V1.2, Updated 12/9/2014
1.2 Changelog:
~Added a version number.
~Changed Weave Magic to be based on CHA rather than INT.
~Added a note saying that you can Weave Magic into moves that don’t require a roll, by rolling +CHA.
~Branched the offensive uses of Weave Magic into their own move, Fightomancy (name change pending; I just didn’t want to call it Black Magic because… well, just because, really).
~As part of that branching, changed the wording of Fightomancy to let it apply to offensive moves other than Hack and Slash and Volley (because heck yes, I want to encourage magical Backstabbing and Called Shots)
~Moved Counterspell to the 6-10 list; turning magic back on itself seemed too strong for 2-5.
~Merged the “extra tag” moves into Battle Mage and War Mage. Not sure if those effects all together are too much or not; mostly I’m concerned that the increase in damage will push it over the line. Would appreciate feedback on this point.
~Added a new move to the 2-5 list: Familiar, a slightly-modified version of Animal Companion.
~Added races and alignments.
~Went over the document and removed instances of “Taboo” and other no-longer-used vocabulary. Hopefully I got everything.
~Added a short guide at the end to address some potential stumbling points about how the class works.
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At this point, do we maybe need a new category for Class Warfare specialties? Anyway, this is my attempt at taking a lot of inspiration from the Mage and rewriting it to (hopefully) remove the problems I have with the class. And I did so as a Class Warfare specialty instead of a new class because, well, it’s a new thing that I’m in love with and frankly it was a lot less work that way. Might or might not beef it out into a full playbook at some point, we’ll see.
Would be keen to receive some feedback, as this is a first draft and there are a few things I’m not entirely sure about–exact choices for Weave Magic and Counterspell in particular. I could see the argument for it being CHA-based rather than INT-based as well, given the obvious roots in the DnD Sorcerer. I’m also kind of split on whether the choices for Weave Magic should be minimum one as I wrote, or minimum none as with the other moves of this style; it kind of makes sense that sometimes you just want to use magic to allow you to do something without making the fact that it’s magic super meaningful, but I dunno. I still need race and alignment choices, too, but I wrote this all at once and I’m kinda running out of steam.
Anyway, my specific design goals were to:
a) Take the idea of the Mage’s Focus and make it a little more flexible. I worry that this specific implementation might be a little too open-ended to the point of diffusing the theme a bit, but I’m keen to hear what you guys think.
b) Maintain the idea of spontaneous spellcasting, but do away with the “one move all the time” problem. When I played the Mage, it always bugged me that I would be, say, rolling Cast a Spell to make myself run faster, when what was really important was that I was Defying Danger by acting fast; the magic seemed like it should be more of a narrative tag on the character rather than a catch-all move, if that makes sense.
I was thinking on ways of adding magical effects into the basic moves, but was struggling to figure out how to make the casting stat stay relevant. When I got Class Warfare and saw Like a Shadow and Blessed, with their “Add +STAT choices as a risk-reward modification” thing, boom, there was the answer. So thanks, Johnstone Metzger! 🙂
