Quickstart Guide

The Hord system is designed for a team of players, controlling powerful characters, to combat against the Hord Master, who controls dozens of enemies per turn. This horde-centric combat means that actions are fast and so are the lives of both the horde and the players if they’re not careful.

This quickstart guide provides a players section and a hord master section, designed to promote playing and running.

§ Players

When preparing to play with the Hord system, you will need a character sheet and a collection of tokens to represent the basic character attributes and control the random aspect of the combat.

§ Tokens

All characters have intrinsic health tokens, attack tokens, and move tokens. Through the use of gear, there may also be shield tokens.

Health tokens represent health and are randomized. Health is determined by flipping the amount of health tokens you have and choosing 1 if tails and 2 if heads. This resulting value is your maximum health.

Attack tokens represent an amount of attacks that can be made per turn. Different weapons consume different attack token amounts.

Move tokens represent the amount of move actions that can be made per turn. Different move actions consume different move token amounts.

Shield tokens represent the amount of shielding the character has. This is dependent on the gear used but generally regenerates over a very short period of time. Not all games will have shields.

§ Combat

Combat works by spending move tokens and attack tokens in any order or combination preferred.

When attacking, choose a weapon you will be attacking with, then spend the amount of attack tokens the weapon requires. The target of your attack will then take the damage of the weapon, along with any additional bonuses there may be. The damage may be reduced by armor or absorbed by shields.

Movements can also be taken, either to simply step or to hand off items between characters. There are multiple types of movements that can be taken.

§ Basic Character Creation

The first step is to choose a lineage and a class. Decide this based upon the make up of your party or what playstyle you may prefer.

The second step is to calculate your health from your health tokens, dependent upon level. If you have 6 health tokens, then flip 6 health tokens, taking 1 on each tail and 2 on each head.

If starting at level 3 and every 2 levels thereafter, you would also pick a Class Special. Every even level also grants one free token that can be converted into an attack token, a move token, or a health token.

If given starting wealth tokens, then buy starting gear as desired, ensuring that you do not spend more than 50% of your tokens on a single item. It is wisest to buy the type of weapon your class is best with, armor, and some form of utility, whether a healing salve or otherwise.