Patch Notes Part 1 (Pre-February Playtest)

Enjoy this content from Nick H and myself.

These rules are not live this month
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Hello Everyone!

A handful of our playtesters were very enthusiastic about the items of our playtest and have shared bits and pieces throughout the community. There has already been a lot of feedback, but a lot of partial information being shared outside of the Playtest group. While we had expected this, we did not expect the infectious curiosity to spread as quickly as we should have anticipated. So, we wanted to try and provide the whole picture to you all to hopefully clear things up.

We will confirm that these documents are not 100% complete (you will notice references to pages, for example) as they are not intended to be finalized before the playtest. However, we plan on providing every document that needs to be referenced. If you have *any* questions, please reach out.


Status Changes
A lot of people can say that skills like ‘waylay’ or ‘stunning blow’ are a skill that you can never take because that would mean you were going to die shortly after. They existed as 2HKOs so everybody always defended them, your skills never landed, and that is neither fun nor interesting.

So, we changed them so that they can allow you to continue participating in combat; giving you a chance to react, defend, and still play the game overall.

We also removed domination effects from the base list game because it was either an instant respawn/kill skill on NPCs or meant NPC resources were being tied up fighting other NPCs and that wasn’t good either. This change was to promote fuller combat of PC vs NPC to keep the combat engaging for everyone involved.


Base/Max Skill Damage
A compression of damage was done to streamline combat numbers in a fight. We felt that 5x burst attacks were not very useful because, relatively, it was easy to acquire that as your base damage with a weapon. It did not allow a new character to feel very effective while swinging 2 damage and striking with their ‘big’ skill 5 damage, when someone else was easily swinging 5 damage consistently. Base 10 felt more like a real attack.

On the other side of things, there was a concern that skills could hit too high in damage, so the overall damage of casters was reduced to x20 in line with rogue classes. Provided below is the low/high damage of classes.

Warriors: 10/15
Support: 10/15
Rogues: 10/20
Casters: 10/20


Health Increases
With the change in the new base damage of skills from 5x to 10x, we noticed that a brand new caster or support character could not survive a single tag skill attack. We raised their base health so, with some basic gear, they could survive a strike long enough to regroup and retreat in a fight.


New Hybrid Class
Eldritch Archer exists! It’s the inverse of Ranger in order to round out the hybrids.


Hybrid Proficiencies/Defenses
The decision was made that the proficiency of the class determined defense of the class. Melee (Deflect), Metaphysical (Negate), and Piercing (Dodge). This changed the defense on every class except Spellsword (it was already Melee (Deflect)).

A Cleric is a warrior of a cause, healing themselves so they may persist in a fight.
An Eldritch Archer is primarily a ranged combatant, with spells meant to control the field.
A Ranger has a handful of spells to lash out at an opponent quickly, able to hide away if needed to strike.
A Spellsword is a warrior that uses spells that help debilitate their enemies, trapping them in a fight.


Spellcaster Archetypes
The results of the poll indicated that you guys preferred 4 Domains over 5 with over 70% in favour of the change. We took this opportunity to narrow down each class’ function so there was less overlap between them and they could all feel more unique as distinctly different classes drawing on different power sources and ways of casting. The reason for the poll was that after we implemented the status effect changes from above, the different spell lists became incredibly same-y. We wanted to see what the best avenue for change was, and we took the majority consensus of 4 domains to heart.


Rogues
Camouflage was altered to be a more interactive ability by PCs and NPCs alike. We talked it out with a handful of players and we were able to find a middle ground we believe overall will be more enjoyable.

For the rogue characters that wish to focus on consistent combat, we have provided an option called Flanking Strike in the Nightblade Master list to participate in combat without feeling dependent on Camouflage.

Their paragons were brought in line with everything else. For the meantime, Bypass has been removed from the game. Assassinate has been altered to be a fairer skill when interacting in PvE and PvP situations.


Warriors
There were a lot of different factors considered to try and give warriors more survivability in a fight. We increased their low end damage on tag skills, improved the status effects they could inflict and endure, and provided an adjustment to their paragons based on the changes of overall status effects, skills, and damage that made them more viable to each class.


Support Changes
This is an easy one. There have been issues with support classes over the last 2 years and we know many of you dropped your support classes or support characters because they weren’t fun to play. Partially due to the heavy emphasis on status effects, that (like we touched on in the status changes) were not effective and lead to the player feeling useless in battle. We completely redid how support classes function but kept the flavor of the class. This includes the overhaul of Artisan. To do this, we had to make changes to how they crafted items.

I’ve heard some people thinking we buffed consumables to only be defendable by avoid. As much as I, Nick, would love that, we did not do this. The text on Deflect, Dodge, and Negate indicates which consumable type they also can defend.


Crafting Changes
Crafting permanent consumables was too expensive to be super useful. What we did to correct this was change up how it worked overall and how materials would interact (or not as the case may be.)
In addition, we’ve changed how the innovation option of talents works in order to tie it into the oculum and make both more useful and allowing us to add damage back onto supports!


Summoning!
It exists now as a paragon and it’s neato. Make golems or summon demons in front of Ilana! A great time awaits us all. There are some specific rules on this so this isn’t a free PvP with no consequences skill, but you can now play your own summon so you don’t need to con your friends into it! But you still can get your friends to play them at your side (details of these rules will be presented later, they were not needed for the playtest.)


Equipment
We’ve heard comments in the past that the armor and equipment were completely confusing. Equipment’s going to be changed up a bit, mostly to make armour easier to use without micromanaging it to get your item benefits. And we did change up the defenses that you can get, away from archetype defenses but towards a perfect guard (any status) and a perfect guard (damage) ability. Part of this is that it keeps them powerful while still being catch-all defenses. Example, if you want to protect a farmer from being attacked but you keep getting knocked back, you can choose to use the knockback defense in your armor multiple times instead of your other benefits.

We also have adjusted the armor cap, how obtainable that cap is, and what you can do to help yourself and your friends customize their items to their style of play.

However, there won’t be real item rewrites and the marshals or any of us on the team will be able to handle converting your armour or weapons (if needed). Regular consumables will continue to exist as-is until used. The change over should be pretty minimal and I’m gonna volunteer Mars for it all since she likes paperwork (I really do!) I’ll do it too, but I’ll probably complain about it.


Feedback and Closing Notes
This is absolutely the last weekend we can acquire full feedback. With the new game in Maryland opening and potential sites in the future, our core rulebook and the card database need to be finalized before April. So, please, use the form to share your ideas, we want to hear them, and we want to try and help achieve the game the overall community wants to see.

We have received feedback already but if you would take the time to fill out the form, we will be able to consolidate everything together so it may be reviewed properly.

Monday evening the feedback form will be closing down, so take the time to articulate your thoughts.

Nick will be NPCing all weekend (as your ‘favorite’ Obsidian Raptor ) and when he is not busy stalking us (or vice versa) he has offered to be available to talk with people directly for their feedback.

I will be PCing, but you may check in if you want to chat, however I may not be available at the time (I need to fight JP as our ‘favorite’ knight Osric after all) If you do not think you will have time to use the form, you may write your thoughts down and give them to me during the event this weekend.

Thank you all for your time, cooperation, and patience as we sort through all the good and the bad. We will be doing our best for you.

Have a good one!

The link to lower list stuff:
drive.google.com/drive/folders/14jdk91qq...bzQnxQL_--ZDT5_4iGaf

Feedback form:
forms.gle/ZBTcbrFjYbczzeW29