Crunch Time (2018)

As was kind of expected, playtesting showed that the game isn't fully ready to be released "into the wild."

Since the game's non-combat aspect leans entirely onto the skills, it will be important going forward to have this facet of the game a lot more thoroughly defined. The mechanics of each skill, the basic assumptions of what happens outside of combat, as well as who commands the flow of the action (and when) will need to be codified. I think it will also be important to define when and how to fall back on Attributes, Skillsets, and Power Sources, i.e. when there may not be a specific skill that covers a certain type of action.

The "monster workshop" guidelines will need more testing; there were some flaws with the theorycraft behind solo monsters, and I can only assume that the same will be true of the other new monster types. Likewise, the rules for summoned creatures need to be expanded upon -- specifically, when they should or should not be treated as "allies." Mechanically, the Ranger's animal companion needs to be reworked, since it can potentially soak a lot of damage, with no real penalty or drawback if it's killed; it can simply be 'recast' on your next turn.

Another thing that was shown to be troublesome was various passive and defensive buffs. Boosts to defense rolls can be disproportionately powerful, since a character can potentially make several of them in a round. Whereas bonuses to attacks are generally limited to Basic Attacks, which (among most classes) happen only once, on their turn. The need to balance off these different types of benefits was reflected in the updated Cleric class, which I wrote during the course of playtesting. Always-on buffs will need to have their effectiveness scaled, to match their projected frequency, or simply have that frequency adjusted to match their potency.

A few of the more basic concepts of the game need to be defined -- "Death and Dying" (so to speak) being one of them. I mentioned previously that Reserves are meant to function as out-of-combat HP top-ups, but the mechanical ability to use them needs to be cleared up a bit. Can you spend Reserves at the end of combat, if you are "dropped"? Does initiative immediately end when all enemies are defeated, or should you finish out the round (potentially letting support characters get more healing in)? These kinds of things need to be explained in the text. "Expertise" (I feel) also needs to be straightforwardly called out as simply a piece of mechanics jargon, or it needs to be renamed (because it continues to cause mental logjams with new readers/players.)

Last (for now) is the fact that I need to finish writing the remaining classes, which also means needing to crunch their damage numbers, and make sure everything balances. The class features all need to be reformatted, and the slate/category upgrades need to be instituted across all classes. The "Performance" progression needs to be ironed out and finalized; some classes being able to gain it as an option at 1st level, but with no actual benefit until 2nd level is something that needs to be fixed. "Subclass only" and "Archetype only" classes will need to have unique and interesting upgrades available to them.

Once the classes are set, they will all need to be tested, re-tested, and re-balanced; if the playtesting has shown anything, it's that things are never as close to completion as they seem, and that the devil is in the details. For the game to reach a finished state, there will need to be a lot of bug-squashing; I'm hoping I can find faster ways to identify problematic, vague, or breakable mechanics, going forward.


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Keeping with the blog schedule, the next post should be up on August 18th, so check back then.