NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stalker0" data-source="post: 8090538" data-attributes="member: 5889">I'll post my gritty review later on, but I did my first read through (detailed read thought with only a cursury look through the manuevers).My initial reaction...a lot to like here. My thoughts:1) Exploration Knacks are both cool but also unobtrusive. I am liking this devision of abilities that are generally more combat useful but can only be done 1/rest, vs abilities that are generally weaker but are always on...that's a balance point that keeps things interesting. Sure adding proficiency to my strength checks (for grapples and the like) is the most generally useful ability...but I can be good at climbing ALL THE TIME. That's a tough choice, a good choice.2) Steely Mein is nice. The three chosen archetypes I think any fighter has had come up, and wishes they were better at. Again, subtle and unobtrusive, but still useful.3) Martial Lore is a bit tooo fluffy to me. While I can see Steely Mein coming up more often, some of the martial lores here seem a bit more vague.4) Reputation: I think there is a power difference in the ones presented, but I'll save that for nitty gritty. However, again I like what you are going for....something flavorful and cool that a player and DM can "latch on to", to make a high level fighter interesting.5) Minor Advantage: This one is one of the biggest ones to see in actual playtest. My initial gut reaction is I don't like the extra die rolling, and I don't like that players have to be looking at their natural die rolls more than they already do. But it does open up some design space, and since this is designed for crunchier players might be ok. I at least want to see this in play.6) Combat Traditions: I understand what you are going for here, this both organizes the abilities into themes, and provides some power restriction (ensuring I don't cherry pick from every area). But I immediately disliked this. First, the names are way too Bo9S.....and some people don't want asian sounding schools for their martial maneuvers.It also organizes things in a way I hate....the same is if spells were organized by school. It might help on my first run through, but any time after I'm going to reference the list I'm going to go (okay Charge I need to look that up....that's C of course...oh wait what tradition is that under again?)Literally my first reaction on the read through was (I hope these die in a fire).7) Maneuvers: Mainly cover this in my nitty gritty review. Just one that stood out immediately, the Charge maneuver does nothing...in fact it actually hurts the fighter. A fighter can already move 30 feet and make all of their attacks.That said, I like the variety of maneuver types, stances, bonus actions, some consuming 1 or more attacks....opening up a lot of design space but in ways that I think make intuitive sense.8) Exertion: Good name, it immediately feels "martial". I like the amount of exertion, that fighters get some bonus.... very solid. I don't like the regaining exertion by spending hitdie....on the surface its makes complete sense, and it offers the "breather" option. But this means that fighters are going to be blowing their healing for "manuevers".... like a lot. Like....who wouldn't do that?I learned this lesson a long time ago in some other boardgame designs I worked on....never give the option for a player to sacrifice defense "points" for awesomeness "points". Either a player will blow all of their points on awesome....and then feel crappy when they die because of its lack, or they will be constantly paranoid about how much to spend, or they get annoyed that the cleric won't heal them more to let them get back their manuevers. I would divorce the concept.... either allow some recovery of Exertion with "breathers" or just drop it...but don't mix it with hitdie spends.</blockquote>

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