Wherein I will discuss all aspects of my small (read: tiny) pdf publishing company, The Fantasy Cartographic.
Further Preview: The Martialist Heroic
Posted 10th March 2009 at 01:13 AM by The Cartographist
Before I launch into a long discussion of powers in 4E D&D, I thought that I'd jump ahead to the product that my team has been working on for the past few months. If you've read any earlier postings to this blog, you are aware of the Martialist. The Martialist is basically an unarmed combatant, who fights with his hands, feet, elbows--just about any and every part of his body. But he's not a monk--he doesn't gain his abilities from religion or philosophy--he's more of a tough guy.
We decided to release a FREE preview of the Martialist at RPGNow.com two weeks ago during their Movie Mayhem promotion tied to the release of Street Fighter. After all, as we state in the product itself, if you wanted to play a street fighter type character in D&D, you'd play a martialist. The Preview, focusing on the heroic tier of play, is 35 pages long, including front and back cover, table of contents page, paragon path descriptions (minus the crunch), 6 pages of power cards, and a page or two of other stuff. All told, if you strip it down to crunch that can be played at the Heroic Tier, it is about 11 pages long plus the six pages of power cards.
There are a lot of products at RPGNow.com that are that length selling for anywhere up to $3. We decided to give it away for free, hoping to have as many people download it as possible, so that they might be interested in purchasing the completed product when it goes on sale before the end of this month. The first part of the plan is working--we've had more downloads for this Preview (over 3x more) than our highest selling product. The question now is, will the second part of the plan work? Will those people who downloaded the preview purchase the product when it actually goes on sale?
Only time will tell. Obviously, it depends on whether they think the preview is well done. Do they think that that portion of the class that is the Heroic Tier is good enough to merit taking a look at the entire class? We're hoping so.
We're excited:
- We commissioned VShane to do the artwork, and we think that it was completely worth it. The pieces that he did are incredible. A lot of other 4E publishers are using Shaman's Stock Art, which is good art, but the products from several different companies now all look the same.
- We have tried to include a lot of fluff in addition to the crunch. We think that good fluff can definitely elevate a good piece of rpg material into a great one.
- We are taking a hard look at the crunch (especially the powers) to ensure that the character is unique, fun, and balanced. (BTW, if you were to download the preview of the Martialist, you would see its class features. You would probably come to the conclusion (that we have) that he is just a little too powerful as written. Look for his features to be de-powered somewhat in the final release.) The powers are getting a good scrubbing as well.
- Speaking of powers. If you look at the core classes from the PHB, you would note that they have, on average, 74 powers per class. If you look at the three striker classes (the Martialist is a striker), the average is just over 72 powers. When you take into account Martial Power, the number of powers available to each of the martial classes more than doubles. WotC is setting the bar high. We have tried to go beyond the PHB, but not quite to the PHB + MP level. The core martialist will have right around 120 powers. Taking into the account the paragon paths, it will have right around 150. We think that that wide variation will be a big selling point.
Interestingly, it is the number of powers that has delayed the release of the Martialist. Our intention was to release it a few months ago. Playtesting has taken longer than expected. Then we found a really impressive guy to act as a rules editor. His feedback on all of the powers as they were written has been invaluable to cleaning up and polishing them. I wish we had found him earlier in the process--it probably would have saved us a lot of time. BTW, he is a regular poster here at Enworld. Look for his name in the credits.
I realize now that this entry reads an awful lot like a long advert for the preview. Not my initial intention, but it seems to have become that. I might as well give you the link. Please take a look at the Martialist. It's available for free download here: http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.p...ducts_id=60294
If you have comments or feedback on it, please send them our way. We'd love to hear from you.
We decided to release a FREE preview of the Martialist at RPGNow.com two weeks ago during their Movie Mayhem promotion tied to the release of Street Fighter. After all, as we state in the product itself, if you wanted to play a street fighter type character in D&D, you'd play a martialist. The Preview, focusing on the heroic tier of play, is 35 pages long, including front and back cover, table of contents page, paragon path descriptions (minus the crunch), 6 pages of power cards, and a page or two of other stuff. All told, if you strip it down to crunch that can be played at the Heroic Tier, it is about 11 pages long plus the six pages of power cards.
There are a lot of products at RPGNow.com that are that length selling for anywhere up to $3. We decided to give it away for free, hoping to have as many people download it as possible, so that they might be interested in purchasing the completed product when it goes on sale before the end of this month. The first part of the plan is working--we've had more downloads for this Preview (over 3x more) than our highest selling product. The question now is, will the second part of the plan work? Will those people who downloaded the preview purchase the product when it actually goes on sale?
Only time will tell. Obviously, it depends on whether they think the preview is well done. Do they think that that portion of the class that is the Heroic Tier is good enough to merit taking a look at the entire class? We're hoping so.
We're excited:
- We commissioned VShane to do the artwork, and we think that it was completely worth it. The pieces that he did are incredible. A lot of other 4E publishers are using Shaman's Stock Art, which is good art, but the products from several different companies now all look the same.
- We have tried to include a lot of fluff in addition to the crunch. We think that good fluff can definitely elevate a good piece of rpg material into a great one.
- We are taking a hard look at the crunch (especially the powers) to ensure that the character is unique, fun, and balanced. (BTW, if you were to download the preview of the Martialist, you would see its class features. You would probably come to the conclusion (that we have) that he is just a little too powerful as written. Look for his features to be de-powered somewhat in the final release.) The powers are getting a good scrubbing as well.
- Speaking of powers. If you look at the core classes from the PHB, you would note that they have, on average, 74 powers per class. If you look at the three striker classes (the Martialist is a striker), the average is just over 72 powers. When you take into account Martial Power, the number of powers available to each of the martial classes more than doubles. WotC is setting the bar high. We have tried to go beyond the PHB, but not quite to the PHB + MP level. The core martialist will have right around 120 powers. Taking into the account the paragon paths, it will have right around 150. We think that that wide variation will be a big selling point.
Interestingly, it is the number of powers that has delayed the release of the Martialist. Our intention was to release it a few months ago. Playtesting has taken longer than expected. Then we found a really impressive guy to act as a rules editor. His feedback on all of the powers as they were written has been invaluable to cleaning up and polishing them. I wish we had found him earlier in the process--it probably would have saved us a lot of time. BTW, he is a regular poster here at Enworld. Look for his name in the credits.
I realize now that this entry reads an awful lot like a long advert for the preview. Not my initial intention, but it seems to have become that. I might as well give you the link. Please take a look at the Martialist. It's available for free download here: http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.p...ducts_id=60294
If you have comments or feedback on it, please send them our way. We'd love to hear from you.
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