Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Looking for Art!

So, as part of moving to DM's Guild, I've been looking for a reliable artist behind the scenes for a while.

For every class option I release, it'd be nice to have a personally-created image to go with each of them. This is something I've always wanted for my work, but it's finally possible with income from the DM's Guild to make this a reality.

If anyone is interested, I'd be willing to pay $35-40 per piece, as long as it meets the appropriate art style (i.e., sufficiently similar to works found in the Player's Handbook, or cool enough that I'd consider it anyway). I'd also be willing to credit you fully with an art credit and a link to a blog or profile that has at least as much visibility in the credits as my own blog link.

This would also be reliable work, as every time I'm about to release an option, I'd be looking to commission (and pay for) a new art piece.

If you're interested, let me know in the comments, or by messaging /u/the_singular_anyone on reddit! Show me your profile, or link me some of your existing works, so I can get a better idea of the art that you create.

The first thing I'm looking at commissioning is the Common Man paladin, so if drafting up a Soviet-esque hero of the people sounds like fun to you, let me know.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Stronghold Expansion: Traders & Merchants [Second Draft; DM's Guild Variant]


Available on the DM's Guild (pay what you want) at this link!

It'd be awfully silly if I was to host content on the DM's Guild and omit the largest thing I've ever made, wouldn't it?

It took some searching, some editing, and some doing, but Traders & Merchants has been updated to use entirely public domain artwork. It was a difficult process (and one that unfortunately doesn't pay dividends in new content or rules updates), but it needed to be done as I continue to move from fair use art into public domain art.

What changed? Well, about that...

CHANGELOG:

  • 32 pages of new artwork!
  • Made Quality and Legendary Merchants operate off of a d20 (to improve probability distribution).
  • That's it.
  • Exciting, right?
CONCERNS:
  • Gimmicks present in some Legendary Merchants may need balancing or adjusting.
WHAT I LEARNED:
  • I never want to re-do 30+ pages of artwork ever again. 

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Prestige Class: Vampire [Fifth Draft]


Available on the DM's Guild (pay what you want) at this link!

With April here, I'm finding myself in interesting times.

I'm starting to transition my work to the DM's Guild, meaning I'm remastering and putting the finishing touches on old favorites, modifying them to use public domain works rather than utilizing images under fair use, and updating rulesets to fix old mistakes and create finished works.

I'm also starting up a new job and a new side project or two, so my ability to produce more homebrew is slowing down substantially. Making new homebrew is always important to me, but for now expect to see a few remastered projects coming in before entirely new work starts appearing again.

This time, the Vampire gets the remastering treatment! I've always been almost-satisfied with the vampire, but after four drafts I decided it was as good as it was going to get, and I needed to let it lie.

The benefit of having half a year between drafts is I've had a good deal of time to think of finishing touches, and of what truly final tweaks the vampire needed to be an ideal prestige class offering. And on that note:

CHANGELOG: 

  • Added Vampiric Quirks, a table of mostly-fluff quirks that help define your vampire and introduce additional minor weaknesses or visible traits that draw in from vampire lore while allowing your character to be distinct!
  • Added a sidebar rule for Prestige Classes, because PrCs are a lot more niche of an option and require some additional explanation.
  • Vampiric Arcana is now Spellcasting, allowing synergy with features, items, and similar that require the Spellcasting class feature. 
  • Granted Elementals exemption from being fed upon, because it's very hard to find the blood in a fire elemental. 
  • Added a sidebar explaining Sanguine Strikes / Smite synergy, because that was a question that came up often.
  • Retooled Blessing of Form, tying Mist Form to the spell gaseous form, increasing the blood cost of all forms, and introducing transformation limits to Wolf Form so you can't wolf-tank a monster, drop to 0 wolf HP, then reassume your form and keep wolf-tanking it. 
  • Moved Blessing of Darkness to 5th level, allowing Sinister Nourishment (the ASI ability) to stand alone at 4th. Most ASIs similarly stand alone, and it was a bad idea to double up anything at 4th level. 
CONCERNS:
  • I was almost tempted to make this option entirely without Sanguine Strikes, but I dialed that back. That would be a much larger retooling that I'd need immense feedback and brainstorming on, and the end result probably just wouldn't be worth it.
WHAT I LEARNED:
  • Once you stockpile a lot of it, public domain art is actually surprisingly easy to make work for an option like this.