What this is

Rules automation for the Adventurer Conqueror King System II in Foundry VTT: classes and the class builder, proficiencies and class powers, equipment and fighting styles, exploration formations and overland travel, battlemaps and hex terrain, henchmen and hirelings, influence and reactions, factions and standing, domains, locations, storage and markets, vehicles and voyages, and the full Monstrous Manual stat block — over one set of shared primitives and one rules-table registry — and the importer that reads all of it from your own ACKS II PDFs.

This is the merge of nine modules that used to ship separately (acks-lib, acks-abilities, acks-equipment, acks-formation, acks-henchmen, acks-influence, acks-location, acks-monsters, and later acks-importer). They were never really independent — seven of the eight required the library, two called into each other, two defined the same Actor sub-type, and the importer filled structures every one of them owned — so they are one module now.

A Foundry VTT module extending the ACKS II game system.

Importing from your books

Book content arrives from your own PDFs. The module ships extraction recipes — for a given entry on a given page, where its fields are and how to recognise them — and never the book text. The GM connects a PDF once; the recipes run against that file, in the browser, and write real world documents.

Everything you import persists. Stat blocks, tables, prices and each entry’s own descriptive text become world data, so once the GM has imported them everyone at the table has them, players who own no books included. Each imported passage closes on the book and page it was read from.
Only the GM needs the books. Import is the one moment a PDF is read; a book staged on the server is read on every launch with no gesture, and nothing is resolved again afterwards. The bytes are never uploaded.
What it imports. The Monstrous Manual’s monsters with the full stat block, natural weapons, spoils and treasure links; the Revised Rulebook’s classes (progressions, saves, award ladders, starting templates), proficiencies and class powers, equipment and the weapon, armour and gear price tables; the Judges Journal’s proficiencies, drawbacks, class builder and the rules tables the henchmen market, travel, weather and encounters run on; By This Axe’s dwarven classes; the adventure line’s locations as journals, roll tables and actors; and another game’s books — Old-School Essentials adventures — converted through the System Compatibility Guide.
Nothing is imported twice, and everything can be removed. Imports land in world compendiums, one per series and document type; re-running updates what the page changed, and Delete Everything Imported (GM) takes it all back.

Guide: Importing from your books.

Shared primitives (the former `acks-lib`)

The foundation the other features are built on, and useful on its own.

Attack roll, remodeled. ACKS distinguishes the attack throw — a target that moves with class and level — from bonuses added to the roll. Core folds the target movement into the die pool: the same hit test algebraically, but the rolled value is masked and no modifier is attributable. This restores the model — 1d20 + labeled terms against throw + target AC, every term visible in the roll tooltip. Outcomes are identical to core’s for identical inputs (parity-tested). Toggle: Attack roll: throw as target.
Storage. Goods can be kept at a place. Stored items are real embedded items on that actor, attributed to their owner, so a warehouse holding three characters’ gear reads as three inventories rather than one shared pile.
Groups and mounts. A stackable group actor (troops as stacks with a linked commander) and a rider/mount binding other features can ask about.
Animal, Group and Template actor sub-types, and the Follower Card sheet.
The rules-table registry. A priority-layered store the other features read through: built-in sample tables at the bottom, imported book tables above them, GM overrides on top. Nobody reads a table by module name.
Repair This World (GM). One window that finds the data this module left damaged: bundles no sheet lists, links to documents that are gone, writes that stopped part-way. It changes only the findings you tick, and checks every fix by scanning again. Open it from the module’s settings or its macro.
Adjust Hit Points (GM). Damage, heal or set the hit points of several creatures at once, each with its own multiplier, through the system’s own damage rule. It opens on the selected tokens from the Tokens controls or its macro, and on a whole party from the party sheet. Undo works while the window is open.
Theming. One design-token layer (--acks-*) across every ACKS surface — including the ones the system renders — measured from the books and carrying a light and a dark value for every colour. Per-client controls for colour scheme, how much styling the system’s own sheets take, and font size.

Classes and the class builder

A class held as a document rather than as prose: requirements and key attributes, the level progression, save and attack bands as printed, the named ladders a spread’s extra columns carry, casting traditions with their slot grids, the printed templates, and the per-level award ladder. Class documents arrive from your own book through ACKS Importer, or are typed by hand — both produce the same document in the same sheet.

The constructor. Create Item → Class opens the sheet that builds one. Simple mode is the printed spread, entered directly.
Advanced mode — the Judges Journal’s class builder, automated. Enter build values (Hit Die, Fighting with its 1a/1b split, Thievery with chosen skills, magic values, a racial value) plus trade-offs and custom powers; the Builder tab shows the accounting and derives the whole spread on demand — XP schedule with its smoothing and post-8th climbs, attack throws, saves chassis, cleaves, damage-bonus and thief-skill ladders, and a casting tradition per magic value including the delayed-acquisition grids. It is a tool for balanced homebrew, never a validator: nothing blocks.
Races are documents too, carrying the racial-value ladder — each rung’s XP cost, level cap and granted powers — attribute minimums, always-on traits, and how the race stacks with a magic category.
Magic values are an open set. Arcane and divine are only the first rows a world imports; ceremonial, gnostic, alchemical or homebrew traditions are rows of the same shape.

The module ships no class values. Derivation writes the same fields an import fills, so applying, levelling and chargen cannot tell the two apart.

Magic and spells

The spell as a document with structure, not only prose. Every spell Item opens on the ACKS Spell sheet: the printed stat line as fields — the lists the spell prints on, each with its magic type and level; its type; range and duration as a shape with a value; target, save, reversal — and a Mechanics tab of effect rows in the vocabulary the abilities already use. The system’s own level, class, range and duration strings follow the fields, so the system sheet and the character sheet keep reading.

Every printed spell imports. Connect your Revised Rulebook and Import Everything writes one document per entry of the spell chapter and each sample ritual, the stat line parsed onto the fields and the description closing on its page. Spells land before classes, so a starting template’s spellbook finds what it names.
Casting stays the system’s in this release: the counter, the chat card and the Save button are unchanged. The cast engine, effect tracking and the spell builder follow.
Leave no trace. Uninstall — Strip Spell Data removes the fields from every spell in the world and keeps the strings.

Guide: Magic.

Proficiencies, class powers and skills

An extended effect model for ability items — the structured mechanics a plain description cannot carry: what an ability grants, what it modifies, what it lets you roll, and at which ranks. Rolls made through it pick up those modifiers automatically. Adds an Abilities tab to ability items.

Equipment and fighting styles

RAW equipment-rule automation.

Equip limits and hand budget — what you can hold and wear at once, and what a two-handed weapon or a shield costs you.
Fighting styles — Weapon & Shield, Two-Handed, Dual-Wield, Missile, Single Weapon: detected from what is equipped, with specialization bonuses applied through one managed Active Effect.
Proficiency requirements — non-proficient use penalties, weapon and armour proficiency, Martial and Armour Training.
Draw and sheath action economy, ammunition consumption, thrown-weapon recovery.
Containers — capacity, contents, and encumbrance that follows the goods.
Optional overlays, each independently switchable: shield variants (JJ), combat maneuvers, item loss from damage (JJ), named magic items (JJ), scavenged equipment (RR), enclosing helmets.

Exploration formations

Condenses the party into a marching formation with a single party token, keeps the dungeon-turn bookkeeping, and runs an overland journey day by day.

Party actor and party token — one token to move, members inside it.
The dungeon turn — a 10-minute clock with wandering-monster throws at the frequency and target you set.
Light sources — torches and lanterns burn down, occupy hands, and light the party token; running out is noticed.
Mapping and fog — fog of war can follow the mapper, and player measurements are fuzzed without a proficient one.
Player requests — players steer their own members through a GM relay rather than needing ownership of the party.

Overland travel

The same sheet switches to a journey: the ground it is crossing, the day’s sky, a day board of ancillary hours, and the march derived with every factor named.

How the order moves decides which factors it meets at all — on foot, mounted, by vehicle, flying or by vessel. A flier ignores roads entirely and feels wind by its own rule rather than the one that slows a walker; a vessel meets no ground at all. The readout says which factor replaced which.
Weather off the calendar. The sky is settled once per day for the ground you are on, derived from the date and the climate rather than stored on whoever rolled it, so two parties in the same country get the same day. Mud and snow accumulate and dry out on their own.
Provisions are pooled. Food and water are shared across the whole marching order and dealt out by a policy you pick: evenly, so everyone goes equally short, or by triage, so as many as possible eat properly.
Hunger, thirst and the cold. Going short tells — hungry, then unable to force march or heal, then starving and losing Constitution daily. Thirst arrives faster and charges a rolled toll that sweltering weather doubles. Cold runs its own clock: a body left unprotected, or one that simply gets wet, turns hypothermic and loses Constitution by the hour until it reaches a fire. Anyone carrying a cloak or furs is sheltered.
Living off the country. Foraging for food, water and firewood, hunting with or without dogs, and grazing for the animals. Hard country, settled country whose forage is somebody’s crop, and the Survival proficiency each move the throw and each is named separately. What is found is deposited on the people who found it.
Searching and surveying. An hour spent looking can turn up a lair, a ruin or another party — harder the faster you are moving, harder again for something particular, easier from the air over open country, and worse under a canopy. Surveying tells the Judge how much is left to find. Looking around owes its own encounter throw.
Getting lost. A failed navigation throw is whispered, not announced. The party walks on believing it is somewhere it is not, and the map fills in with the ground they think they crossed, while the Judge alone sees where they really are. When they realise, that imagined ground closes back over — and only finding a known landmark puts the country they really crossed onto the map, in its right place.
City travel. A settlement is crossed the same way: a pace, the avenues or the alleys, how well the party knows the way, and whether it is dark. Being lost in a city is a wrong turning noticed at once. A large party straggles, and splitting it is the way out — at the price of each group answering for its own encounters.

Every threshold, target, penalty, yield and rate behind this arrives through ACKS Importer from your own books. Until it does, each readout says plainly what it cannot price; nothing is ever guessed.

Battlemaps and overland maps

Map tools for both scales, on the scene rather than in a separate window.

Hex terrain painting. Claim hexes as Regions and the travel readout picks the ground up from the map. The terrain vocabulary is whatever your own books put in the registry, not a list fixed in the module — and mud and snow are deliberately not paintable, because they are conditions the weather produces.
Roads and routes. A hex has edges, corners and a centre, and a road is a declared path between them. A road only helps a party actually travelling along it, and a winding route costs more distance than a straight one — stated rather than hidden inside a multiplier.
Battlemap alignment — line a published battlemap up to the grid, and keep token scale honest across the two scales.

Henchmen and hirelings

The complete hireling ruleset.

Availability by market class, rolled once a month for the whole town — availability belongs to the market, not to the recruiter.
Recruitment postings, paid per week per hireling type: generic searches draw on the town’s shared pool, directed searches are rolled privately for whoever paid.
A player-facing recruitment board.
Hiring negotiation — Reaction to Hiring Offer, including presenting as a level you are not.
Henchman generation — stats, class, level, culture, age and occupation from the settlement’s demographics.
Loyalty and morale — calamities, level-up loyalty, obedience, wages, arrears.
Monstrous henchmen, followers, and the optional slavery rules (JJ 409).

Influence and reactions

A reaction and influence roller for the three ACKS II tones — Diplomacy, Intimidation, Seduction — with attitude tracked per subject on an attitude item, and ability effects feeding the roll. Optional By This Axe dwarven caste modifiers and a configurable race-relations matrix.

Locations and storage

The Location actor: a place where people are hired and goods are kept. One sheet carries both halves — market tabs (recruitment, henchmen, mercenaries, specialists) and a storage tab showing what is kept there, grouped by owner.

Also: a Storage tab on the character sheet, a GM storage manager, and the retirement of the system’s banked-coin column in favour of coin that is actually somewhere. The Ruledata Browser is the GM’s audit surface over imported tables — export, edit, override, revert.

Factions, standing and status

The Faction actor: a guild, a temple, a syndicate, a noble house, the watch. It has a seat, a leader, members, the quarters of a city it controls, and a ledger of how it stands toward a party or a character, in the Judge’s own figures. The ledger’s total is listed on reaction rolls made against the faction, against its members, and anywhere in its quarters; a Wanted row marks the party hunted in those quarters, so the district’s hunted table answers there; and an optional setting lets standing move a market’s class for one recruiter. The influence roller also fills its social status row from the ranks of the two people talking. Adventure books that describe a settlement’s organisations import them as factions seated in their quarter.

Domains

The Domain actor: a ruler’s land, kept as the campaign game keeps it. Its territory and peasant families, the settlements and strongholds it holds, the structures of its stronghold, the month’s revenue and expense lines, its morale, and the lieges and vassals around it. This release is the record: every figure is the Judge’s or an imported adventure’s, the sheet adds them up, and a line nobody has entered is reported as unset rather than counted as zero. The rules tables, the month’s turn and territory painted on the map come next.

The Full Monster Sheet

An alternate monster sheet carrying the complete structured Monstrous Manual stat block — classification, attacks, abilities, defenses, ecology, spoils, treasure, henchman details — instead of one prose block. Enable it per-actor from the actor context menu.

Every feature here is free and none of it is gated. If it earns its keep at your table, you can chip in on Patreon.