Hey there,
Since I'm the author of the
Back to Basics and its undergoing final review and edits right now, I'll answer any questions I can
(Psi)SeveredHead said:
I'm not impressed so far, although apparently not all the knacks have been written down yet. It's not going to do me much good as that class wouldn't show up in any adventures.
There are a LOT of knacks in this product. At last count, I think we have over 40. So you should have plenty of options. Of course, this was a first pass - should it prove to be successful there may be a
Back to Basics II with even more knacks.
As for the class showing up in adventures, that should not be an issue in any way. This product only replaces the base classes of Spycraft with the Basic Classes of the modern SRD, so depending on what you like for your home games you can swap them freely without disrupting any other part of the system. That's what I meant by calling it a "small footprint" product. Every adventure or setting or supplement we write will work just fine with the classes found in
Back to Basics - it's just another option for those of you who like a more 'generic' class design and selectable class abilities (and lots of them
).
Personally I like how I can craft together a Strong/Charismatic mob boss with Fast Talk and the leadership tree and not have to dig up a supplement to find the "Mob Boss" Prestige Class.
As PBartender has noted...you can already do that using the NPC system. As Psion pointed out, you can also do it with the classic build them as PC system too. You can certainly construct a Strong/Charismatic character using
Back to Basics and call him a mob boss, and he would mightily whup ass
It's your call.
Anyway, I'm aware it's a preview, but I have to wonder how useful it'll be if it's not being supported by Crafty Games. (Any adventures, supplements, etc, will ignore the new classes.)
I'm not sure why the question of support has come up at all, since it really is a standalone piece at this time. Adventures in standard Spycraft NPC design will ignore the new classes anyway, since the NPCs have their own system entirely. Our adventures also never railroad
as to what classes the PCs play - the new Living Spycraft missions are actually opening the door for other classes to come into play later on.
As for direct company support, we will certainly address errata in the document, answer customer service questions, and produce more should the demand be high enough, the same as we would other products. Scott and I have already discussed making a few new knack trees to cover some special abilities that will be appearing in later products (such as the spellcasting rules of
Spellbound) as free bits for the website. So I think it's hasty to say we're abandoning this before we even release it
As for the new class, I said I wasn't impressed, but at the same time, I noted that the preview isn't complete yet and I'm open to being impressed later.
As long as you give it a fair shake once it's complete, that's all we could hope for
