Ch-Ch-Ch Changes

First of all, Happy Easter!

Now, on to gaming...

In going through my draft for Tales of the Splintered Realm, which is coming along nicely, I was trying to clean up the archetypes. I had twelve different archetypes going, and was trying to get them to not look so ... messy.

Then I realized that I've made this a LOT more complicated than it needs to be. I decided to go with the 3E option (which might be in 5E... I have no idea) that each level you can advance in a different class, and that we go back to race and class as two separate options. I know that I've made race and class a hybrid thing for this game, and I may revise the 'basic rules' to do that, but the main rulebook is going to have the mix and match option. This cleans things up, and lets me build every character I could want to build. I want to make a gnome trickster who has more arcane magic than thievery... fine. He's going to progress 2x in magic user for every level of thief, and ultimately wants to end up as a magic user 4/thief 2. Exactly the character I want. This caused me to revisit a few core concepts.

1. Class Progression and Attribute Increases are changed.

You select a class and a race. Every time you level up, you can progress in your current class, or you can take 1 level in another class. At level 1, Mimsby was a magic user 1. At level 2, he became a magic user 1/thief 1. At level 3, he took another level of magic user, becoming a magic user 2/thief 1.

Ever level, there is a chance that you have an attribute score increase. Roll 1d6. If you roll equal to or above the current attribute modifier, you increase the rating +1. For example, Mimsby moves to level 4, and takes 1 level of magic user. He currently has INT 11 (+2). He rolls 1d6; if he rolls 2 or above, his INT increases to 12. If he rolls a 1, it stays where it is. Any rating of 9 or lower automatically will increase; once you get up around 15 (+4), it gets less and less likely to see that increase.

2. Classes and Races are simplified.

They each give a few specific benefits. When you hit level 4, you trigger a special ability for your class. For example:

- Magic User gives you the lore talent, and 1 tier of arcane magic every level. You have a chance of increasing INT every level. At level 4, you get to cast one instant spell each turn.

- Elf gives you +1 to INT at level 1. You add +2 to sense Feats. You have darkvision.

That's it.

And by the way, I took shield use away as a separate ability. It comes included with medium armor access. However, a fighter with two weapons can choose to use the shield as his second weapon; he gets the benefit of the armor class bonus, but also gets to bash enemies with the shield every round for a little bit of damage (1d4). However, he'd get to add magical shield bonuses to attack and damage rolls, so it's a pretty nifty combo. Fighters are now much more awesome. I need to upgrade the two-handed talent by giving an extra +1 to attack rolls just to offset this; the two weapons ability for a fighter is SWEET if you go sword and shield. You get two attacks per round and +2 to AC at level 1. Good stuff, but only fighters get it. Of course, anyone can take one level of fighter just to do it...

3. Attributes and how they link to magic are moved around.

I bumped WIS back to faith magic, because Healer is now the default class for that. I bumped nature magic over to CON, since it makes sense that your ability to channel nature would be based on your personal endurance; you are channeling a lightning bolt through yourself, so you better be hardy. This allowed me to free up CHA for the bard, and to include chants as part of the core rules, which I am very happy about. It also gave me a class to link CON to, since I was having trouble with that. STR is the fighter, INT is the magic user, DEX is the thief… it was the other three I couldn’t firm up. Now I have.

And now I can make my dream stoutling bard character who picks up one level of fighter. Bwahahaha.