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<blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9030774" data-attributes="member: 7040941"><p><strong>The Rogue</strong></p><p></p><p>The last of the three "main" Martials (others include the Paladin, Ranger, Monk, and Beastmaster, who I think are more relevant to their respective groups), my take on the Rogue is another reinvention of sorts.</p><p></p><p>To put it in a nutshell, my Rogue does not assume an overt stealth focus. Instead, the Rogue follows what I personally imagine in fantasy when I hear the name, which tends towards more of an Errol Flynn meets Cary Elwes. Swashbuckling scoundrel for sure, but not necessarily an overt criminal. It also simply follows the logic that while your thieves or asssassin types might fight similarly to a Rogue, a Rogue does not always fight like them. Hence, in the subclasses, the Assassin and Ravager return these themes to the class, while the Duelist and Seadog build on the Rogues new core abilities.</p><p></p><p>So with that said, introducing the Rogues Primary ability chain, <em>Roguish Cunning</em>. This is, essentially, an adaptation of DCCs Mighty Deed mechanic, except adapted for my combat system.</p><p></p><p>As such, you begin with 1d4 as your Cunning Die, and as you level this eventually grows not just in die size, but also in number to two dice, with each corresponding to your Act and React (and like your 2d20 roll you can choose which die goes to which). When you roll your 2d20 at the beginning of a combat round, you also roll your Cunning Dice, and you add the values of your assigned CD's to your Act and React ratings.</p><p></p><p>Like in Mighty Deed, if your Cunning Dice roll at least a 4, then you get the option to make either a Cunning Act or a Cunning React, or both if you rolled at least two fours. With these you can describe any sort of maneuver or action that plays into your attacks or defense, with the only limit being that regardless of what you describe, they can only inflict (or negate) as much damage as what you rolled on your Cunning Dice. So, if you rolled a 10 on your first die and a 12 on your second, and you assign these to Act and React respectively, your Deeds can thus only inflict the 10 damage, and negate up to 12 damage, and you deeds can be freely repeated for each attack or defense that you're able to make.</p><p></p><p>However, it you assign both dies to Act or React, you get the added value for that Deed, though this does not allow you to get a deed if you didn't at least roll a 4 on either die.</p><p></p><p>Overall, this adaptation is explicitly meant to not only provide a resource that the rest of the class can key off of for various benefits, but also helps emphasize the difference in playstyle relative to the straightforward and simplistic Barbarian and the methodical and complex Warrior, with creativity being the driving factor for how the Rogue plays.</p><p></p><p>To that end, the Rogues secondary ability is named <em>Roguish Grace</em>. This ability chain is all about driving the Rogue towards a "speed tank" sort of playstyle. The opening ability, <em>Swift Foot</em>, allows your Cunning Dice values to be added to your Movement, and as you grow, your abilities give you greater climbing and reactive movement; you no longer must make checks in combat to climb (but you can if you want it to not cost Movement), you get to spend your movement even after defending yourself. </p><p></p><p>This all eventually culminates in the capstone, <em>Like Water</em>, which lets you burn Movement to reduce incoming damage. </p><p></p><p>The first tertquat for the Rogue, is <em>Roguish Gambit</em>. While the core design of the Rogue isn't intended to push a stealthy stealy stabby sort of playstyle, the overlap between that and the more swasbuckling type of thing is valid, and so Gambit bridges that gap. Themed principally around IRL Magician tropes, abilities like <em>Cardist</em>, <em>Misdirect</em>, or <em>Clever Lift</em> all contribute to a rather tricky sort of playstyle that meshes well with the fast moving improvisation of the Core abilities.</p><p></p><p><em>Misdirect</em> for instance directly improves the process of feinting in combat, whether you improvise it with your Cunning Act or use the basic feint attack, guaranteeing that you'll always burn your opponents reaction. But it also gives you the ability, out of combat, to make a Cunning Act (if the die rolls 4 or higher) to distract a mark, with the final value of the die imposing a direct penalty on the mark's Perception. </p><p></p><p><em>Clever Lift</em> meanwhile lets you pickpocket your foes in battle, provided you can successfully Hide from them (either by basic action or with a Cunning Act), and if you opt to take a weapon or some other damaging implement, like an arrow or a dart, you can immediately redirect it into an extra attack. <em>Tricky Ricochet</em> builds on that concept, letting you turn Disarms against your targer in the same way. </p><p></p><p><em>Gambit</em> all culminates in the capstone, <em>Like a Mirror</em>, which lets you redirect the enchantments of your pickpocketed or disarmed items at your leisure. Pickpocket a nifty dagger of fire and stab the guy with it, but then his friend gets hit with the fire enchantment. The idea here being that, after so long "pretending" to be a magician you actually learned a little bit. </p><p></p><p>The final ability chain for the Rogue is named <em>Roguish Induce</em>. This entire chain is built to integrate with my Debate system, which is a social conflict resolution system thats, basically, a verbose version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock. </p><p></p><p>That system Im still working on, but to give an idea of how it works and why it is what it is, its essentially my attempt at creating a social mechanic that meshes well with natural conversation, but also delivers a more mechanical approach. More or less a bridge between my personal preference of having no meaningful social mechanics at all and having an overtly mechanical process. </p><p></p><p>How a Debate is resolved is by one side draining the other of their Charisma, which is measured in divisions. As the debate begins, the four Charisma skills (Insight, Persuasion, Intimidation, Deception) are used by the participants to try and counter each other's arguments, with each skill corresponding to the participants chosen approach. Each failed check divides that participants Charisma in half, and when their Charisma can no longer be wholly divided, the Debate ends with the final skill used dictating how the Debate was won and, if it was an NPC that lost, how they might react. (They still retain autonomy, as skills aren't mind control, but the influence will be noticeable)</p><p></p><p>Insight, in addition to giving you insight on what an NPC is susceptible to, also gives you and the NPC the ability to sub in different skills and even raw attribute Talent checks to try and win the debate, with the idea being that charisma alone cannot always win over a person or otherwise influence them; sometimes it requires a more practical argument and through Insight, a participants other skills allow them to make such arguments, such as a skilled Smith convincing a merchant to stop overcharging for cruddy daggers, and indeed, some may very well <em>need</em> to be convinced this way, and no amount of raw charisma will circumvent it. This capability is what provides the Lizard/Spock to the Rock/Paper/Scissors of Persuasion/Intimidation/Deception. An Insight substution can only be successfully countered by a higher roll of the same skill, or by a critical success (nat20) in P/I/D. </p><p></p><p>While I think it provides an interesting way to systematize a social conflict, the overall point is that one could let the mechanics slide into the background very easily, as they shouldn't encroach on the natural flow of the conversation. </p><p></p><p>And so, for the Rogue, <em>Induce</em> hooks into this Debate system and gives the Rogue a lot of different tools to influence debates and swing them in the Rogues favor. </p><p></p><p>Now, for the subclasses this where I also found I hit a stride, and I had a lot of fun playtesting them in fact. </p><p></p><p>The first is the simply named <em>Duelist</em>. This was deeply inspired by Alexandre Dumas novels, and the core idea of the subclass is to deliver the ultimate swashbuckler. Starting with <em>High Society</em>, you not only gain the ability to sub in your Charisma for Str/Dex for your Stamina, but also learn to turn affluent dress into the effective equivalent of armor, with flashy, high quality clothing providing you armor and, to emphasize this flavor of Rogue as more of a Face type, the ability for your clothes to add additional penalties to a Marks Perception. </p><p></p><p>This then moves on to <em>Vengeful</em> and <em>Bitter Resolve</em>, which give you greater control over your Acts and Reacts, letting you React offensively, making unique counter attacks that key off of your React Rating, and even allowing you to freely decide to Act or React twice, giving up the ability to do the other for the round. </p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, <em>Second Blade</em> and the Duelist capstone, <em>Swordmaster</em>, deliver on their namesakes, further developing the Duelists capability to React offensively, and solidifying a dedication to the Sword, providing some serious competition to the Warrior for best swordsman in the game. </p><p></p><p>The second subclass is a particularly fun one. The Seadog is the classical pirate, and was very heavily inspired by Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. As that inspiration implies, the Seadog is a significant vertical skirmisher, combining attacks from heights and throwing weapons into an even faster moving hit-and-run machine. But not to be outdone, the Seadog even begins to fight with a savagery not unlike a Beasthearts Frenzy; with lower and lower Composure, the Seadog hits harder, runs faster, and fights for longer. Stupendously fun class. </p><p></p><p>As mentioned, the next two classes return the more overt stealth focus to the class.</p><p></p><p>The Assassin, as you can guess, is pretty straightforward and I like to think it captures precisely what you'd want out of such a class, if what you wanted was Skyrim style sneaky stabby bow stuff lol. Between devastating stealth driven critical hits and a greatly enhanced ability to stay hidden even in the most difficult of circumstances, the Assassin is very capable of delivering on its namesake, albeit its limitations keep it reserved as it doesn't do well when surrounded and forced out of stealth. </p><p></p><p>The Ravager is the essential Thief class, and actually does a lot to reach back into the more classical Thief of DND. Focused on placement in battle (rather than being super fast or merely hidden), the Ravagers <em>Backstab</em> attacks serve as a unique variant of stealth attacks that only require the Ravager be in shadows or immediately behind their target, and delivers your Rogue level as a substantive damage bonus. <em>Springcoil</em> meanwhile gives the Ravager some important maneuverability, not only being able to scale those classic sheer walls, but also being able to leapfrog an enemy, letting the Ravager get in easy Backstabs. </p><p></p><p>However, in addition to pushing the Thief ideas, I also wanted to emphasize the Ravager as a dungeoneer, and to this end the Ravager gains a unique immunity to lower and eventually mid level <em>Curses</em>, letting them take cursed objects and turn them against the Ravagers enemies if they wish, and these abilities all come together in their later ability <em>Object Desire</em>, and the Ravager's capstone, <em>Behold, Labyrinthine</em>, which allow the Ravager to not only deliver devastating Backstabs with cursed objects, but also let them begin to try and resist even the most powerful curses with the aid of their Cunning Dice, making the Ravager a most useful ally to have when delving into the dankest dungeons. </p><p></p><p>Overall the Rogue was quite a lot of fun to design and playtest, and while some of it does feel overtuned, it'll take a greater context to really decide, as while its very strong relative to its other Martial brothers, it could well turn out they need buffs more than the Rogue nerfs. But we shall see. After all, part of the design intent is for individual characters to be potentially powerful enough to go toe to toe with entire armies by themselves, so in that context if anything the Rogue is undertuned, which is arguably where it ought to be in the scheme of things.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Emberashh, post: 9030774, member: 7040941"] [B]The Rogue[/B] The last of the three "main" Martials (others include the Paladin, Ranger, Monk, and Beastmaster, who I think are more relevant to their respective groups), my take on the Rogue is another reinvention of sorts. To put it in a nutshell, my Rogue does not assume an overt stealth focus. Instead, the Rogue follows what I personally imagine in fantasy when I hear the name, which tends towards more of an Errol Flynn meets Cary Elwes. Swashbuckling scoundrel for sure, but not necessarily an overt criminal. It also simply follows the logic that while your thieves or asssassin types might fight similarly to a Rogue, a Rogue does not always fight like them. Hence, in the subclasses, the Assassin and Ravager return these themes to the class, while the Duelist and Seadog build on the Rogues new core abilities. So with that said, introducing the Rogues Primary ability chain, [I]Roguish Cunning[/I]. This is, essentially, an adaptation of DCCs Mighty Deed mechanic, except adapted for my combat system. As such, you begin with 1d4 as your Cunning Die, and as you level this eventually grows not just in die size, but also in number to two dice, with each corresponding to your Act and React (and like your 2d20 roll you can choose which die goes to which). When you roll your 2d20 at the beginning of a combat round, you also roll your Cunning Dice, and you add the values of your assigned CD's to your Act and React ratings. Like in Mighty Deed, if your Cunning Dice roll at least a 4, then you get the option to make either a Cunning Act or a Cunning React, or both if you rolled at least two fours. With these you can describe any sort of maneuver or action that plays into your attacks or defense, with the only limit being that regardless of what you describe, they can only inflict (or negate) as much damage as what you rolled on your Cunning Dice. So, if you rolled a 10 on your first die and a 12 on your second, and you assign these to Act and React respectively, your Deeds can thus only inflict the 10 damage, and negate up to 12 damage, and you deeds can be freely repeated for each attack or defense that you're able to make. However, it you assign both dies to Act or React, you get the added value for that Deed, though this does not allow you to get a deed if you didn't at least roll a 4 on either die. Overall, this adaptation is explicitly meant to not only provide a resource that the rest of the class can key off of for various benefits, but also helps emphasize the difference in playstyle relative to the straightforward and simplistic Barbarian and the methodical and complex Warrior, with creativity being the driving factor for how the Rogue plays. To that end, the Rogues secondary ability is named [I]Roguish Grace[/I]. This ability chain is all about driving the Rogue towards a "speed tank" sort of playstyle. The opening ability, [I]Swift Foot[/I], allows your Cunning Dice values to be added to your Movement, and as you grow, your abilities give you greater climbing and reactive movement; you no longer must make checks in combat to climb (but you can if you want it to not cost Movement), you get to spend your movement even after defending yourself. This all eventually culminates in the capstone, [I]Like Water[/I], which lets you burn Movement to reduce incoming damage. The first tertquat for the Rogue, is [I]Roguish Gambit[/I]. While the core design of the Rogue isn't intended to push a stealthy stealy stabby sort of playstyle, the overlap between that and the more swasbuckling type of thing is valid, and so Gambit bridges that gap. Themed principally around IRL Magician tropes, abilities like [I]Cardist[/I], [I]Misdirect[/I], or [I]Clever Lift[/I] all contribute to a rather tricky sort of playstyle that meshes well with the fast moving improvisation of the Core abilities. [I]Misdirect[/I] for instance directly improves the process of feinting in combat, whether you improvise it with your Cunning Act or use the basic feint attack, guaranteeing that you'll always burn your opponents reaction. But it also gives you the ability, out of combat, to make a Cunning Act (if the die rolls 4 or higher) to distract a mark, with the final value of the die imposing a direct penalty on the mark's Perception. [I]Clever Lift[/I] meanwhile lets you pickpocket your foes in battle, provided you can successfully Hide from them (either by basic action or with a Cunning Act), and if you opt to take a weapon or some other damaging implement, like an arrow or a dart, you can immediately redirect it into an extra attack. [I]Tricky Ricochet[/I] builds on that concept, letting you turn Disarms against your targer in the same way. [I]Gambit[/I] all culminates in the capstone, [I]Like a Mirror[/I], which lets you redirect the enchantments of your pickpocketed or disarmed items at your leisure. Pickpocket a nifty dagger of fire and stab the guy with it, but then his friend gets hit with the fire enchantment. The idea here being that, after so long "pretending" to be a magician you actually learned a little bit. The final ability chain for the Rogue is named [I]Roguish Induce[/I]. This entire chain is built to integrate with my Debate system, which is a social conflict resolution system thats, basically, a verbose version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock. That system Im still working on, but to give an idea of how it works and why it is what it is, its essentially my attempt at creating a social mechanic that meshes well with natural conversation, but also delivers a more mechanical approach. More or less a bridge between my personal preference of having no meaningful social mechanics at all and having an overtly mechanical process. How a Debate is resolved is by one side draining the other of their Charisma, which is measured in divisions. As the debate begins, the four Charisma skills (Insight, Persuasion, Intimidation, Deception) are used by the participants to try and counter each other's arguments, with each skill corresponding to the participants chosen approach. Each failed check divides that participants Charisma in half, and when their Charisma can no longer be wholly divided, the Debate ends with the final skill used dictating how the Debate was won and, if it was an NPC that lost, how they might react. (They still retain autonomy, as skills aren't mind control, but the influence will be noticeable) Insight, in addition to giving you insight on what an NPC is susceptible to, also gives you and the NPC the ability to sub in different skills and even raw attribute Talent checks to try and win the debate, with the idea being that charisma alone cannot always win over a person or otherwise influence them; sometimes it requires a more practical argument and through Insight, a participants other skills allow them to make such arguments, such as a skilled Smith convincing a merchant to stop overcharging for cruddy daggers, and indeed, some may very well [I]need[/I] to be convinced this way, and no amount of raw charisma will circumvent it. This capability is what provides the Lizard/Spock to the Rock/Paper/Scissors of Persuasion/Intimidation/Deception. An Insight substution can only be successfully countered by a higher roll of the same skill, or by a critical success (nat20) in P/I/D. While I think it provides an interesting way to systematize a social conflict, the overall point is that one could let the mechanics slide into the background very easily, as they shouldn't encroach on the natural flow of the conversation. And so, for the Rogue, [I]Induce[/I] hooks into this Debate system and gives the Rogue a lot of different tools to influence debates and swing them in the Rogues favor. Now, for the subclasses this where I also found I hit a stride, and I had a lot of fun playtesting them in fact. The first is the simply named [I]Duelist[/I]. This was deeply inspired by Alexandre Dumas novels, and the core idea of the subclass is to deliver the ultimate swashbuckler. Starting with [I]High Society[/I], you not only gain the ability to sub in your Charisma for Str/Dex for your Stamina, but also learn to turn affluent dress into the effective equivalent of armor, with flashy, high quality clothing providing you armor and, to emphasize this flavor of Rogue as more of a Face type, the ability for your clothes to add additional penalties to a Marks Perception. This then moves on to [I]Vengeful[/I] and [I]Bitter Resolve[/I], which give you greater control over your Acts and Reacts, letting you React offensively, making unique counter attacks that key off of your React Rating, and even allowing you to freely decide to Act or React twice, giving up the ability to do the other for the round. Meanwhile, [I]Second Blade[/I] and the Duelist capstone, [I]Swordmaster[/I], deliver on their namesakes, further developing the Duelists capability to React offensively, and solidifying a dedication to the Sword, providing some serious competition to the Warrior for best swordsman in the game. The second subclass is a particularly fun one. The Seadog is the classical pirate, and was very heavily inspired by Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. As that inspiration implies, the Seadog is a significant vertical skirmisher, combining attacks from heights and throwing weapons into an even faster moving hit-and-run machine. But not to be outdone, the Seadog even begins to fight with a savagery not unlike a Beasthearts Frenzy; with lower and lower Composure, the Seadog hits harder, runs faster, and fights for longer. Stupendously fun class. As mentioned, the next two classes return the more overt stealth focus to the class. The Assassin, as you can guess, is pretty straightforward and I like to think it captures precisely what you'd want out of such a class, if what you wanted was Skyrim style sneaky stabby bow stuff lol. Between devastating stealth driven critical hits and a greatly enhanced ability to stay hidden even in the most difficult of circumstances, the Assassin is very capable of delivering on its namesake, albeit its limitations keep it reserved as it doesn't do well when surrounded and forced out of stealth. The Ravager is the essential Thief class, and actually does a lot to reach back into the more classical Thief of DND. Focused on placement in battle (rather than being super fast or merely hidden), the Ravagers [I]Backstab[/I] attacks serve as a unique variant of stealth attacks that only require the Ravager be in shadows or immediately behind their target, and delivers your Rogue level as a substantive damage bonus. [I]Springcoil[/I] meanwhile gives the Ravager some important maneuverability, not only being able to scale those classic sheer walls, but also being able to leapfrog an enemy, letting the Ravager get in easy Backstabs. However, in addition to pushing the Thief ideas, I also wanted to emphasize the Ravager as a dungeoneer, and to this end the Ravager gains a unique immunity to lower and eventually mid level [I]Curses[/I], letting them take cursed objects and turn them against the Ravagers enemies if they wish, and these abilities all come together in their later ability [I]Object Desire[/I], and the Ravager's capstone, [I]Behold, Labyrinthine[/I], which allow the Ravager to not only deliver devastating Backstabs with cursed objects, but also let them begin to try and resist even the most powerful curses with the aid of their Cunning Dice, making the Ravager a most useful ally to have when delving into the dankest dungeons. Overall the Rogue was quite a lot of fun to design and playtest, and while some of it does feel overtuned, it'll take a greater context to really decide, as while its very strong relative to its other Martial brothers, it could well turn out they need buffs more than the Rogue nerfs. But we shall see. After all, part of the design intent is for individual characters to be potentially powerful enough to go toe to toe with entire armies by themselves, so in that context if anything the Rogue is undertuned, which is arguably where it ought to be in the scheme of things. [/QUOTE]
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