AWW Fill-In-The-Blanks
Sep. 15th, 2013 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinEarlier today while waiting at the theater for a movie to start, I had a random flash of inspiration on two different CGs that have remained stubbornly blank. Specifically, the Enchanter and the Unarmed Fighter. So I pulled out my phone, opened Docs To Go, and hammered them out in a file, which I sent to my Dropbox. When I got home, I opened that file, cleaned up and formatted the abilities I'd written, and pasted them into the draft.
The ability to do this sort of thing is responsible for a lot of the progress I've made on the character guide. When I talk about it being something I can pick up and put down in bits and pieces as compared to writing rules or stories, that's pretty much what I mean.
I'm very happy to have these two formerly blank CQs filled out, because the Enchanter was a popular request when I asked potential players what the basic set was missing and an unarmed character type was sort of a glaring omission. Brawler and Fencer can both double as unarmed, Warrior and most other non-weapon-specific fighting CQs can at least be tailored for unarmed fighting, but there was no generic unarmed expert.
Folks might remember I was really critical of the fact that D&D 4E didn't include unarmed fighting options for any non-monk characters even when they added the monk multiclass feats. Because of that, I've tried to be very conscious about not marrying any CQ that doesn't directly reference weapons in its name or concept to the use of weapons. But making a CQ that specifically refers to unarmed fighting takes some of the mystery out of the process for new players who know that's what they're looking for. And when I give it its descriptive write-up, of course it'll list all the other CQs that have good unarmed potential. So someone might well flip to Unarmed Fighting Expert to begin with but then end up making a character with two other qualities they wouldn't have thought of.
Because this is the generic CQ, I stayed away from anything that smacks of a particular style or school of fighting and anything overtly mystical or superhuman. I did take some inspiration from the description and mechanics of 3E's "flurry of blows" in how some of the Unarmed Fighter's abilities work.
For the Enchanter, part of the problem was that a player who specifically makes an Enchanter is going to want to produce magic items, which, balance issues. I'll save an in-depth description of how I resolved this for a possible preview. For now, I'll just say I feel like I've managed to hit the core appeal of the concept and created a character that is recognizably an enchanter without running afoul of those issues.
There are still some blank or incomplete CQs left in the list, but I've started cutting those ones out and pasting them in another doc if they aren't crucial in some way. A lot of the cut ones will make it back to the basic set, probably, but in terms of having a finished playtest-ready draft, some choices have to be made.
The ability to do this sort of thing is responsible for a lot of the progress I've made on the character guide. When I talk about it being something I can pick up and put down in bits and pieces as compared to writing rules or stories, that's pretty much what I mean.
I'm very happy to have these two formerly blank CQs filled out, because the Enchanter was a popular request when I asked potential players what the basic set was missing and an unarmed character type was sort of a glaring omission. Brawler and Fencer can both double as unarmed, Warrior and most other non-weapon-specific fighting CQs can at least be tailored for unarmed fighting, but there was no generic unarmed expert.
Folks might remember I was really critical of the fact that D&D 4E didn't include unarmed fighting options for any non-monk characters even when they added the monk multiclass feats. Because of that, I've tried to be very conscious about not marrying any CQ that doesn't directly reference weapons in its name or concept to the use of weapons. But making a CQ that specifically refers to unarmed fighting takes some of the mystery out of the process for new players who know that's what they're looking for. And when I give it its descriptive write-up, of course it'll list all the other CQs that have good unarmed potential. So someone might well flip to Unarmed Fighting Expert to begin with but then end up making a character with two other qualities they wouldn't have thought of.
Because this is the generic CQ, I stayed away from anything that smacks of a particular style or school of fighting and anything overtly mystical or superhuman. I did take some inspiration from the description and mechanics of 3E's "flurry of blows" in how some of the Unarmed Fighter's abilities work.
For the Enchanter, part of the problem was that a player who specifically makes an Enchanter is going to want to produce magic items, which, balance issues. I'll save an in-depth description of how I resolved this for a possible preview. For now, I'll just say I feel like I've managed to hit the core appeal of the concept and created a character that is recognizably an enchanter without running afoul of those issues.
There are still some blank or incomplete CQs left in the list, but I've started cutting those ones out and pasting them in another doc if they aren't crucial in some way. A lot of the cut ones will make it back to the basic set, probably, but in terms of having a finished playtest-ready draft, some choices have to be made.