments. A Barricade can also be a nifty way to bridge a pit trap or block a swinging blade trap.
There’s also the fantastically useful Cocoon spell. This spell creates a protective bubble around your caster and can be extended to adjacent allies if you invest more power into it. Everyone inside gains the benefits of a Rest in just one action, even when enemies are nearby. As you can probably imagine this is a powerful tool in your armoury. Magic can be a fickle thing though, which all adds to the drama, as one of our playtesters found:
“Moranna tried to save Grogmar from a horde of Lamentors and a Hellfont by casting Cocoon around her and him, but failed her magic die roll and he ended up having to cleave his way through three of them with only one Health peg left.”
Andy Jackson
Resting is more than just a respite for your Adventurers, it changes how the game plays and allows space for more engaging quests. In Core Space, you’re often on a hit-and-run mission to get out before your resources are spent. In Maladum, the Rest action means that you can take a little more time to fully immerse yourself into the quest. Of course, the need to press forward is still there, the Dread Tracker isn’t going to stop its relentless progress just because you needed a breather.
Rest Phase
The Rest Phase is all new for Maladum and happens between games. It follows the Market phase and adds some interesting decisions and a lot of fun and flavour. Like any good adventuring party, yours is going to have to choose between the comforts of an inn or roughing it in the wilds.
The Inn
A roaring fire, fine ales and some entertaining company would be nice, but sometimes anywhere with a roof over your head beats being out in the cold. Even the sketchiest inn is probably better than taking your chances in the wilderness, but it doesn’t come cheap, especially early in the campaign.
Whenever you stay in an inn you get to roll on the Inn table, which tends to be beneficial to your campaign. Perhaps you’ll gain valuable intel to help you on your next quest, gain renown with your tall tales or meet a shifty-looking character offering some ‘premium merchandise’. Even on a quiet night, your party can rest to start the next game with the Blessed status, or get in some training for bonus XP!
Of course, not every stay at an inn is so relaxing. Maybe you’ll see our Tavern fantasy terrain turn up in our future scenarios. After all, how many adventures start in a tavern?
The Wilderness
Not everyone is flush with cash, so you might need to rough it in the wilderness, especially earlier in the campaign. This goes about as well as you’d expect most of the time.
First of all, without the strongbox at the inn to store all your loot, you’ll need to find somewhere else for it. Maybe you’ll get a decent night’s kip or maybe you’ll be beset by bandits, losing money from your Stash and some gear, or choose to fight them off and start the next quest with some valuable health already spent. Or maybe you’ll be set upon by wild beasts and start the next quest poisoned or wounded.
All of this sounds like an inconvenience but you get what you pay for, and it sounds like fertile ground for future quests.
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