Trailblazer: Free GM's Day Preview

[Wulf Ratbane]

In honor of GM's Day, Bad Axe Games is pleased to offer a free preview of our upcoming Trailblazer rules supplement.

What is Trailblazer?

Trailblazer is a “system optimizer” for your d20-compatible 3rd edition game. Our design approach has been straightforward and focused: identify the major problems of 3rd edition, then rebuild or refit the system using the latest in game design philosophy.

Trailblazer is both forward-looking and backwards compatible; innovative, but respectful of gaming traditions.


GM’s Day Preview

For our special GM’s Day Preview, we’ve chosen a set of rule subsets specifically with the GM in mind. Each of these subsets was also chosen because you can use them right away, independent of any other rules changes.

• The 10 Minute Adventuring Day
• Encounter Budgeting
• Treasure Parcels
• Customizing Monsters

This preview is designed to showcase our design philosophy and presentation style, which is focused on empowering the GM to take his 3e game and tune it up, rather than turn it in.

 

[DaveMage]

Alas, I cannot view the file....

Edit - I can't see it in your post above, but I found the link in your sig in another thread.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Alas, I cannot view the file....

Edit - I can't see it in your post above, but I found the link in your sig in another thread.

Dave-- thanks for the heads up. You didn't see the link because I am a jackass and forgot to link it.

Now that's all sorted out-- are you able to download the file, and if so, are you having trouble viewing it?

I believe I saved the PDF for Acrobat 5.0, let me know if there are any changes I need to make for you.

 

[DaveMage]

Downloaded and viewed!

I like what I see so far. When do you envision the final product being ready?

One other thing--and maybe I'm just dense (I can sense people nodding)--but even after reading the sidebar, I still don't know what the term "CoDzilla" really means - even though I've seen the term a few times.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Downloaded and viewed!

I like what I see so far. When do you envision the final product being ready?

Pre-GenCon and pre-Pathfinder. It depends on how much (good) feedback we get from playtesting.

My plan is to offer a "Trailblazer Only" PDF version, which includes only the changes (and relevant design essays). The Trailblazer PDF will be priced in accordance with the value I have invested in the work.

I will also offer a "Trailblazer Complete" print-on-demand version that includes all relevant portions of the SRD in one place-- but priced just enough to include the additional cost of hard-copy printing. In other words, if you want the printed version for the sake of completeness at the table, you won't pay for reprinted and unchanged portions of the SRD. I'll just eat whatever it costs me in man hours to lay that out in a single work. (Assuming I'm otherwise still gainfully employed by then...)

Ultimately, my recommendation for anyone who is already planning on buying the printed version of Pathfinder would be to do that-- just buy the printed version of Pathfinder, and use that as your printed reference at the table.

Let me be clear: I wholeheartedly support Pathfinder as the rightful heir and "hard copy" repository of 3e knowledge moving forward.

One other thing--and maybe I'm just dense (I can sense people nodding)--but even after reading the sidebar, I still don't know what the term "CoDzilla" really means - even though I've seen the term a few times.

Ahh, that's ok Dave-- that sidebar's somewhat of a throwaway for the preview. In the final product you'll likely find some artwork there instead. If you "get it" you get it, and if you don't-- count yourself lucky.

CoDzilla is a cleric or druid that excels at combat (and everything else) with a level of self-sufficiency that puts all other classes to shame. The rest of the party just serves to hold the cleric's jacket so it doesn't get wrinkled in the coming dust up.

Personally, I think the Druid is by far the worst offender, but DoCzilla simply doesn't have the same panache.

There's some wiggle room in the class features and spellcasting figures, but you can easily see how far ahead the Cleric and Druid are compared to the other classes.

Suffice to say, the Trailblazer class overhaul doesn't show a lot of love to the Cleric or Druid.

Conventional wisdom is that 3e shows a certain amount of "love" to these two classes simply because they had to serve the function of party healer, which, quite frankly, is a bit of a drag. We address this instead through the 10-minute rest, and while the cleric and druid are still important for emergency healing during combat, they are by no means the primary source of recuperative healing after combat.

Removing this burden from the divine healing classes increases the imperative to "juice" the other classes.

I think somewhere along the line, the 3e designers lost sight of all the moving parts of 3e. Once the party is able to buy (or Craft) a wand of cure wounds, there's not nearly the same kind of pressure on the cleric or druid to use their spell slots for healing-- which leaves those spell slots open for the kinds of spells that give rise to CoDzilla (divine favor, divine might, righteous might, and countless other buffs).

Does that illuminate the situation any for you?

 

[DaveMage]

Does that illuminate the situation any for you?

Yes, thank you!

In all the 3E games I've run or played in (2 longstanding campaigns, a couple of one-shots), I've never had a druid PC in the party, so I've never seen the class in action (though reading threads here on EN World has made me interested to see it in game).

I have seen the cleric in action, and we did in fact use wands/potions many times to avoid having the cleric simply allocate all spells to healing.

 

[Greg K]

Wulf,
It looks interesting. How about next tackling the seperation of non-biological abilities from race?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Wulf,
It looks interesting. How about next tackling the seperation of non-biological abilities from race?

I don't know what you have in mind.

It sounds like a facet of "Monster PCs" which means it is not likely elevated to our design criteria.

Having said that, what we will provide with regards to class and monster design may allow you to do what you want:

Once we have removed the intrinsic field, you are welcome to play Dr. Manhattan and reassemble the particles.

 

[Greg K]

I don't know what you have in mind.

Basically, what 4e did in making thing likes bonuses vs. giants into feats and racial proficiencies into feats. I think it would make it easier to create environmental /cultural variants of races or handle situations where a PC of one race grew up among another race's culture. Making such things feats would also just add more variety among PCs of the standard races should a player feel that their character did not receive the training vs. giants or kobolds and learned something else.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Basically, what 4e did in making thing likes bonuses vs. giants into feats and racial proficiencies into feats. I think it would make it easier to create environmental /cultural variants of races or handle situations where a PC of one race grew up among another race's culture. Making such things feats would also just add more variety among PCs of the standard races should a player feel that their character did not receive the training vs. giants or kobolds and learned something else.

Yep, that falls below our design criteria of "common complaints."

We don't want Trailblazer lose focus from "3.5 fixes" and drift into "Heartbreaker."

That said, sounds like an easy fix and you already have your head around it: Build up a package of traits for each class. Assign each trait a value equal to 1 Feat or some fraction thereof. Let each starting PC then choose a list of traits with the same total value from your master list.