Today's post covers some of the things I've been thinking about over the past couple of months—plus an exciting appearance!

Goblin Points Podcast Interview

I was on the Goblin Points podcast! Goblin Points comes out twice a month. Jon, the host, reviews Draw Steel's different development changes and third-party content in one episode. The other episode features interviews with people in and adjacent to the Draw Steel community.

In the last episode, he interviewed me! I had a wonderful conversation with Jon about Skies of Mor-ladron and worldbuilding in general. You can listen to the interview on Goblinpoints.com, YouTube, or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Class Thoughts

Over the last month, I have been thinking about some class changes—especially as my players dip their toes into the Skies of Mor-ladron (SoM). Specifically, I've been thinking about the Elementalist, psionic weapon-users, how the Summoner and Beastheart classes under development will fit into SoM, and a potential new subclass.

In this post, I talked about making the Elementalist more of a single-element caster, allowing payers to only use abilities tied to their specialization. After thinking about it some more, I don't want to restrict it quite that much. Keeping the Elementalist close to its namesake and allowing players to mix and match abilities will work better. Instead, I'm treating it as the druid or nature-themed casting class. This means that I might disallow the Void specialization but free up the other specializations and allow players to pick any of the non-Void abilities, as they all fall under that nature magic feel, as opposed to, for example, allowing a fire Elementalist to only pick fire spells. To fill the space of the storm-scarred I will probably create another class focusing on storm-themed powers using the Elementalist as a template.

In addition, I may give the Elementalist a corrupted feel from a narrative perspective. The world is broken, so anything nature-tied could have an interesting corrupted feeling. I'm not sure how to invoke that in the class, but maybe I'll get around to tweaking ability descriptions. The Stormwight Fury is also tied to nature, at least in my mind, so I might adjust this class as well. That fits, as the Stormwight could be nature's wrath incarnate. Alongside the Stormwight Fury, I may create other themed subclasses for the Fury, like tying the berserker to demons or creating a demonic Fury subclass.

On another note, I am more and more enthralled with the idea of a psionic weapons user. Currently, we have the Talent, which is the psionic caster archetype. We also have the Null, an anti-magic/psionic hand-to-hand-combatant. I like the base idea of the Null, but I'm not sure how well it fits my idea of the world. Nulls are in it for now, but I might replace them with psionic weapon users. These weapon-users would mainly focus on firearms and ranged weapons, but I could devise more subclasses. Granted, if I have a player choose a Null and love it, I would be less likely to get rid of it.

Ultimately, I want classes that support the type of world I am creating. I'm trying to include as many of Draw Steel's core classes as possible in addition to any I create. As Draw Steel releases new classes, I will look at and incorporate them into the world on a class-by-class basis.

Draw Steel's team is currently working on some interesting classes: the Beastheart and the Summoner. Both are classes that could fit into SoM.

The Beastheart is the archetypal wild character with an equally wild animal companion, and the version they made for D&D 5e is a lot of fun. I will definitely add that class to my game. I have players who would want to play with an animal companion, and it would be cool to come up with a few animal companions that tie in with the world.

The other class is the Summoner—someone who summons minions to help in combat. Draw Steel has mentioned four subclasses: the necromancer and summoners of fairies, demons, and elementals. Elementals and demons work wonderfully in Skies; fairies, not so much. I'm still considering whether I want necromancy as a player option. On the one hand, it would have weird interactions with the Mallki (undead) in Hilean, as Hilean disapproves of creating mindless undead. Then again, that could make for interesting in-world interactions. For now, I'm up in the air about it (no pun intended).

I've also been considering a Sporemancer subclass, a class fungorians could take to control dead beings using fungal spores. This would probably be really close in mechanics to a necromancer, at least with my current thinking, so making this subclass would be another reason not to include necromancers.

Perk Thoughts

I'm also changing another perk. Friend Catapult allows you to throw a willing adjacent ally (your size or smaller) a number of squares equal to twice your might score; you can only do this once until you gain a victory.

I'll tell you for free: My players will want to do this. I'm making Friend Catapult something players can do to any ally smaller than them as many times as they want. It sounds fun, and we'll see if it seems too powerful in play. I don't think it steps on any classes' toes, but I'll make adjustments as needed. The perk will stay as-is to allow a player to throw someone their own size, and I'll probably increase the distance thrown to three times the might score since that just seems fun.

Now that my Draw Steel playtest group has moved to SoM, traveling via a portal from their original world, I am starting to get the itch. I need to delve deeper into the lore and worldbuilding for SoM.

The group has arrived in Stormspire, which used to be called Shipspire, so I need to dig into the details of how the city works and who the powerful NPCs and factions are. As my players explore this city, I'll write additional posts about this island of scum and villainy.