Post Aegis Recruits Patch Notes

Here is a list of 'patch notes' I've currently documented with some reasoning behind them. The primary goals are to reduce prep time for campaigns, sessions, and to simplify existing mechanics into their best parts.

Some of this is still being worked through while I await the release of the next Maptool update, which will resolve the issues of players not being able to load maps or the campaign without closing their program multiple times. 

There is currently no ETA for the next campaign. Truth is that the previous campaign was incredibly exhausting to run and I'd like some time not worrying about the pressures of session dates just yet. There is a lot I need to personally work though aside from these system changes being aimed at helping me be more easily prepared. This may also include practical things such as finding somebody to aid in creating maps.

• Character Creator that is much more streamlined. Boils down to selecting abilities of different categories to ensure each player has one of each (Defense, Attack, Utility, Specialization); or selecting a prebuilt character of common archetypes for those who aren't as interested in character building. Still a work in progress, but is helping to set a balance standard for the game with all the insights I got from running Aegis Recruits. The full explanation would be most appropriate at the next character creator session at the start of a campaign when it is all fully prepared.

‘Birth Signs’ potentially to be unlocked during a campaign rather than chosen at creation. It is a lot of information to immediately place on a player without much context and may be better suited for a moment of character specialization after they have some experience within the system. This will likely be prioritized until after starting a campaign as its not needed at the start unless inspiration strikes.

A few under used status effects were removed or reworked. This makes sure stats and statuses are relevant to characters more often. Haste/Slow/Rejuvenate are fully removed at end of turn. (instead of smaller amounts being removed over time) Makes them much easier to balance and more regularly incorporate and scale more interestingly.

• ‘Defense’ was renamed to ‘Evasion’ to be more clear on what it does. (Reduces accuracy of attackers) It also scales normally rather than relying on tiers. (Previously +1 defense was -25 accuracy to attackers). This adds more opportunity to scale Evasion rather than other forms of defense (Armor). How many times attacks miss against a player is tracked and can benefit some abilities.
• End of Combat stat log recap will show which players did the most damage, healing, took the most damage, etc. Shows values. More stats may show up if they requirements are met (ex; most wealth spent in combat). Includes many data points of things which regularly happen in combat which may be used to improve specific abilities throughout combat, such as the Evasion example above.
• Attack of Opportunity no longer exists for players or creatures. Melee creatures can now follow player movement instead of using Opportunity to immediately damage them for moving. This should speed up combat even more and add new tactical options (intentionally having an aggressive enemy follow you). Creatures often declare random targets and need to walk away from players triggering Opportunity. Those moments also require pausing what is happening to ask a player to make their opportunity attack.  Smooths out target declares, creature consistency, and pace of combat.
• Injuries should be more consistently impactful, particularly because of a reduction of status effects players are likely to not have, effectively giving them a free pass on their injury.

Declares and Enemy Prep

• Declares: Enemies no longer declare their exact actions, but still declare targets. As previously stated, this was a huge time sink for preparing content. Players will instead be able to look at a ‘stat sheet’ for each enemy which generalizes their behavior, statistics, and may list the names of all spells it could potentially use.

Much of this is automatically generated to reduce time preparing an enemy. For example, the 'Burn Immune' text here is generated due to having the stats which create burn immunity. A lot of 'dev tools' are being made to quickly assemble enemies and input important values quickly and conveniently. 

• New ‘Save’ mechanic for enemies to help fill the gap of all their possible combat tactics without having to individually program and prepare each one. Their save value is always visible on their stat sheets. If you are fighting a human and have placed your back to a pit of spikes, normally they would just do whatever it is they declared on the prior turn. Now I can decide to have the player save using Mobility to avoid being pushed into the pit. The damage, push, and status applications of these ambiguous save options are still based on a creatures defined average damage so that they continue to feel fair and I'm not making up values in the moment.

If a player attempts to save against a creature and matches the challenge value with their social check (Rolls a 5 against a challenge of 5) they will initiate a new mechanic; Clash. Thus,  there is no discrepancy between who wins if the save matches the challenge and an interesting moment of decision making can occur. 

• Clash: A player may take 1 action before the creature they clashed with gets to perform their aggressive action. If the creature is slain by the action the player takes or they are moved out of range of the creature, their follow-up actions will not occur as part of the Clash. This allows a player to act out of their normal turn order and mix up the flow of combat.

• In the Future: I’d like a creature’s race to universally mean something now that they are easily readable off of a stat sheet. (Beasts always have…something)

Trigger System

Placing macros in predetermined groups on a token will automatically declare at the start of a creatures turn that a Trigger ability can freely be used. This gives the feeling of a “declaration”, because their action is predetermined by the conditions of the trigger. The triggers all automatically show up on a creatures stat sheet so the knowledge of what ability will be used under what trigger will not be hidden.

Ex; A creature is guaranteed to start their turn using an ability once they have been lowered to below half of their HP. Or they may always start turn 3 with a triggered action, requiring the start of round 3 being planned for appropriately.

A specific “Half Health” trigger type may only be redeemed once per combat, but multiple abilities that require that trigger may all be used at the start of that turn.

I'm still investigating if it is worth giving players access to these types of triggers, keeping in mind that removing Attacks of Opportunity felt like the right direction.

Walking over Tiles (WIP). It is intuitive that walking through fire is bad, but the current tile system only validates starting your turn on top of a fire tile. I do not wish to track player movement using the system for many reasons, so a manual ‘walk through tile’ tool will be used after counting how many fire tiles a player went through. Walking through a tile may be less harmful than starting a turn in that tile. 

I will continue experimenting with some more consistent ways to incorporate the Sanity mechanic, Madness, and reading occult texts. There may be no changes here, but it is something I’d like to continue putting thought into moving forward as it is core to the identity of Myriad -- but generally these are hard concepts to implement well into a role playing game.

Thanks guys for your continued support, it was great to see all the discussion and retrospect after the conclusion of Aegis Recruits.