Approximate time to read: 2 minutes.
The diehard English-speaking fans of Symbaroum have been translating the Spelarens Handbok since Day 1. Somehow, this volume of Swedish gaming goodness became a must-have; a grail to Google Translate and pore over.
In the Spelarens Handbok you could find details of Undead and Trolls, staff magic and trollsong, advantages and abilities… It seemed worth the effort to expand the world of Symbaroum just that little bit further.
Now, you can set your efforts aside and enjoy the gaming goodness. After a year of impatience, you can download the Symbaroum – Advanced Player’s Handbook in PDF for yourself… and then badger the Järnringen team for the physical release date (it’s May 2017, through Modiphius).
The volume got a new name — after lengthy discussion on the Symbaroum Google+ Community — and some of the features inside got renamed too — where the original system for small advantages and disadvantages became Boons and Burdens (my suggestion!). You can find inside these pages:
- Five new playable races, in the form of Abducted Human, Dwarf, Elf, Troll and Undead.
The Abducted Humans are the other end of the Challenging swap; the children of other races raised by the elves.
- About twenty new occupations, out of which some are so called Professions that the characters can strive to reach – for example Inquisitor, Monster Hunter, Wrath Guard and Troll Singer.
Professions allow those who have followed a path with care, experience and a singular purpose to access Abilities otherwise unavailable.
- A system of Boons and Burdens, effective in problem solving situations and perfect for adding color to the player character.
A little colour to your character comes in the form of these minor Abilities that cost 5 experience to acquire or reward 5 experience where something negative. A couple of Boons cost the same as an Ability – but they can really add character to your treasure-seeker or a GM might even use them to flavour non-player characters.
- About fifty new Abilities and Rituals – some exclusive to members of the Professions, others only available to certain archetypes.
Something that players and GMs have been clamouring for since the original release of the Symbaroum Core Book, these expand the existing options and offer specific paths for the new magical options, like the Troll Singer. I have added a couple into characters in the past – like Herculean, called Feat of Strength (possible in honour of Festivus?).
Plus…
- Rules on the crafting of artifacts and items; including Lesser Artifacts and Mystical Qualities to infuse into your masterworks.
- Alchemical weapons in the form of explosive grenades and fire tubes, the latter either stationary or carried by Sappers.
I look forward to seeing how people use these new options in their games and where we go from here.
Pick up the new Advanced Player’s Handbook now!
Congrats on your efforts, this site has been very useful for my explorations of the world of symbaroum.
I believe this new Advanced Player’s Handbook really fleshes out the core rules, and the system of boons makes much sense (kudos to you again!).
It would be great to have new reference cards that take into account all those new abilities, rituals, spells, etc. – the original reference cards are a great resource!
We and my group translated the english version in some parts into german (boons, burdens and skills). The races we got from some other fans before the publication of the Player’s Handbook.
So we started with a dwarf (nearlx died in second adventure), one changeling hunter (died in second adventure), a human witchhunter and a shield maiden GM-char.
Today we will play one of Paul Baldowski’s suggestions of an adventure (the mountain passage has now two evenings/one adventure passed).
The Advanced Player’s Handbook is really a “must have”, ’cause now the chars survive some conflicts without dying in turn 2 – 4.
Thanks for this page, Paul! It saves us much time and inspires us two GMs.