Total//Effect

[selkie]

Oh like, you form relationships and teach each other stuff? that's SO COOL

[Binary]

Yeah! And also with NPCs and such that you meet along the way, to pick up more classes than whatever your group started with.

[Binary]

Session 1 went great! Will be tweaking up the starting PC powers from 2 to 3 because everyone ran out fast but that's fine. Combat goes fast.

In a wild turn of events, Raph D'Amico (author of The Zone) saw me post a request for "how do I make this more interesting" and decided to run a masterclass on it:

https://www.loom.com/share/d4891d0ad941 ... e0944eadd7

So I'm poking at making the class spread more interesting looking now based on that advice, because it's going to be a LOT of this game by volume.

[Binary]

Ok. So I've got the (initial, at least) 12 classes down.

I started first with combinations of the Total//Effect combat roles that I outlined here. Then, I synthesized 12 combinations of those, and put them to good use (with some more predictable than others).



(Bolding on the names is because those are the ones I wrote first and that was my checklist; bolding on the roles means that's a "first among equals" style role.)

Here's where I landed on all of those:

• Bard: Healing focus one, with some added offensive buffs and debuffs. (Bard does healing because Health is Vigor and I figure they're the most "lighten everyone's spirits" concept.)
• Berserker: Melee AOE combined with high mobility and some ability to influence enemy action with taunt-like mechanics. Very aggressive.
• Blazemagus (formerly Firemagus): High offense via reduction of resistance, addition of vulnerability, and AOE. They also have a little healing, because I figured putting that on the fire mage would be cool.
• Champion (formerly Warrior): Big focus on offense through defense: basically if anyone attacks someone who isn't you, you get bonuses to attack them. On top of that it's got some durability tech and high Harm for single targets.
• Commander: The "lead from the front" support class. Offensive buffs, some "give an ally actions" tech, and some "we all move up together" mobility stuff.
• Dark Knight: The "take Harm to do extra Harm" class. Largely focused on dealing Harm, with a split between melee Weapon Harm and ranged Magical Harm (so it's pretty versatile in that regard).
• Earthmagus: I decided to lean into the earthquake/mudslide stuff: it's great at making enemies not move.
• Frostmagus (formerly Watermagus): Encasing in ice, along with some healing stuff. Extremely good defensive buffer, as any ability they use that affects an ally also gives them a little damage reduction.
• Knight: Extremely hard to kill and good at locking enemies down. Has a few "everyone scatter" and "everyone come to me" abilities too, and it can take hits for other characters.
• Ranger: Long range, high single-target Harm. It's also got some "set a trap" and "pin an enemy down" tech.
• Tactician: Extreme 4E lazylord vibes: mostly they just order everyone else around and let them take extra actions or give them extra defenses. They've also got a few surprise defenses, which is good because they're quite fragile otherwise.
• Windmagus (formerly Airmagus): The main gimmick is that it blows enemies around, which combos really well with various abilities that deal Harm when an enemy moves/is moved.

And as mentioned above, you can grab other classes' powers, reactions, and standards (and the ability to eventually straight up swap classes) via Relationships, so a lot of combos will present themselves pretty quickly.

[selkie]

Love these. I love character customization and this is a great way to ground it in how your character actually learns!

[Binary]

Yeah! I gave out my group's first relationships at the end of last session and as soon as I explained what was going on I could palpably feel the wheels turning. It's coming together really quickly.

I threw together the initial Reputation system - as you go up in levels, you'll gain a reputation based on your deeds. Reputations have to be kept up to be maintained, but keeping them up gives you essentially another free skillset.

[Binary]

https://cohost.org/binary/post/1090715- ... orizon-dev

Making a change to combat: among other things, I decided it was weird that movement was the only action you didn't roll for, so I changed that. Now every class has a second Standard that gives them move + something.

This has the knock-on effect of making the extra Standard selection at level 4/7 a little more interesting - you can mix and match "do something" standards with "move" standards.

[Binary]

https://cohost.org/binary/post/1118232- ... id-ramblin

Talkin' about ships and dogfights and not-dogfights because I'm thinking about how they're gonna work.