Dev Blog: Sept 20

Busy week. Two subclasses got wired all the way up, three went through play-testing at a real table, ten picked up play-style guides, the Shardware list got a rules overhaul, and a few things that had quietly never worked now work.

Play-style guides for ten subclasses

Bloodbound Gunslinger, Wraith, Berzerker, Templar, Warmonger, Dreamwalker, Hextăru, Neomachinist, Neuromancer and Techwright all got play-style guides this week.

A guide is a suggested route through a subclass constellation from level 6 to 10, for when you know the fantasy you want but not which nodes get you there. They advise. They never pick anything for you, and you can ignore them entirely. They start at 6 because level 4 only decides which two Core Feats arrive a level early, and level 5 hands you the rest anyway.

Balladier is finished to level 10

46 feats across levels 4 to 10, all three Adept Paths, the bracket pool, all six level 10 Core Upgrades, and every one of its 38 Spells checked line by line against the book. Balladier is released to 10.

Herald's higher levels went in

Herald's Adept tier is wired, with Judgment, the Verses, the Anointments and the level 10 material all live.

Three play-test passes: Herald, Balladier, Monarch

Roughly 75 reports came off the table this week and got built.

Herald. Judgment's extra die rides Judgment's own damage. Choral Blending learns Monarch and Balladier spells as Verses. Blessed turns a natural 1 into a 20, maximises healing, and lasts until a Long Rest. Anointed Ground can be placed as a stationary field and burns on first entry. Vow of Silence now actually makes a Censured creature fail the roll, which it had never done.

Balladier. The Rebel's bonus Amp Point is once per Round. The Coliseum adds +2 Amp Dice to Area of Effect Spells and Abilities, including for allies standing in the Aura, and those areas spare your own party. Sound Engineer's Sonic Wall now anchors Harmonic Feedback, Sonic Wave and Panic at the Disco, which fires on each Hostile creature that comes within 2 m of the Wall.

Monarch. Haus Manifestation no longer retypes your weapon, the Glam Dice carry the Haus's type instead, chosen per roll when two Hauses are up. Royal Decree applies the Haus effect it names. Glamorous Aura is a proper contested field, and its ally half reaches your allies. Illusions are counted and spent. The Celestial Dragling's abilities are its own.

Checking the Monarch work also turned up things nobody had reported: Bloodbound's Hail to the King was not delivering its ally half, three Hextăru boosters did nothing, and Aletheomancer's Floating Shield did not exist anywhere in the system, which is what Shielded Sentry, Fate-Reflected and Woven Shield all depend on.

Allies who are not at your table

If you had no Syndicate and no live VTT session, the ally picker listed nobody and Send stayed greyed out. The Feat or Spell still charged you the AP, still took the Subclass Points, and delivered nothing.

You can now pick "an ally without a sheet here", give them a name, and the sheet hands you a card telling you exactly what to say to that player, including any pre-rolled numbers, heal totals and when the effect ends on them. Every ally-targeting Feat and Spell works this way now, whether you play on the table, in a Syndicate, or around a kitchen table with nothing but the sheet open.

Copy-Paste can also now borrow from every Spell in the game, and a borrowed Spell from another subclass actually Weaves instead of resolving to a bare name and a price.

Shardware rules pass

Linkage and Conflicts are gone from the game entirely, not just from the text. All 26 shards were updated to the new table.

Vocal Harmonizer drops from 600 to 300. Adrenaline Amplifier and Hormone Imbalancer go to 1 Charge, Eli-Lite to 2. Neural Dilation Lens is now a passive +1 across three Skills. The IFF is fully passive at 25 m line of sight and no longer needs NovaSight. The three Arcane Recovery tiers collapse into one shard at 1,200, and the Spellodex's Innate tier is cut.

Anything cut is retired rather than deleted. If you already own one, it keeps working exactly as it did. Nobody can buy another.

The Death Save Shard had been doing nothing at all since the day it was written. It now banks one of the three successes you need, automatically, on the first Death Check of a dying episode.

The public cybernetics page on the website was regenerated too. It had been publishing what each shard is and never what it does, and had dropped the Bio-Sig Shard's rule completely.

Neomachinist lifesteal

Lifesteal is now a real mechanic the sheet understands, and Neomachinist's Spells and Feats that drain life now heal you for it. Dormant heals wait until they are actually triggered, and Spells with a variable price no longer loop on the cost prompt.

Iconic Gear for NPCs

Iconic Gear climbs its Tiers when the wielder spends Aptitude Points on it. NPCs have no Aptitude Points, so a creature handed Boulder Shoulders sat at Tier 1 forever with no way for the GM to change it.

GMs can now choose the Tier a piece is issued at when handing it to an NPC or granting it to a Syndicate, and the picker shows which rungs that Tier turns on. For a player it is a starting point, not a ceiling: spend a Point on a Tier 3 piece and you are at Tier 4.

Fixes straight from the table

Creature abilities only rolled damage. Using a creature's Action or Special Ability skipped straight to the damage roll, never offering the Attack Roll or the Creature Skill Roll the ability called for. The 33 catalogue abilities with dedicated handling were fine, which is why this hid for so long, but everything else, including every ability a GM writes in the Forge, went straight to damage. The system now reads the ability's own text and offers the roll it asks for.

Areas stopped at the party line. An area aimed at everyone in the Radius only ever asked Hostile creatures to roll, so things like Center of Attention and Signal Booster asked the players nothing. Hostile-only areas are unchanged. While fixing it, a second gap turned up: an outcome's prose, the part like "they lose all Movement and cannot make Opportunity Attacks", never reached the creature it applied to, so the GM never saw the half that is theirs to play.

"+1 to Attack Rolls for 3 Rounds" was worth zero. A flat attack bonus from a timed effect was read by nothing at all. Sixteen places across eleven subclasses were doing nothing, including whole Path abilities: Bullet Speed, Sentry, Voidtouched Arsenal, Overcharged Systems, Martial Training, The Terror Diva, Overdrive, Loomed Weapon, Eternal Recurrence, Elixir of Focus, Shadowmeld and Performance Enhancer. Channeler's Mirror Soul reads "+4 to all Defense and Attack rolls" and landed neither half. All of it pays out now.

What is next

More play-style guides, and the same wiring and play-test treatment for the subclasses that have not had their turn yet. If you are playing one of the subclasses above and something reads right in the book but behaves wrong on the sheet, send it in. Nearly everything in this post started as one of those reports.