Where are the classes?!?

So, hi.

This temporary post isn’t for my player group, it is for the folks who are coming to see the site from outside our group.

We just finished the final Playtesting effort about a week ago on the last of the classes. There are 19 Classes in total, and no subclasses — but there are about 200 Aspects on top of that for customizing the assorted base classes (in much the same way that a subclass does, but more flexible, in our opinion).

Now that we have playtested them out, I have to write them up. All of them. Assemble them from notes, different iterations, scribbled reviews, and more — and add in additional lore as we go, so it is both a creative and a direct process and it gets super old, super fast.

The classes will be up and finished by January 23rd, 2024. It is a lot of work, and the worst of the stuff I have to deal with in this last push to be ready for the zero session in February.

So, what are the classes?

1. Bard – Performers & heralds whose magic comes from Muses
2. Cleric – Servants of the Powers That Be, the Healers and caretakers.
3. Corsair – Bandits and Pirates and Charmers, oh my!
4. Envoy – Diplomats, Spies, and Assassins.
5. Gunslinger – Keepers of the Old Ways, warriors with a particular skill set.
6. Monk – The Defenders of the ephemeral from the encroachment of Nightmare.
7. Mystic – The Weaver of the Veil, practitioners of the Mystical magics.
8. Outlaw – Rogues that see laws as more a guideline when they are inconvenient.
9. Paladin – The chosen Warriors of the Powers That Be.
10. Ranger – The defenders of the wilds and the weary — shapechangers and woodsfolk.
11. Reeve – The Long Arm of the Law, Detectives and Investigators.
12. Shaman – Those who work with and commune with the Spirits of the World, the Numen and the Oloshe.
13. Shrineward — Those who defend the people, and preserve the shrines.
14. Sorcerer – The self taught mages, empowering themselves.
15. Vanguard – The biggest, baddest, toughest fighters, individual and committed to glory and adoration.
16. Warlock – Mages who specialize in the Elemental magics, welcomed in war, scorned in peace.
17. Warrior – Soldiers, warriors, tacticians, strategists; the fighters who can work as part of a team or stand alone, and the best at it.
18. Witch – Potions, Amulets, Herbs, and Draughts, Witches are the wise folk whose price for magic is always a bargain of some sort.
19. Wizard – The students of the magical world, the masters of Arcane Magic, the source of our greatest knowledge, and some of our worst excesses.

To understand the classes and why there are so many, it is important to note that there are both different kinds of magic (affinity) and different ways of learning it (axiom); plus, there are some who are slightly resistant to magic.

Thus, Bards are rather unique, and everyone has the possibility of having some magic (though always at the cost of martial capability).

While the spells are mostly the same (with many new ones), the way that magic works on Wyrlde is very different from the regular rules, and this impacts a lot of stuff in classes. For example, all PCs have a “magical score” that determines their casting, and it is the sam score for everyone. As the PCs gain levels, the power of their magic increases — a 20th level Magic missle does 20d6 damage, for example.

Classes Are fairly simple, overall, and each class does something that no one else can do — they each have a very specific role and function that no one else can duplicate. That makes each of them unique. What gives them more interesting stuff, what enables a PC to be something more than “just a fighter” or “just a mage” is the use of Aspects, which essentially replace subclasses, and allow you to customize your PC over time in a way that reflects the individual choices you make.

Aspects come in several different flavors:

• Precepts – Talents and capabilities.
• Maxims – Disciplines and development.
• Orders – Martial capabilities, an Either/Or with Mysteries; you cannot have an Order at the same time you have a Mystery.
• Mysteries – Magical Capabilities, a trade off against Orders.
• Esoterics – The special abilities and feats that are well known, but more open and often with magical capacity.
• Psychics – Still in development, but will add in developing out mental powers using a point system similar to magic, but still distinct from magic.

Characters gain one kind of aspect or class ability at each level — and they get to choose the ones they want that are available.

Basically, I took all the special abilities of all the classes and then added in all the feats and put them into a list, separated it out by level, took out ones that worked for the 19 classes, and then what was left was regrouped and organized as choices that PCs make. There are some abilities that will come later, as they are more complex and involved, but that’s the underlying premise.

Finishing up the writing out of all of the above, and finishing the rewrite of the spells to work with the new magic system are all I have left to do. It is a lot — about 150 pages of stuff.