Race: Swarm [First Draft]

Sometimes, it's fun to make something profoundly different and gross. Something that makes my skin crawl just writing about it. Something equal parts fun and horrifying to bring to the table and play.

Hint: I'm talking about this race. This horrible, disgusting, pile-of-worms-or-rats-in-a-trenchcoat race.

A swarm is created one of two ways: Either arising by itself when a group of tiny animals or insects affected by magic bands together, or when a mortal is transformed into one by dark magic. Swarms are nightmares to behold, and a truly alien creature to step into the shoes of.

And, honestly, those are the characters that I like playing the best. The characters that see the world in a way I never could, that have opinions, thoughts, and motives that I the player find strange to contemplate.

Anyway! Here's what it does:

FEATURES:

• Break into an amorphous ball of nasty, to slip through grates and escape foes!
• Summon animals from the wilds, and add them to your horrible body!
• Eat people! Just, eat people.
• Two different feats, to give your swarm some fun magic to play with!

CONCERNS:

• This is a hard one to balance, but doesn't feel overly powerful. Playtesting is good.

WHAT I LEARNED:

• It's fun to do concepts that instinctively make me flinch away! Broadens my horizons, and I can really lean into what I find gross or unnerving about them.

Spells: Codex of Technomancy [First Draft]

I've always wanted to make another spell collection! Had a few drafts that I ideated on for quite some time, but never finalized.

Fun fact: I had a rough Codex of Alchemy at one point, but I fully cannibalized what I made there to make the Brewcraft and Imbue Potion features on the Witch class.

Anyway! Technomagic has always been one of my favorite ideas, the idea that in a world where both science and magic exist, there'd be a rather big overlap on that Venn diagram. I've also been a big fan of the mad science types that would take up such arcane practice, as well as the Actual Magic Scientists who'd look down their nose at exactly those kind of people.

Let's take a look at what this supplement has in store:

FEATURES:

• 16 New Spells, with something for every class!
• Spells to Craft Golems, take pictures, summon impossible machines, create traps, and more!

CONCERNS:

• The usual slew of small balance concerns that come with making lots of spells for just about any class

WHAT I LEARNED:

• YEP SPELL COMPILATIONS ARE ABOUT AS HARD AS I REMEMBER. I'll for sure make another one eventually, but it'll take a while.

Race: Scarecrow [Second Draft]

The first draft of the scarecrow was remarkably on-point! Very little needed to be changed, which is something I always appreciate.

I love making D&D races in particular. There's something fun about the lore-writing, which I don't typically get to do. Races, for obvious reasons, get much more lore than general class options, and making a race gives me much more time to create a compelling reason to play that character.

Scarecrows in particular are interesting to me. Not only are they a construct race, which I adore, but they're horror-themed. They're twisted abominations of their former selves, so far-gone they've forgotten who they even were.

It's a fun character for me, personally, to play, because it begs the question: Where does the character go from here?

CHANGELOG:

• Not that much! Changed how fire vulnerability works, added a passive racial ability that literally scares crows, and a sidebar for how scarecrows and witches interact.
• New art by Doug Wright!

CONCERNS:

• Also not that much! Scarecrows, previously, were fairly balanced, and this iteration doesn't shake up that formula too much.

WHAT I LEARNED:

• I want to make another construct race! Expect more in the future!

Class: The Augmented [Second Draft]

The Augmented was always a promising concept but, as one of my first full classes, not one I feel I executed initially very well. It had a handful of balance issues that needed solving, and stepped on a few toes.

But, more importantly, it had great thematic potential, and a well-defined space that allowed it to exist as a distinct class!

Converting it to v0.2 required a few crucial changes, most of which I'll elaborate briefly on in the changelog.

CHANGELOG:

• Streamlined level progression, keeping front-end from being too heavy
• Rolled Overdrive and Shield Matrix into subclasses, to keep the class from having too many tools
• Rebalanced several key augments
• Added integrated weapon augments into the core battlefist design

CONCERNS:

• The class still occupies a distinctly science-fiction thematic niche. I don't think this is strictly forbidden in D&D, but it's definitely on the far side of acceptable.

WHAT I LEARNED: 

• I accidentally released this one before I planned to! I need to be more careful with which version of files I upload, when.

Class: The Commoner [First Draft]

Level 0 play is a really intriguing option to me. I love starting the party in a position of relative powerlessness, and having them earn their stripes from there.

I kicked around how to do this for some time, experimenting with ideas like Level 0 Archetypes, backgrounds-as-classes, and other off-the-wall spitballing ideas before finally settling on the Commoner class, as you see it here.

The Commoner is a class unlike any other, not necessarily meant to be played alongside traditional fighters, rogues, wizards, or the rest. Commoners are by nature weaker to the point of near death, and exist entirely before 1st level. 

A commoner is a class about overcoming your flaws, getting stronger, and learning to survive.

FEATURES:

• Four Fractional Levels of Class Progression, culminating in your first level in an adventuring class!
• A Collection of Unique Flaws, to give each commoner character and something to struggle against.
• A Handful of Perks, illustrating how each commoner learns the tricks necessary to help them survive.
• A New Background, for any character, but particularly for aspiring commoners!

CONCERNS:

• As with any new game mechanic, will it work as intended?
• Are commoners too weak, or too strong?
• How to the flaws and perks measure against each other?

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Classes in D&D can be made to do a lot! Even things they're not really intended to do.

Subrace: Tabaxi Variants [First Draft]

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

Cats! Everyone loves cats! The people who tell you they don't are, frankly, liars.

Tabaxi are one of my favorite races in canon D&D, and they're a ton of fun to play. But one thing I noticed is how many people fluff their tabaxi out to be a certain kind of cat. You've got hairless cat tabaxi, big huge lion tabaxi, cute fluffy housecat tabaxi, the list goes on!

So, I thought, what if I went into the Volo's Guide to Monsters rules for tabaxi, and tweaked them, so that they'd be able to have subraces? 

What if I took the cats we already had, and used them to make even more cats?

Here's the result, with artwork from the fabulous Ashley Irelan, whose portfolio you can find by clicking her name!

FEATURES:

• Five new tabaxi subraces! From lions, to lynxes, to housecats!
• Distinct subrace features for each, to make different cats play like different cats.

CONCERNS:

• The core race may not have as much unifying meat left on its bones as I would like.

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Turning a race into subraces is fun, and not as difficult as it would seem! I'll have to try it more often.

Catching Up!

Hey there, reader! Bet you've been wondering about the radio silence.

Well, surprisingly, I haven't stopped releasing! I've just fallen behind in on-the-blog updates in a major way.

But that's going to change in the next few days. I'll be bringing us back up to speed with an update every couple of days, until we're all caught up to my most recent releases.

So buckle up, you'll be seeing a lot of new (well not precisely, but still!) content, very quickly.