The Duelist's Guide

The Duelist’s Guide is made for use with the Honor + Intrigue Swashbuckling Role-Playing Game. Inside you will find a number of new resources to use with the game’s unique dueling rules, including new dueling styles, Maneuvers, and equipment. In addition, you will find new and optional rules to help you speed up combat and run it off the cuff, and also rules for lasting injuries.

Aside from material to use in combat, this guide also deals with some of the role-playing concerns involved in a character learning a dueling style, becoming a sword master in one’s own right, and taking on students of one’s own. There is even a guideline for grandmasters to create their own unique dueling styles. This addresses the issue not only mechanically, but how it is handled in-character.

Finally, there is an adventure that accompanies this guide, "Death of a Swordsman", or "The Man Who Killed Trujillo  Maldonado". The story involves a sword master who is killed, and the PCs must help find out what happened. The adventure includes several sample PCs, some of whom use the new dueling styles featured in this volume. The adventure also has a guideline on how to customize the adventure for each of these PCs.  

Features Include:

• Optional Rules Hack: Improvised Combat. Great for teaching new players especially, improvised combat rules eschew the specific Maneuvers list in favor of a system where the player describes what they want to achieve and the GM tells them which Quality and Combat Ability to roll. Guidelines are included to help the GM decide if the effect is a Major or Minor Action.
• Guidelines for creating new Maneuvers.
• Extended guidelines for creating new Dueling Styles, discussing roleplay aspects as well as rules mechanics.
• 4 new combat Maneuvers: Goad, Horsemanship, Study Opponent, and Forefend Maneuver.
• All 19 previously published Dueling Styles for Honor + Intrigue from all sources, revised and updated.
• 17 brand-new Dueling Styles for a wide variety of weaponry including mounted combat and ranged weapons.
• Rules and Roleplaying advice for finding a teacher and learning new Dueling Styles.
• New Equipment (dueling glove, carbine, light pistol, horse pistol, mace) and all previously published equipment from other modules.
• Optional Rule: Lasting Injuries. Gives the player the option to lose an eye (or a limb) rather than their life (or the fight).
• New Boon (Grandmaster) and Flaw (Notorious Duelist)
• Adventure: “Death of a Swordsman” or “The Man Who Killed Trujillo Maldonado”. When a swordmaster is killed, the PCs are hired to find the killer and uncover what happened, but find themselves caught in the middle of several opposing factions.
• 9 sample PCs so you can dive right into the adventure, including advice for customizing the adventure for each one.