Hey there, I find myself preparing to run a game on Warden and I noticed that there's very little in the way of options for buffing or supporting with magic. There's some stuff with barriers and alteration, but none of the stuff I would expect to see (like making someone stronger or weaker, granting special abilities like waterwalking...). I bet my players will want to try some of these, how should I go about implementing it?
You can use the Freeform Spells rules note in the Magic Alteration. By default, they cannot deal damage or inflict conditions, and numerically I would personally make them either work like Aid, except scaling with your Special Proficiency, or grant resistance/other benefit equal to the Special Rank of the caster (like casting an anti-lightning spell).
Duration-wise, if it's primarily combat-focused (like resistances or granting strength), I would make them last 3 turns (i.e an Active Effect 3), and if they're more exploration-focused (protect against Exposure, waterwalking, waterbreathing etc), I would make them last until Refresh.
If they want to cast something that's more "debuff"-oriented, you can increase the Strain or Action cost to cast it from the default 3 I lay out to break the "don't inflict conditions" limitation. I did try to make it so that most conditions are achievable without magic, but spells can obviously be tinkered with Range, AoE, etc.
Thanks! How would you go to implement these high action costs? Above 3 actions would mean more than one turn, with any damage whatsoever breaking Focus and wasting all of it, right? This might be okay for an encounter ending spell, but not for a regular debuff.
Also, wouldn't it be better to make a "Curses" or "Debuffing" school of magic for this?
Congrats on the full release! I've bought a copy and can't wait to dig into it.
I know at this point people are already bombarding you with what they would like to see next for Warden. I can't help but also give my two cents - I would greatly appreciate a tutorial scenario with pregenerated characters which also teaches the rules one slice at a time.
(And the foundry mod. :p But maybe the foundry mod won't be as necessary since this is supposed to be a lighter game than PF2e.)
Worry not, I'm... Going to make stuff, settings and pregens and all that, in time. With a generic game it's a little harder to make a "Beginner Box" since the settings are malleable. Would have to figure out something pretty universally appealing but noticeably different from, say, Golarion.
There is actually a Custom System Builder JSON for the game, very lean but good enough to run the game on if you know your way around Foundry. I just forgot to add it to the actual files when I purged my prerelease files. It will probably take a fair bit of time until I get a proper Foundry Implementation, but I know people who could make it happen, probably even happily as that would help them play the game as well.
Oh, sorry, this comment got buried! Yeah, the playtesting is going very well, I've noticed little hiccups with combat difficulty being too low (due to Mooks being that easy to dispatch), but other than that, it seems to be working well.
I'm going to be releasing a new version later this month, effectively the final playtest version before the game launches later this year / early next year. It's mostly just up to art assets at this point.
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Hey there, I find myself preparing to run a game on Warden and I noticed that there's very little in the way of options for buffing or supporting with magic. There's some stuff with barriers and alteration, but none of the stuff I would expect to see (like making someone stronger or weaker, granting special abilities like waterwalking...). I bet my players will want to try some of these, how should I go about implementing it?
You can use the Freeform Spells rules note in the Magic Alteration. By default, they cannot deal damage or inflict conditions, and numerically I would personally make them either work like Aid, except scaling with your Special Proficiency, or grant resistance/other benefit equal to the Special Rank of the caster (like casting an anti-lightning spell).
Duration-wise, if it's primarily combat-focused (like resistances or granting strength), I would make them last 3 turns (i.e an Active Effect 3), and if they're more exploration-focused (protect against Exposure, waterwalking, waterbreathing etc), I would make them last until Refresh.
If they want to cast something that's more "debuff"-oriented, you can increase the Strain or Action cost to cast it from the default 3 I lay out to break the "don't inflict conditions" limitation. I did try to make it so that most conditions are achievable without magic, but spells can obviously be tinkered with Range, AoE, etc.
Thanks! How would you go to implement these high action costs? Above 3 actions would mean more than one turn, with any damage whatsoever breaking Focus and wasting all of it, right? This might be okay for an encounter ending spell, but not for a regular debuff.
Also, wouldn't it be better to make a "Curses" or "Debuffing" school of magic for this?
Ah sorry, I meant the Strain cost by default for freeform spells is 3, but the Action Cost is meant to be just 1 if used in Conflict phase.
Making curse magic that has debuffs is fair enough, it's probably not terribly difficult to brew looking at the other magic abilities.
Congrats on the full release! I've bought a copy and can't wait to dig into it.
I know at this point people are already bombarding you with what they would like to see next for Warden. I can't help but also give my two cents - I would greatly appreciate a tutorial scenario with pregenerated characters which also teaches the rules one slice at a time.
(And the foundry mod. :p But maybe the foundry mod won't be as necessary since this is supposed to be a lighter game than PF2e.)
Thanks!!
Worry not, I'm... Going to make stuff, settings and pregens and all that, in time. With a generic game it's a little harder to make a "Beginner Box" since the settings are malleable. Would have to figure out something pretty universally appealing but noticeably different from, say, Golarion.
There is actually a Custom System Builder JSON for the game, very lean but good enough to run the game on if you know your way around Foundry. I just forgot to add it to the actual files when I purged my prerelease files. It will probably take a fair bit of time until I get a proper Foundry Implementation, but I know people who could make it happen, probably even happily as that would help them play the game as well.
Just gotta gather funds to do so.
Big congrats for the full release, Ghost Spark.
this is so cool! I hope playtesting is going well? I may try running this!
Oh, sorry, this comment got buried! Yeah, the playtesting is going very well, I've noticed little hiccups with combat difficulty being too low (due to Mooks being that easy to dispatch), but other than that, it seems to be working well.
I'm going to be releasing a new version later this month, effectively the final playtest version before the game launches later this year / early next year. It's mostly just up to art assets at this point.