Musings: Creating the Skald

 Skalds

 When you think of a skald what comes to mind? From asking around a lot of people consider it to be like the bard, but instead of a frilly and flamboyant personality a skald is metal and hardcore. According to the internet, skalds are just poets, they're not even warriors. Historically, bards had a wide range from telling stories to music, and general entertainment that fell just short of plays and acting. It's always interesting seeing the disconnect of history and fantasy. The paladin is another such interesting disconnect: paladins served a lord, they didn't act independently, they were more like samurai that served someone of a higher status. Which segues into another misconception: What people think of lone wandering samurai are actually called ronin. So you could play a paladin as a samurai. Which may be a great alternative class idea! (Writing down notes)

So where do we go from here? A historically accurate skald would be boring, as would most accurate tropes of fantasy. So let's go ahead and go with the expected case and make a bard, but hardcore.

Class Skeleton

First thing first: Inspiration will be mandatory for the class. For our skald we'll be building someone who inspires other through stories of old while aiming to become a part of those stories.

Second: No spells. I want to challenge myself and make something that doesn't use spells.

Third: Some type of performance. I see this almost as a channel divinity like feature where you can further inspire allies. For now we're borrowing from pathfinder. Their version of the bard is a 3/5th's spell caster, casting spells up to 6th level. They also inspire themselves and allies to enter a battle frenzy that improves their general morale and gives them a rage effect. I think I can replicate something similar that's better for 5th edition.

Inspiration

Inspiration for skald will be slightly different from bard. We'll use our reaction to give someone their inspiration rather than as a bonus action when they fail something they need to succeed. It feels better - you're reacting to something happening rather than preemptively guessing if someone needs it. It makes your inspiration less wasted and improves its power - we'll need all the power we can muster from a martial class, due to their lack of strength in late game.

Frenzy Song

I'm going to start calling our rage feature Frenzy Song for now. Another possible name could be Call to Arms but they feels more like a commander than a skald. Here's the initial idea:

• Allies under the effects of the song deal damage with their attacks at least equal to our inspiration die. This means if someone is using a sling then the sling damage is improved to a d6. Not bad. But this is to help people who rely on weaker weapons early game to do better damage with attacks.
• They will gain our inspiration die as temporary hit points at the start of their turn. But instead of rolling, they'll gain the maximum. This will act as our damage reduction and will be fantastic to protect weaker allies. The temp hp will be lost when the effect ends.
  
• Allies under the effects of frenzy song can't be frightened. Not a terribly common condition early game but its niche use will come handy later.
• Affected allies will get a d4 to attack rolls and saves. This will substantially improve their general performance
• This requires "concentration", as if concentrating on a spell, but you don't make concentration saves when hit. It just prevents you from stacking it with powerful spells if the player decides to take 2 levels for this.
• (Maybe it can make weapon attacks do magical damage, or perhaps that could be saved for 6th level?)
  

It will last for 1 minute, and will end early if the person falls unconscious. The subclass could potentially come in at this or next level. If we choose this as our subclass level then the subclass will do the following:

• Modify inspiration
• Add a new effect to frenzy song or give an entirely new song.

As I've said earlier, I feel this is close to channel divinity where you use it a few times per short rest. It makes sense for your subclass to modify it like how barbarian subclasses modifies rage.

Subclasses

I've already thought of a great name for these: Epic Verse. Your subclass will the named "x Epic". Instead of "5th level feature" for the feature tag it will be "5th level verse", like "5th level Divine verse". It makes a feature feel a part of the story itself rather than just being a feature.

Regardless if our subclass is 2nd or 3rd level, I'm thinking subclass features will come in at 5th level, 9th level, 15th level, and 18th level. We're only going to plan to 5th level until we have something really fun.

5th level

This will change how we perform combat. Let's say we have a divine epic, it would make sense to do radiant damage with our hits, so let's say for this subclass we do a bonus 2 rolls of our bardic die as radiant damage on a successful weapon hit. This will do something pretty cool: It will automatically scale our damage as we level, up to 2d10.

Alternative 5th level feature: Ensemble

There's probably a better word for this, but let's use ensemble for the moment. What if instead of extra attack our mere presence passively improves the damage of those around us like the paladin? Let's do some quick math to determine our budget.

5th level is extra attacks for martial classes. The average modifier for someone's primary ability score for this level is around 4. Luckily the average of our bardic die at this level will be 4. Most one-handed martial weapons do 4.5 average damage, so we're expected to do 4.5 + 4 damage around this time.

The idea of this feature is we inspire ourselves and others constantly. So then we form a deeper connection with people around us, creating an ensemble. Let's say we can have 2 people as a part of this group, and each time the skald and their ensemble hits with a weapon attack they can add one bardic die to the damage roll. That's 4.5 damage for each person, slightly more than extra attack. Then as we level we can include more people in our ensemble and improve the parties performance massively. For our Divine Epic example that extra damage could be radiant.

Our subclasses may take advantage of this. For example when you use Frenzy song you also always affect one of your ensemble no matter who you target. That's extremely strong.

Improving Inspiration

It would feel bad to spend one of your three bardic dice early on and have the roll a 1. The chance to roll a 1 is the same as rolling the maximum amount. So for 3rd level when you roll a 1 you treat the die as its maximum amount. We'll call this Explosive Inspiration. When you reach 11th level (A level after getting a d10) we'll treat a 2 or less as a maximum roll. Now your average for your die roll is 4.5 for a d6, a 5.5 for a d8, then at 11th level the average of your d10 will be a 6.5! Wow! You're absolutely getting your money's worth. This will ensure that your dice are never ever wasted, and it helps us keep up with the power of the stronger spell casters.

Musings of future features

This will largely be a mixed garble so parse what you can! Perhaps we can always add our bardic die to saves later on, or freely apply it to people making saves without spending any dice. Maybe our frenzy song can last 10 minutes and include immunity to charm. I think the last feature should give players goosebumps when they read it.

Design Help: Negative Space

 Negative Space

I can't emphasize enough how important of a skill this is. When you are developing, the proper skill and utilization of negative space will allow you immense flexibility by taking aspects from one thing and incorporating it into what you're making without it being a complete rip-off.

Here is how I define Negative Space:

"Think in negative space. The warlock's spell slot resource is actually a short-rest spell point system, except the designers decided to "summarize" how many spell points you had at the given level and made them into spell slots that then scaled with the warlock. Imagine if they had spell points equal to their level that restored on a short rest that followed the rules of spell point cost (DMG, 288). While the power curve is wonky, its very close.

Another negative space is the paladin lay on hands. It's actually a per-level ability score modifier healing ability, like the Druid's Balm of the Summer Court is per level healing. The designers decided to instead summarize it as a 5, so the healing felt more impactful when used.

Thinking with negative space is by far the most powerful tool you can use to create new features, but is also the hardest skill to learn. This will help you take the feature of one class and splice it into yours without anyone ever knowing."

I created this concept when I started realizing what I was doing by looking at other people's work and using it for my own. Suddenly I went from struggling to create my own features to creating very original ideas, simply by parsing "negative space" from its design. It took me a few months to really develop this skill, and once I did it has become my strong arm. The level and speed at which you develop your design skills begins to skyrocket. I'm still learning new negative spaces to work with.

Example Designs

Okay, so enough talk, now let's do the walk. How do we create a new feature? Let's say you have a martial class or subclass but you don't want to use Extra Attack, but you have the "budget" for it. What is an extra attack? At 5th level most players will have around a +3 to their modifier for an attack (Spells, weapons, or otherwise). A d8 (die roll average: 4) is the average for martial weapons, and a d6 (die roll average: 3) is the average for simple weapons. Let's say we're making something rogue-ish, like a hunter taking an advantage of a weak point. We'll be safe and use the expected damage of a simple weapon with the expected attack score modifier of +3. I'll use an idea I've already come up with:

Spot Weakness

5th level Hunter feature

Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can cause the attack to deal an extra 2d6 as damage of the same type dealt by the weapon to the target.

(Wording of this feature borrowed by Cleric, War Domain)

 Let's dissect this. "Once on each of your turns" is basically an additional attack because you get this in addition to your normal attack. It also defines on your turn, so this doesn't apply to anything like opportunity attacks (Which it shouldn't, since extra attack doesn't affect those). The next part is an "extra 2d6" damage. The average of a d6 is 3, and the player is expected to have around a +3 at this level. Thus, "2d6" is really the average of a d6 weapon + the expected damage modifier for the attack.

Suddenly we have an entirely new extra attack feature without stepping out of line in terms of expected damage. This can also be used to control player damage for things like multiclassing; it creates a vacuum in the class (vacuum meaning it can't be used elsewhere). By having this vacuum we can safely improve upon it without it affecting too much power for multiclassing. Subclass features or core class features could potentially improve the amount of damage you deal, such as increasing the die size to a d8 or adding more dice. Alternatively the damage type can be changed, potentially allowing a player to take advantage of vulnerability.

Bonus "Proficiency"

Okay. Let's look at another negative space: Proficiency. Let's say the class had a class die that scaled with its levels from a d4 to a d12. If a class did this, look at the proficiency bonus at the same levels it improves in die size. It should match the levels your proficiency bonus improves. This is because proficiency bonus is actually a 1d4-1d12 summarized as its average die size (Rounded down).

Now I'll think of a new example I've never tried using this space:

So let's say we have a feature that grants proficiency in all saves. We could use that feature, but what if we used our class die? "You add your class die to all saves" is pretty exciting (Well to me it is. I love rolling more dice). What if you could, at will, give this dice as a reaction to someone attacking another target within 5 feet, adding it to their AC? Like a parry? That also sounds exciting. You're always reacting to the action each and every turn, giving you even more to do.

Conclusion

The power of Negative Space is extremely powerful. Learning how to use it with spells and spell-like features will allow you to make new classes with new features that seem completely original but in fact uses features from elsewhere.

The Seeker: Eldritch Artifacts

 Magic Items are really cool

I love the idea of a class who interacts with the world primarily through their craft. This post is about the seeker and their Eldritch Artifacts.

The goal of artifacts

Artifacts should offer two things:

1. A unique ability
2. A spell list including one cantrip and a spell of each level from 1st to 5th.

An artifact should offer an ability other artifacts don't. I begun the occultist with three important artifacts: The Black Mirror (Now called Magic Mirror), Claw of Obliteration, and Watcher's Eye. Admittedly, two of the three artifacts are about damage - it's my personal philosophy to offer a damage, support, and utility effect when first creating something akin to this. Let's take a brief look at each item.

Magic Mirror offers a strong utility. It provides information about each creature that fails to save against it per long rest, and it offers divination spells. A utility effect that offers no direct combat or social advantage should be very strong and tempting, so the list of creature properties you can scry is flexible and numerous.

Claw of Obliteration offers "damage". When you hit something unharmed, you do full damage. I place quotes around it because you don't deal more damage than normal, but instead increase the average damage by 50% more. How do I figure 50%? Each die has an average damage count, so let's take a d10, which has an average damage of 5.5. If you're dealing 3d10 damage to someone, that's an average of 16.5 damage. Against a full health target you'll always deal 30 damage, which is essentially a 50% increase in damage. It's not exact, but for the purpose of balance its close enough. The claw offers damage spells, as well as spells that raise the dead, as the claw is themed for undeath.

Lastly is the Watcher's Eye. This is simultaneously utility and damage. You'll always know where the target is, you ignore disadvantage with attack rolls, and ignore cover up to 3/4ths. While, again, this doesn't directly increase damage, it offers utility to increase Dormant Damage. From now on I'll use Dormant Damage when referring to an ability that increases potential damage without increasing minimum or maximum damage. The watcher eye is really powerful - it has a 10 minute duration once per short rest. Spells offered by the eye revolve around sight, such as Darkvision.

How many artifacts?

Here's a great use for negative space: I don't need to put any effort into figuring out how many artifacts you have. I'll have the class start with three, which is three spells, three cantrips, and three artifact skills. That's more than enough to start with. Then I'll increase the amount of artifacts in junction with gaining a new spell level. This solves two things: Players know when they gain a spell level they get a new artifact, and it increases how many cantrips they have available in a natural way. It also spaces out the artifact amount nicely over long periods. While this will result in a massive amount of known spells, the player can't hand pick each spell, and thusly should be fine balance wise. If the player is picking an item just for the spells I think I might be doing something wrong with the artifact skill. I want players to pick artifacts for their flavor and skill first, and spell list second.

Another design philosophy for my artifacts is I'll have any upgrade effect increase when a new spell level is gained. Example: Arcane Ward allows you to turn the requirements of any armor to Intelligence and wear it without proficiency. Because Heavy armor is valuable, it needs to come later, so I'll make the artifact grant heavy armor, but only at 5th level when you get 2nd level spells. The spells it comes with is already valuable enough. I could make it 3rd level, which is when the Artificer can use the same effect on Heavy armor, but I decided to push it to 5th level anyway to make it coincide with future artifacts. Plus, the class is already quite tanky.

Artifact effect or spell list first?

This is a hard question, and I think it can work both ways, but typically I think of a cool effect for an artifact before making the spell list. The item is the core fun of the class, so it should always be fun and useful. If I can't find the right spells I'll either create my own or adjust the flavor to fit the spell list without affecting the ability it has.

Wrap up

I think this should be good to begin with. I think the next post will be about expanding on later features.

Musing: My Dream and Development Skills

 How to Start?

    I'm struggling to think of a satisfying way to begin this post. This will be largely me rambling, but it's also about how I process game and idea development.

    Ever since my introduction to D&D 3.5 I've always  wanted to create my very own game system. I've been big on game development for literally my whole life, but I struggled to really think of a good way to tackle it until recently. Countless times in the past have I started and immediately stopped trying to develop my game creation skills. It wasn't until I discovered homebrewing for D&D 5e that I finally found my method of game development that's still going on about 5-6 years later. And now I want to achieve that goal, to create something people love to play.

What do I want to achieve?

    This is a question I've been slowly answering over the past few months. As a gamer you know what you enjoy, but when placed in the position to create it you have literally no idea where to begin. This has spiraled into the search for what I want from a game and how to achieve it. I've been doing 200 word games to help hash out smaller ideas, rather than aiming to make an actual game. It forces you to think of the raw essence of your goal and distill it into the purest form. It's my philosophy that if you can make a fun game in 200 words or less, then it's better than a large game with no flavor.

    This is going to be a really long journey. It took me 4 years of homebrewing for D&D until I was finally getting a grasp on development, balance, and flavor. Developing my own system is going to take just as long. Probably longer. But honestly that idea doesn't scare me. In fact I'm excited just typing this. Though this excitement wanes and waxes as it pleases. I'm not always 100%, and you won't either!

Learning to Love Challenge, and other skills

    This is what I consider a very important aspect if you want to seriously game develop. Learning to love a challenge will drive you harder than forcing yourself to develop something to meet a quota. It also allows you to gain motivation through more work. Being excited for the unknown is an extremely powerful tool that keeps you interested. Honestly I didn't have this at first - I had literally over 16 years of ideas trapped in my head, which allowed me to create an absolutely inhuman amount of content when I first started development (As stated within my first blog). 

    But once you hit a wall where you need to develop new skills is the right time to learn to love the challenge. Get excited for not knowing how to tackle an idea, because you don't know how awesome the end results will be. That's what truly drives me. Unfortunately not all ideas are winners, and it's best to accept they're okay, or bad, then move onto a new project. The idea is to keep the ball rolling, then tackle a bad idea again later. Be sure you save all your work, you'll need it later down the line, even if it's a really bad idea. It's my personal philosophy that no idea is inherently bad; it's the execution. Take the Diablo franchise as an example. Imagine if all it had was fighting monsters in a new environment every few hours. Not interesting or fun. But when you add skills, random potential, powerful and interesting loot, and a plot line, the idea becomes more grand. By exploring separate ideas, they can become a conglomerate and create a greater whole.

Collateral Inspiration

     Another skill to learn is to work on ideas adjacent to the first one when you're stuck and you will often solve two problems at once. I call this collateral inspiration. This is such a powerful tool and I didn't realize I had it until later. Once I realized its existence, I put it to practical use and suddenly jumped forward in progress. Sometimes you can create exploding collateral inspiration, where solving two problems you were stuck on creates new ideas.

    An example of collateral inspiration is you want to work on an ice themed warrior. You might be stuck with some mechanics or imagery behind it. Then work on something else ice themed, perhaps a monster, or create an ice priest. Another amazing idea is to invent a new character within a world you're familiar with and imagine how they interact with it. Creating a character more often than not creates explosive collateral inspiration.

Make something that excites you

     I can't emphasize this enough. If you aren't excited by what you're looking at then you should work on the idea more. An interesting idea doesn't mean it's fun, either. There's plenty of paved paths that are really fun despite never deviating from the normal, as in they're fun not just because it's interesting, but because it's fun and interesting. This is by far the hardest challenge you'll face. It's one I'm dealing with now. How do you create a meaningful mechanic fun and flavorful without making it too obtuse or have it weighed down by its own idea? The idea of a blood mage is really fun, but the issue is the mechanics are weighing itself down; it's defeating itself before it can even get out of the gate. Many blood mages I see are too complicated for their own good.

Make something for you, not them

    Don't make a game that'll interest hardcore players. Don't make something around a theme just because it sounds interesting. Make it for you, and if you find it fun and exciting, then other people will follow. You can't make something that pleases everyone. You are the first person that you should please. When looking for feedback, ask it only from people you trust and love. People are cruel and uncaring about how or why you arrived at a conclusion; if you start revolving your game around that, you are no longer creating something for yourself, you are making it for them.

    Once you have created something you love, and you have tested this idea to be as balanced as it can be, then you release it into the wild. The wild is full of animals that will rip and shred your material, but it's also full of civilized people. When reading criticism from an animal, treat it like a dog who has torn up its new toy immediately. Disconnect yourself from your work when looking at these comments, or ignore them entirely. Look for people who are interested in aiding you. Look for people who give you a how and why ideas work and don't work. You can usually tell when their words come from a place of love and or respect.

There are innumerous people that disrespect D&D 5e, but there are still thousands of players that love it.

Follow the Fun

    The last musing I'll post. Follow the fun. You find something that isn't a core part of your project, but find it very fun. Incorporate it, or rework your system around the idea and you'll arrive at a better place. There are countless ideas that changed drastically from the original idea because they found a fun idea that worked better than the one they were working on. I've done this several times for my game project despite having a dire attachment to my old ideas that no longer fit the project. You'll hate it at first, then you'll love it later.