KR 2.0 Rules Final Patch Notes

RULES FINAL UPDATE PATCH NOTES


NOT GOING LIVE AT THE MARCH EVENT

Link to google doc version for easier viewing

docs.google.com/document/d/1CpGGLxiNRqoc...iQ/edit?usp=drivesdk


Quick Foreword by James 
Hey everyone! I’ve decided to hand the bulk of this announcement off to Ben Carlson, but I wanted to get a few words in prior. This is the end of a multi-year process. We have sincerely addressed a lot of issues that players struggled with and we decided to err on the side of fun.  The last few weeks the entire rules team has been working like crazy to finalize this rulebook and deliver the best result as possible. The database team also has been working like crazy and considering that we have been constantly changing things on them during this process they have been stellar.  Both teams are still working overtime and will be until it's all done. They all have my immense praise and gratitude and they deserve so much more for all of the hard work they have done for your enjoyment. 

I now hand off the detailed explanation to Ben. Thanks! 
 


OK WE'RE FINALLY DONE FOR REAL THIS TIME

It’s only been about a three and a half year journey! Thank you all for your patience and understanding as we have been going through these big changes. For all intents and purposes, this will be the final update to the Knight Realms™ Core Rules. We have gone through ALL of your feedback and have implemented it in a way we are confident to share with you all. 

At this point the book is ENTIRELY WRITTEN, but is currently being formatted for your viewing pleasure. It will release on March 20th, 2020, for the low low price of 20 bucks. (Nah just kidding, the online version will be 100% free! There will be a physical copy available for purchase in the future, though, but I do not know the planned pricing.)

Below are patch notes for the majority of changes, an overview of a lot of feedback we were hearing, and why we made the decisions we made. We are sharing this with you to give you some transparency and insight into our writing process. It’s gonna be a doozy, but I promise it’s worth it. Without further ado, let's dive right in!

Burst Damage

Most of the feedback we have gotten over a significant amount of times is the inherent dislike of burst damage. Burst damage was introduced in order to help single-class specialized characters feel useful when compared to versatile multiclassed characters. You give up being "the best at something" for more variety in your skills. On paper, it was the perfect way to balance classes.

However, an unintended side effect of the way this was implemented was a rather frustrating game for many players. People were feeling forced to take just one archetype to max out their burst, or on the flip side, feeling forced to take multiple archetypes to get certain defenses (this one is addressed in the next section). Many were also frustrated with the math, and felt their class choices were restricted for mechanical reasons, rather than roleplay ones.

That being said, I am pleased to announce that BURST IS GONE!

Burst has been replaced with a fixed damage system across all lists. With it comes fixed numbers for buffs and healing, as well as a bonus for sticking to a single archetype. We believe this will help make combat smoother, faster, and more engaging for players. We took a look at what the average numbers of all the class damages were and using those as our gauge, came to a damage spread between 20 to 50 on the base classes. Everything is now in multiples of 10, and that makes calculating damage mid combat much easier.

Don’t worry! There is still a benefit for being a 4x single archetype. You now gain a single prestige point for free. I know you don't know what that means yet, but trust me, it's great! It's endgame content that's usually only purchasable after you have finished all 4 lower lists and all 3 master lists. Some examples of what it can be used on are: an additional paragon from anywhere on your archetype, extra base or tag damage, doubling class health, an additional skill stack overlap, and much more!

We want players to feel like the option of staying focused on one archetype felt worthwhile but not necessary to enjoy the game, and with the change to a flat damage system we had to add better rewards to make single archetype characters feel, frankly, fun.

Which brings me to our second change….

Defenses and Smoothness of Combat 

A huge part of our feedback about combat and the game in general was trying to figure out which skill defended which attack. Countless holds where “What defends that? Oh, dodge?” would grind combat to a halt. And many more small slow downs adding up. These can be incredibly frustrating, boring, and just plain not fun. This, again, had been an attempt to keep a sense of fairness between the archetypes. However, it made further restrictive choices for players, forcing them to choose between focusing classes for higher damage with less versatility, or spreading out for versatile skills with little damage.

But, no more! Now defending is far more intuitive, and tags can be defended in a couple of ways that require almost no memorization. You just need to ask yourself the following questions:

Did you physically get hit with a melee weapon skill? You call Deflect!

Did you get hit with a spacket, ranged attack or auto-attack skill? You call Negate!

Can you Dodge? Nope! Dodge is now an NPC skill replacing perfect guard (it’s ok I promise, keep reading).


That’s right! All attacks that are dealt with melee weapons of any kind can be deflected, and any attacks that are ranged can be negated.  But don’t worry! We have updated all the classes across all the archetypes to gain more defenses. If you are worried about the roleplay making sense we plan on allowing the description of Deflect and Negate to encompass whatever theme is appropriate for the specific class. 

For example, a caster class that gets Deflect may be using a magic shield or gust of wind to deflect an attack, turning their skin to stone, or even weakening their enemy’s blow with their mind. A warrior class that gets Negate may be tapping into the blood of their draconic ancestors, shrugging off the effects through force of will, or guarding with their armored arm or shield just in time! A Rogue using either may be dodging (shhh don't even say it) the attacks at the last second, dancing around enemies faster than you can see, or using misdirection techniques to keep the enemy off their game. The possibilities are endless and entirely up to you! 

This simplifies the system immensely, and in a way we believe will make the game far easier to learn, play, and master.

Some things are still the same: base damage can also be defended with Parry. Avoid still defends Traps, Items, and Multi-target Attacks. Willpower still defends social attacks. Etc. But again, defenses are more common and spread across ALL archetypes.

We truly believe these two huge changes allow you to pick the classes you want for your own roleplay flavor without losing effectiveness in combat. It should no longer feel like you are forced to build a certain way to avoid being entirely useless or too vulnerable to have fun. 

Increased Rest Time 

With the removal of burst, the largest difference between multiclassing and single archetyping becomes build cost increases, and skill cost overlap. However, this brings up two problems, one of which we have seen come up time and time again: Every character is always at their full card for each encounter. While this may have some benefits, in practice, this means that NPC stats will forever be skewed to being way too strong in order to present a challenge, or end up far too easy to be considered one. 

The second and highly related issue, is now that the major difference is build cost overlap, if you are always full card for every encounter then having 6 skills versus 10 skills is negligible at best. Now, yes, you can do a bit more during a single fight. But if you both spend 6 skills on the first encounter, and the second one springs up on you, the single archetype character with 4 extra skills will feel MUCH more powerful and specialized. This is a feeling we want to encourage. 

Feedback from players have told us that rest times feel too short, to the point where they almost feel like they do not exist. Some feel that by the time you walk home from an encounter and talk about it for 5 minutes the rest time has ended. 

Because of these and other reasons all rest times have been increased to 1 hour.

We feel this change will give dynamic character building more of an oomph, and create more dire roleplay situations where you feel you must choose when to spend your skills wisely. Perhaps you will find yourself caught in a weakened state more often! A feeling that players (including me) have said they would like more of. 

Don’t fret newer players! We will be introducing a Fate purchasable for a low Service Point cost only by characters with two or fewer classes. This Fate will reduce your rest time to 30 minutes. We believe this will help ease the gap between higher and lower level characters, allowing us to make higher level characters have higher risk decisions, while also allowing the newer characters with only a small handful of abilities the chance to recharge quickly for the next adventure without falling behind.


Body, Armor, and Classes
So, in the last planned set of changes, we raised Caster health because we felt that a lower level caster was far too squishy. However, many people across all 4 archetypes had commented that caster health felt far too high, and despite some debate, we eventually agreed. But there was still the problem of the low end of health feeling too low. A first event caster having almost no skills *and* no health is not fun. A low level warrior being unable to use 95% of the cool armor they brought to try out this new game? Not fun. (Rogues were in a pretty good spot, comparatively.) So, we decided to change this! I am not necessarily a mathmagician, but I am going to try and explain this as simply (and high on bullet pointy) as I can. I will do a TL;DR at the end to try and summarize it.


All characters start with 15 Body in addition to their classes.

Think of this as instead of starting from 0 Body at level 1, you start at 15 Body and THEN choose your starting class.


All characters have an armor point cap equal to their Body points.

This is the same as it was before. If you have 30 Body, you can also get 30 armor.

An unarmored commoner is intended to have 15 Body points. A fully armored commoner would have 30 total Body points.

So, a character with a single class has a base of 15 Body plus the Body from their class and can wear the same amount in armor. 

For example, a single class rogue has 25 Body points (15 base + 10 from their class) and can wear up to 25 points of armor for 50 total body points.


All temporary body points are now healable, and the cap for augmented health is now 40.

We felt the difference between unhealable and healable body buffs was either unknown, confusing, or just unnecessary. Additionally, though the cap being 60 was great for lower health characters, with the changes we’ve made, it felt a BIT too high on the upper end.


Caster health has been returned to 5 body per Caster list. 

With the removal of burst, casters doing the highest damage in the game once again, feedback from characters of all 4 archetypes, AND the above change of adding 15 body to all characters, we lowered them back to their original health and armor cap ratio. Glass cannons bb~


Support health has stayed at 10 body per Support list. 

While we did indeed return Caster health to 5 body, we felt that Supports did not get enough of a boost in the combat side of the game to warrant such a low body pool. Having them at a higher health means they can support other characters more, which is their purpose. This is a good thing.


Rogues have stayed at 10 Body, and Warriors at 15 Body.

And they keep their same armor cap increase of 10 and 15 respectively.



TL:DR Everyone starts with 15 body points and 15 armor points cap, and now temp health is reduced to 40

Wow, that TL;DR was way shorter than I thought...


Some Misc. Changes
Listed here will be changes that I feel should be stated. However, these are not all changes to the game. For a more in depth look please remember to look within the completed Knight Realms Adventure Guide (released 3/20/2020). If you have questions, there will be a Q&A where myself and the rest of the team will be responding to whatever you may want to know.


All lower lists are now free! That’s right! Now you only need to wait a couple months before purchasing your next list at no cost. This will allow you to open up your possibilities much sooner! Additionally, you can buy skills the same month you decided to open a new class, that way your next event you can start with brand new skills to try out! EVEN MORE ADDITIONALLY, a new character will learn more build their first half a year so that they can be excited each of their first six events to figure out which skill they'd like to buy!


Some older damage types have returned and new ones introduced as each caster class now has their own unique damage source, helping to bring some role-play flavor back to each one of them. Mages now do Magic, Priests do Divine, Druids do Primal, Hexers do Necrotic, and more. 


Determination now has been changed so you may only attack once per 5 seconds, but retains the ability to defend with your melee weapons while suffering a broken limb. We felt the proposed change to Determination was still too limiting and would cause a player to cease combat regardless of having it or not to seek medical attention, which is entirely against the point of the passive.


Stone Fists is now a continuous skill that only affects Brawlers instead of a paragon as proposed. We felt that depending on which melee weapons you use, being immune to attacks up to your elbows was an ability that was either entirely overpowered, or just pointless. Moving it to Brawlers only gives them a much needed boost in efficiency and viability in the current meta.


Supports got tons of positive feedback from our first form, and so the majority of them have not changed beyond slight tweaks. They have all gained new defenses and continuous skills to keep them in line with the other archetypes. Some other changes to them include: crafting taking 5 minutes and the appropriate talent slot, procedures taking 5 seconds and the appropriate talent slot, among other.

….oh yeah and we gave them damage


Rogues now have access to an additional passive called “Lightfoot”, which allows a character to not trigger a trap they can see while under the effects of concealment. While we did make changes to passives overall, we felt that the rogues could use an additional “archetype only” passive to help them feel less samey. This passive only appears on rogues and rogue hybrids. (Keep reading to see notes on changes to passives overall!)


Oh side note, I noticed during the February playtest some people were having trouble with traps… Y’all can set traps during combat yo. Draw in the ground with your foot/a stick, or carry around a string to lay in a circle. When NPCs walk over ‘em, bam!


Bypass has made a return to the Thief list, now as their unique periodic skill. We saw an overwhelming sadness that bypass was removed, and our original thought that it was too strong as something that was a continuous passive. Moving it to their unique skill allows us to keep the strength and uniqueness of it, while still limiting its usage in a meaningful way. This also means that Trap Attack and Trap Master have been rolled into one Paragon. (If a character still feels like they need an extra way to escape, they can always use a Banishment Bomb on themselves )


Summoning has been moved to a periodic skill, and has a whole section on this in the book!  The primary use of the skill in combat will be to charm the creature type that you summon, but will still allow you to have a pet minion at your side, which you can power up in exchange for some components. 


Casted Latent Buffs have made a return! We know a lot of people have been asking for these! Some of them include Fanfare of Victory, Death Scent, Cycle of Seasons, Shield of Starlight, Temper Soul, Drain Life, and more! Make sure you keep a lookout for them and see what they do!


Channelled buffs can now be used while still participating in combat. We felt that channelling a buff or aura was thematically cool, but only very mechanically useful if you had a dedicated group protecting you. Now you can defend yourself and make base damage attacks while channelling the effect, which gives a much needed boost in effectiveness where the channeller was previously vulnerable.


For Example, beat someone with a stick with one hand, while holding a Star Globe with the other.


Critique on Scholar has been adjusted to allow it to bypass the refreshment limit. However, a player can only benefit from Critique once per rest. Critique felt too under utilized. This buff gives it some much needed oomph to distinguish it from other refreshments without overpowering it.


A big question to the changes to Centurion was wondering why Devastate was “nerfed” to a lower number. In actuality, damage was crunched equally across the board. Compared to other attacks, this current version of Devastate is the same relative power level.


Flanking is rad yo. We got nothing but good feedback on it and we love it too. I'm going to strategically say nothing about it here though.


Commoner Skills and Lists feeling similar

Two other complaints we have gotten fairly often are about Common list RP skills, and the lists in general feeling a bit similar. With the introduction of many new and returning common list skills ( E.G. Interrogate, Diplomacy, Research, Tracking, Etc), players felt they would HAVE to purchase these in order to participate in roleplay at all. This is frankly not true. While you may need to purchase some skills in order to do specific things (I.E. Tracking to roll on the tracking chart), this will NOT be a stopping point for roleplay. The only thing these skills will do is give your character a better chance to be able to perform the tasks you deem them capable of.

Additionally, we received feedback saying that people wished every character couldn’t learn to do everything, and we agreed! So, we moved some of the common list skills to classes. Each class has 2 extra continuous skills now to fit these abilities, and you can choose to buy some or all of them.

We believe that adding more flavorful passive abilities to each class gives them back a sense of character and roleplay. You still only need two passives to be able to purchase your paragon, but you have more to choose from and all are able to be purchased. This will cause less overlap, and add a feeling of uniqueness to each class and character.


Q&A and reminder for the book
These are some of the overarching changes we have made to the rules based on feedback, but most classes were updated based on player feedback as well. Definitely check them out!

If you have any questions on anything specific (either what changed, why it was changed, or how we came to our decision) we will do an open Q&A to our design process once the book is released! For now, feel free to ask questions in this thread about the contents of this post and we will do our best to answer.

The book will be released in its entirety 3/20/2020, when that comes I will edit this post to include a link.

Will there still be ways to reduce rest time other than the Fate listed?

Will Rest Time increase while suffering Resurrection Sickness, in addition to rolling on the Death Chart?


Thanks in advance!