I am super excited to show off this absolutely massive update for Vigilant that adds over 100 pages of new content and three new chapters! What started out as a very modest goal of porting over the bestiary from the 1st edition and adding in some loot rules exploded into months of combat testing, complete overhauls of almost every single creature, significant balance changes across every single archetype (except priest), a bunch of new items, some new spells, a whole chapter of brand new NPC generation tools, graphical and space-saving overhauls, big chunks of new lore, and so so so many new tables. Take a look at the chapter-by-chapter breakdown below for all the new content. 

The broad idea with this update is to stuff the book full of all the useful tools a GM needs to run encounters and generate treasure with minimal prep. I'm assuming that anyone following this project already has an idea of how to GM, so the 'basics' rules have been tossed on the backburner in favour of tools that are going to be immediately useful to people actually playing this game right now. 

Miscellaneous Changes

• Changed some text-weighting throughout to match consistency between digital / printed versions 
• New Cover!  Testing out a cleaner, more minimalist look 
• Number of grammatical and clarifying edits throughout
• Touched up page backgrounds to improve readability 
• Added Object Size to Adventuring chapter and some clarifying notes on objects and how they work
  • Objects are different from items in that items are stuff you carry, and objects are stuff that goes on the ground. 
  • Object size scales the same way as player/character size. A medium object is roughly the size of a medium character and so forth. Object size is relevant to a few spells and creature abilities.

Perk Updates

Some new perks added, some minor reworks to fix references to outdated rules and wording, and some balance changes.  

• General Perks
  • Added Cavalier: allows a character to make a riding maneuver as a free action each round. 4+ ranks in riding required.
  • Added Skill Adept: character treats ranks as double when determining skill rank bonus and bonus may exceed character level for chosen skill. 
  • Added Polymorph: can take ranks in polymorph spell (forbidden school). 
• Barbarian Tree changes
  • Vicious Blow bonus damage reduced from 1d6 to 1d4 
  • War Cry reduced to 30ft. Wording updated to mental attack (functionality remains unchanged).
  • Extra Rage now also grants an additional use during an encounter.
• Protector tree changes
  • Taunt perk - dice cost removed. 
  • Reversal - ability changed to after successfully blocking an attack the protector receives a +1 bonus to next action they take against the attacker or may make an attack of opportunity the next time attacker takes an action this round. Old ability no longer functioned due to changes to action chains.
  • Quick Bash - removed 1/round limit. Concentration changes made this ability less impactful as it is more difficult to deny an attack; now instead provides a flexible option for the protector if they think they will be able to soak an attack with their DR. 
  • Disrupting Bash - changed to increases Concentration TN by +1 (old perk triggered a concentration check on the attacking character, but concentration checks are now incurred by default if damaged when attacking)
  • Even the odds - reduced to 2 dice maximum; ability is still pretty overpowered. 
• Duellist Tree changes
  • Unrestricted Defence perk changed to +1 bonus on block / dodge reactions when not wielding a shield and carrying a light load or less. Old version (MND added to Physical TN) allowed for a niche min-maxed build that trivialised too many encounters. Tying the bonus to an action with a dice cost brings it to an appropriate power level.
  • Combat Flexibility perk now also allows a character to take an additional move action instead of an attack of opportunity.
  • Precision Strike added - 1st attack each round ignores armour. 
• Assassin Tree changes
  • Silent Hunter penalty on enemy perception checks from -1 to -2 
  • Removed 2-weapon fighting perk
  • Added The Piercing Knife - Sneak attacks against adjacent targets ignore damage reduction from armour. 
  • Terrifying Blow now triggers a will save against fear for affected characters instead of applying automatically if the target’s mental TN is lower than damage. Moving away from non-savable fear effects. 
• Investigator Tree changes
  • Update Apathetic Outlook perk in the Investigator tree to remove ambiguous wording - Investigator is immune to effects of the cowed and shaken conditions, but is still treated as cowed/shaken for the purpose of advancing to a higher fear stage. 
  • Unnerving Presence now also makes the investigator immune to any penalties on insight checks as a result of other abilities or perks. 
• Tactician Tree Changes
  • Command perk changes
    • Only mental dice can be used to add to the command pool (effectively this changes nothing for a rogue character, but does have implications for cross-archetype characters taking perks from the tactician tree).
    • Adding dice to another character’s action uses your reaction for the action chain.
    • Dice added to a character’s action are treated as bonus dice, but may still not allow a character to take an action on more dice than their base pool.
    • Can now only add dice to a standard action or reaction (no bonuses to free actions). Channelling checks can still not benefit from command dice. 
  • Expert Advice now provides a +1 bonus when aiding another character in a skill check (old text was only functional in previous version). 
  • Extra Command tier II makes the 1/encounter effect of the perk add 2 dice to the command pool instead of allowing the power to be used 2/encounter. 
  • Courage no longer applies when you are feared, and applies only to friendly characters. 
• Charlatan tree changes
  • Magnetic Ramblings changes - ended up being a useless ability on low-reflex characters due to initiative timings. Restructured a bit to allow for more consistent use cases.
    • Now a full round action with a static perform TN of 18
    • On success target makes a 3d6 + your WIl save; on a fail they are dazed and cannot take actions on more than 2 dice until the end of the following round. 
  • I did that on purpose - changed to 1/ encounter use, no reaction cost, and grants an attack of opportunity on a success instead of negating the fumble 
  • Auto Psychotic Self-Manipulation - reduced to 2 dice. This was intended to be more of a bizarre giga-brain ability with a neat situational payoff if the charlatan could manipulate events to trigger their action. In practice, people just use it to get a free attack off at the start of combat, so reducing the bonus dice by 1. 
• Foreign Schools perk in Archivist tree now removes foreign school casting penalty from scrolls and spellbooks instead of granting the ability to cast foreign spells using scrolls / spellbooks (which can now be done by all spellcasters by default). 
• Sorcerer Tree Changes
  • Overwhelming Arcana perk now applies a -4 penalty to the channelling attempt and is no longer treated as a counterspell effect. 
  • Forceful Casting II - Bonus die counts towards channelling pool for the day.
• Buffed Spellthief Drain ability - now applies a -X penalty to the target’s channelling attempts where X is the amount of channelling dice drained. Lasts until end of round.
  • Changed ability to use drain as a secondary grapple option to usable as an attack during a grapple.
• Sunset Champion Changes
  • Hot Blooded II - instead of increasing to 2d6 fire damage (from 1d8), now applies a 1d4 burn effect that triggers at the start of each round, lasting 1d4 rounds. 
  • Immolation: 
    • Removed Immolation III (Sunset Overdrive available 1 level earlier)
    • Instead of triggering 1d6 fire damage when hit by a melee attack, now deals 1d6 fire damage to all adjacent characters at the end of each round. 
    • Fire damage bonus changed to +2 and applies only at Tier II of perk
  • Sunset Overdrive - duration from 10 rounds to 1d3+BOD. Now doubles only fire damage dealt from perks within the sunset champion tree. Lasted too long, and damage stacking with pyromancy spellcasters could get a little insane at upper levels: there was formerly a min-maxed build where a lvl 12 sorcerer / sunset champion could reliably fire off two 12d6+10 damage lightning bolts in a single round with maximal rank investment, which is a little stronger than I’d like. 
• Slayer Changes
  • No Quarter for the Damned - movement type changed to shift
  • Armour of contempt - changed from +5 magical DR to +2 all DR against damage dealt by targets affected by your mark of hatred
  • Rip and Tear - divine point cost from 3 - 5. 
• Sword Mystic Changes
  • Turtle Carries Its Hearth - skill max doubled only when not using a shield. Thematically the mystic is supposed to be more of a duellist / great weapon user. 
  • Arcane Surge II - damage from +4 to +3 (dodge bonus remains). 
  • Sparrow Hones Its Claws II - damage bonus from +3 to +1. The magical damage that this perk enables already tends to ignore most DR, and in combination with arcane surge this ended up dealing way too much damage for a relatively low dice cost. 

Skill Updates

• Long jump distance for Athletics skill changed from static distances to a fraction of movement speed. This change gives a realistic bonus to faster characters, as the old system was based off an assumed movement speed of 30ft. 
• Riding Clarifications
  • Charge manoeuvre for Riding now requires mount to move in a straight line and can no longer target characters that are threatening or adjacent prior to movement. Charging character must now move at least 20ft to grant attack of opportunity, and provides only a +1 bonus to attack roll. Changed to eliminate some odd situations where a character could charge when it really wouldn’t make sense. Also the attack bonus was too high. 
  • Changed riding attack manoeuvre wording to use mount’s highest standard action for roll (as mounts are statted as hordes) 
  • Intelligent mounts are treated as a separate character now. 

Combat Rules & Equipment Updates

• Free actions and reactions trigger in normal initiative order now instead of reverse initiative order (for simplicity sake) 
• Shift movement no longer ignores difficult terrain
• Clarified that attacking requires active concentration (for cases during which an opponent is granted the opportunity to damage a character before their attack goes off, the attacking character has to make a concentration check as a free action)
• Swig special action reduced to 1 physical die (from 2). 
• Added rules for changing weapon size categories in the Combat chapter
  • +1 damage and +1 dice step for each +1 size category. Inverse when reducing size.
• Clarified base physical / mental TN (it’s ‘6’ for both) 
  • Now noted in Ch2 attributes
  • Dedicated section in combat chapter under Attacking & Defending
• Movement (in Combat Chapter) added to bookmarks. 
• Weapon Changes - mild nerfs to the powerful 2h martial weapons, and some tweaks to maces and morningstars.
  • Greatsword from 2d6+4 damage to 2d6+2. Crit effect from Doubles(5+): max damage to Doubles(5+): +1d6 damage.
  • Great axe from 2d8+3 damage to 2d8, crit from triples(6+) to triples(5+). Crit effect remains unchanged (+2d8 damage). Unwieldy(2) to Unwieldy(3)
  • Morningstar from 1d8+1 damage to 1d8 damage. Crit effect from Triples(3+): +5 damage to doubles(5+): +1d8 damage 
  • Mace critical from Doubles(5+): +5 damage to Doubles(4+): +1d6 damage

Magic & Mystical Item Updates

• Clarified rulings on aura threshold - only items with passive or triggered effects constantly apply to aura threshold. Items with an active effect but no passive or triggered effects apply to aura threshold only while active.
• Changes to scrolls: can add rank bonus in addition to scroll bonus, and removed unknown school penalty to channelling attempt. 
• Buffed Forfend (general spell - it’s the one that wards an area from undead)
  • Used to be 10 minute casting time / 1 hour duration. Is now 2 full-round actions to cast and 10 round duration. Changed to allow for use during combat. 
• Conjure Creature changed: TNs lowered, creature now uses dice pool of caster (+1 bonus die) and acts on caster’s initiative as a controlled character. Has fixed pool of 20 HP and is vulnerable to magic damage, but otherwise gains abilities of base creature.
• New Spells
  • Added regrowth to Aquamancy - high magics, regrows limbs
  • Added regeneration to Aquamancy - high magics, extends healing aura around caster
  • Added Polymorph to forbidden school - can turn things into little creatures
• Flash-Bang now also applies bright light in radius. 
• Added new Mystical items (new loot charts will create a natural surplus of minor mystical items over a campaign, so adding in more minor items to keep loot fresh) 
  • Amulet of Reverberation
  • Charged Ammunition
  • Whistle of the horse-lords
  • Mask of Mimicry
  • Babblehead
  • Luck Pendant
  • Anathema Manacles
  • Salve of True Form 
  • Quariil Spirit-Anchor
  • Void Crown

Loot Chapter

• Added Loot Chapter
• Added guides for distributing loot, and tables for recommended wealth / level 
• Ported over carried-loot system from errata document
• Added Hoard generation rules
  • Level-scalable rules for generating large stores of wealth. 
  • Auxiliary charts to generate specific types of goods, art, and gems
• Added guidelines for how to manage parties selling magical or rare items which scales to the size of a settlement. 
• Added new Artefacts (really powerful items) and ported some over from the original GMG with heavy modifications
  • Banefyre - a big ol’ legendary sword
  • Chroniton - moved from special materials to artefacts to better-reflect its scarcity
  • Ryuorstam - retains the lore and function of its legacy GMG counterpart, but now has a randomized chart to assist defining its abilities. 
  • Staff of Mephistopheles - powerful staff of a fabled demon
  • Kortonni - legendary variant of Fae divining cards (similar to Tarot) that provide the drawer powerful randomized effects
  • Wishing Ring - grants a wish 
  • Gorp’s Tome of Gastronomy - contains really good recipes
• Added rules for generating lore and abilities of custom artefacts. 
  • Added tables to generate an artefact’s type, appearance, and unique features
  • Added tables to generate minor and majour powers, and an artefact’s history.
    • 20 new power options in total
• Added randomized tables for generating every type of magical item or arcane implement.  

NPC Chapter

• Added NPC chapter - rules for primarily non combatant NPCs or NPCs of player-character races. 
• Added section on how to run NPCs
• Added ‘basic statline’ rules that provide options for running quick throwaway NPCs
• Added section on how to flesh out and run memorable NPCs
• Added a bunch of random charts to determine various NPC traits:
  • Physical traits
  • Personality quirks
  • Relationships with other characters
  • Motivations
  • Profession
  • Backstory 
• Added rules for running NPCs in combat.
• Added Morale system for trained / untrained NPCs in combat.
• Added full statlines for a number of generic NPC roles and professions for quick reference.
• Added full lore sections on all the major races, detailing culture, governance, world perception, naming conventions, etc… to provide extra context on how to distinctly characterize NPCs of different races.
• Also added full statlines for a number of NPC roles that only appear within certain cultures.
• Added a table to generate sophisticated and upstanding goblin names such as ‘Slopdickery’.

Bestiary Chapter

• Added Bestiary chapter
• Added updated rules for hordes (hordes have set actions instead of shared dice pools as in old GMG)
• Added updated rules for threat pools (all creatures contribute to threat pools and all creatures in a combat can use dice from a shared threat pool). Creatures have a per-turn limit for the maximum amount of threat dice they may use from the shared pool. 
• All creatures now have attribute ranges and HP ranges to allow more baked-in customization options when building encounters. Default scores are still provided and all the derived bonuses in a creature entry are based off these default scores for quick reference. 
• Added an Encounter Rating stat to creatures to help build balanced encounters. When designing an encounter, add up the ER of all creatures to determine the total rating of the encounter. 
  • For a party of four characters a minor encounter should have an ER equal to double the average level of the party.
  • ERs currently assigned to creatures will likely change with further testing - these can be used as a ‘ballpark estimate’ for now. 
• Defined creature subtypes and associated rules
  • Whegwari (player race) now have Resistance to magical damage due to being of the Divine Minion subtype
• Changed creature HPs to hit-dice based rather than static. 
• Bestiary Updates
  • Creature entries have been grouped to make sense instead of being in purely alphabetical order. Things like Devils, or bears or wolves or elementals with multiple variants can be found under their generic root-creature (IE Fenrisulfr are listed under ‘wolf’ now)
  • Migrated over most entries from the old GM guide and Player’s Handbook. Minor-major changes to pretty much all the entries. Added Encounter Rating as well as threat dice + horde actions from errata document to all entries. Major changes to individual entries listed below. Many creature-entries had their Will stat nerfed. 
    • Animal entries have mostly been converted to hordes. 
    • Overhauled bears: added the tiny ‘hand bear’ (it’s like a cute little gerbil-sized bear), added abilities with awful bear-pun-names, changed dire bear to titan bear and made it significantly more threatening.
    • Reworked automatons to Automatica: changed up lore to make them fit setting better, removed annoying shock ability, rebalanced DR / HP spread to make them less swingy in combat. 
    • Reworked Malevolents - now deals Will damage to feared targets, reduces Will of creatures within a cursed area, and has different more thematically appropriate spell list. 
    • Reworked Dragons - changed to unique variants in line with lore. Basically 4x completely new creatures. 
    • Reworked elementals - storm elemental changed to air elemental to align with the 4 elements paradigm. Types changed to construct. Abilities changed. Minor stat-adjustments throughout.
    • Reworked medusae - added an ‘e’ to the name, de-emphasized spellcasting and gave bonuses to grappling. 
  • Added new creatures
    • Iq-Lid - bird-like creatures with a massive bony pavisse that covers their entire front.
    • Shelleck - boneless parasitic amphibians that take control of corpses or wounded creatures, puppetting them from within. 
    • Corpse Eater - a big ol’ flesh-eatin’ worm.
    • Chittersquall (squirrel variant) - arcanically activated psychic hive-mind consisting of thousands of individual squirrels that form a massive humanoid abomination.
    • Kharazan - Fae-like trickster spellcasters with an expressionless fox-like face who can invoke spoken words into law. 
    • Teleporting Strumpitte - Chimeric creature that’s a cross between a raccoon and a hawk. Intelligent and naturally teleports short distances. 
    • Ongaru - In-universe Oni (a smarter shapeshifting ogre). 
    • Raaklain - Like a dire bear mixed with a dragon.
    • Mastolor - Basically a triceratops with wooly-mammoth fur that lives in the northern ice plains.Skittish and stupid. 
    • Living armour - living armour. Comes in variants depending on the type of armour. 
    • Hullush - hyper-violent tribal creatures that look like a big goblin with sloth-like arms covered in a rocky hide
    • Dryad - forest sprite thingy
    • Erazeere - metal angel thingies 
    • Stalker Devil - Hunter devils with envenomed spider-like claws protruding from their backs and chameleonic skin
    • Collector Devil - grinning devils covered in living chains and rusted iron cages that can compress enemies and lock them away. 
    • Hearth elemental - a cute little fire elemental that lives in forges and fire beds. 
    • Sarkya - big shock-troop devil with corrosive blood and a charge-through ability.
    • Cabramal - small semi-intelligent bipedal goat creatures with a tendency to develop fanatical religious cults. 

Other Changes & What’s Next?

Future updates will focus on the ‘basic’ GM rules to make this a complete ruleset, and then I’m just gonna go nuts and add in all the weird shit I’ve been working on. Here’s a VERY rough update order: 

• GM Basics Chapter - how to run a game smoothly and make things fun and interesting
• Settlements and Encounters Chapter - Rules for generating settlements including their inhabitants, wealth, political crises, allegiances, diversity, secrets, scandals, and projects. Also rules for generating encounters, the motivations for the creatures or NPCs that are part of them, and environmental and character-driven complications.
• Lore Chapter - a huge lore-dump providing context for all the groups and nations that are running about in the worlds of Vigilant
• Dungeon Builder - porting over the dungeon builder in the 1st edition GMG and retooling like 90% of whats in there to fit with new rules and creatures
• Extra Rules Chapter - this will probably get sprinkled in with some other updates. Includes a chunk of optional add-ons and character generation rules:
  • Plot points - meta-currency system that lets players add characters and encounters to the worlds
  • Epic Destinies - replacing the old epic-levelling rules, epic destinies provide grand goals and powerful progression for characters looking to ascend past lvl 16
  • Questing Backgrounds - a lifepath system for randomly generating mid-level characters with a seasoned adventuring background and a collection of magical items, allies, and enemies. 

With this update I’ve also shuffled the Gamemaster’s Guide compatibility & errata document over to the old GMG itch page as this update largely invalidates the need for it to exist here. 

I am planning on being  a little more active on the bluesky account and would really appreciate the follow if you're interested in keeping up to date on Vigilant and some other projects - @gordonsheadgames.bsky.social‬