Pre-generated Archetypes

Pre-Generated Archetypes for Deck of Adventures Beta v0.0.0a2

Earth Tank

Role: Defender Primary Suit: Clubs Primary Skill: Brute

Highest AC of the party, and is even higher when using Rock Shield
Gravity Surge: Controls gravity that allows them to move party members or enemies around the battlefield as an action that doesn’t require a spell slot, and using a spell slot allows you to use a power that drags enemies with him in an AOE for one turn
Rock Shield: Can summon Rock to add Armor Points to himself as an action, can grant 1AP for free, 2AP for a minor spell slot, and 3AP for a major spell slot
Shape Weapon: Carries a sword and shield into battle, or if they’d like he can take a warhammer to battle - the crystal hilt he wields can produce both

Water Healer

Role: Support Primary Suit: Hearts Primary Skill: Faith

Buffing status effects as well as healing wounds
Heal: Can channel Water to heal a wound as an action, 2 wounds for a minor spell slot, and 3 wounds for a major spell slot - these can be all on one person or across party members
Protect: They can protect themselves or allies with an ice shield, granting 1AP for one player for free at a time, or granting up to 3 players a 1AP ice shield for a minor spell slot
Support: Grants a buff/bonus to an ally’s next action, allowing them to draw twice for one action - take the higher of the two draws
Detract: Grants a debuff/hindrance to an enemy’s next action, forcing them to draw twice for their next action - take the lower of the two draws

Air Ranger

Role: Martial Primary Suit: Spades Primary Skill: Finesse

One with the Wild: Can bring an animal companion into battle and direct them with a free action each turn - Zukthar grants them a wolf companion at the beginning of the adventures and teaches the player a secret command word to summon the wolf - the wolf’s name is Silvertooth
Shape Weapon: Uses a bow at range or a set of short swords up close
Speed of the Wind: Highly maneuverable on the battlefield, you can gain movement speed each turn by discarding a card per additional square of movement (up to 3), can use it a number of times equal to their level per short rest

Fire Sorcerer

Role: Caster Primary Suit: Diamonds Primary Skill: Knowledge

Does high damage but is reliant on their spell slots for high damage output, and is pretty squishy - low AC
Amplify Damage: Can amplify the damage of their spells in return for discarding cards, up to a +3 for discarding 3 cards, can use it a number of times equal to their level per short rest
Flame Burst: Channeling fire magic you can hit one target for free without a spell slot or you can use a minor spell slot to target an area of effect attack originating from your hands radiating out 3 squares in front of you, forcing each enemy to make an Agility Saving Throw or take a hit
Spirit of Flame: The magic of fire fills you or an ally, removing any penalty for taking a second action and allowing the buffed target to take an extra 2 squares of movement each turn. Can target one ally for a minor spell slot, or up to 3 allies for a major spell slot.

I'm seeing a couple proposals here:

Spells (e.g., Rock Shield and Protect; shielding spells)
Alternate suit mechanics (i.e., Speed of the Wind)
Specific character sheets (from level 1-3)

I think I can turn this into a PR, but I have a few questions:

How do we determine AC? How many XP to start/on-level-up for 0.0.0a2?
Are there 'free' 'level-0' spells that don't cost spell slots?
What's the difference between an Affinity and a Spell? Can we collapse the two?
- It seems to me that they're both added character abilities, but the latter grants one-time use with the caveats that
  - Spell resources can be exchanged for one another (i.e., use my X slot for my Y Spell if both major/minor)
  - Spells are limited use, pending rest recovery
- Are there limited use Affinities that we would not want to be recoverable or exchangeable for Spells?
  1. How many suit mechanics per character? I think only 1, and only active on level 2.

If I can answer these and get them implemented, I can tackle DeckofAdventures/TheAdventures#6 . For the latter, it would help to have NPC stats, like a Bestiary.md where a GM could look up a wolf, the Prophet.

Hey, thanks for sending this. I ended up having the pre generated archetypes as a set of sub-bullets under my broader Introductory Adventure module text doc so I separated it out into a separate issue to make it easier to clarify. Definitely not final but wanted to get that first pass over to you for review and see what questions came up. I didn’t know where we would want to submit Adventure text, would we want that to go under Lore or maybe make a 4.0 section with Adventures that can become more of the GMs guide at some point?

I can refine the affinity Vs. Spell piece more but I agree that some of these would be level 2 or 3 things. I put them all on there but figure that in practice we would create a pre written sheet with half the spells/affinities on there and then grant an additional bullet point per level up when we’re conducting actual playtesting. Gonna try to answer your questions 1 by 1 but lmk if there’s any other questions that come up.

AC let’s just set per character for the prewritten ones, maybe ranging from 11 at the tankiest to 8 at the weakest. I think rather than XP for our beta let’s stick with milestones so we can keep it really lightweight and I already baked two level ups into the planned adventure for now (completing the intro session and then defeating the Prophet).
Spells and spell slots we’ll want to chat through in more detail. I think it makes sense for us to keep Level 0 spells a thing or any caster or magic user will have a lot of trouble staying relevant. It also gives us the ability on some spells to have 3 effects in one spell depending on if there’s a spell slot used and which one. I like the idea of a Tank having an unlimited use 1 armor point shield as an action but they can burn a spell slot to make it a 2 AP or 3 AP shield so it’s more a sense of scale than of raw power there. Gives us less things to manage but helps the player feel like they have more tools in their arsenal and more nuanced decision making thats core to their character.
I envisioned Affinities being one of two types of things: a mechanic usable a certain amount of times per short rest/long rest, or a permanent buff like the ability to summon a companion or a +1 to a specific type of check. For the usable on short/long rest I want those to be more related to card draws and be a bit more “meta” to the player rather than a spell which is a mechanical choice to either: buff, debuff, heal, protect, manipulate the battlefield, or deal damage.
agreed on suit mechanics and reserving any mechanics for level 2, we can modify this issue to have each archetype with what they have at level 1 and what unlocks at level 2 and 3 being clearly outlined and separated. We can use the suit mechanics for the elements that we have written in the core mechanics rather than anything I included here.

On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 7:20 AM Chris Brozdowski @.***> wrote:

I'm seeing a couple proposals here:

Spells (e.g., Rock Shield and Protect; shielding spells)

Alternate suit mechanics (i.e., Speed of the Wind)

Specific character sheets (from level 1-3)

I think I can turn this into a PR, but I have a few questions:

How do we determine AC? How many XP to start/on-level-up for 0.0.0a2 ?

Are there 'free' 'level-0' spells that don't cost spell slots?

What's the difference between an Affinity and a Spell? Can we collapse the two?

It seems to me that they're both added character abilities, but the latter grants one-time use with the caveats that

Spell resources can be exchanged for one another (i.e., use my X slot for my Y Spell if both major/minor)

Spells are limited use, pending rest recovery

Are there limited use Affinities that we would not want to be recoverable or exchangeable for Spells?

How many suit mechanics per character? I think only 1, and only active on level 2.

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From Chris - 2.2.22

I think I'll refine the structure as follows to incorporate adventures. I want to keep Mechanics/GM_Guide as setting-agnostic as possible. Each setting could then have setting-specific GM advice sections.

1_Mechanics/
2_Settings/Pelagia/
- Introduction.md
- 1_Lore/(current files)
- 2_Adventures/

This list doesn't map on to our previous archetype draft. Switch to what's here?
I'd like to have a rule for calculating AC in the beta if we can, as well as XP for advancement additions. The rule can change, but I think it would help balance if these pre-gens to all be governed by the same rules. I would then generate a spreadsheet that can be added to the repository and used to 'print' the pre-mades we make.
- AC = 8 + (Agility Mod OR Armor)?
- Defenders get armor on char creation? 1 + half level rounded down?
- Do the Defender archetype or physical armor have strength requirements?
- Starting XP = 6; XP per level = 6?
- Major spells/affinities cost 2, minor cost 1
Spells
- Level 0 = unlimited use, no slot
- Each archetype gets a number level-0 on creation, 0-3 depending on archetype
- +1 AC for action is level 0, but limited to Defender. Minor +2, Major +3
- Level 0 implies a level below minor - what do you want to call it? Simple/Minor/Major spells?
I think we simplify if reduce down to one category. They can be tagged as passive vs. active, resource cost (0/minor/major), to separate for semantics. If we can think of a counter-example of a limited Affinity that shouldn't be able to get repeated use by expending a spell slot, I would see that as reason to keep them separate.
Would you draft bestiary.md based on your adventure draft?

Matt's response - 2.2.22

Spells and Affinities we should combine under a new name.
Powers

Minor Powers

Can be used any time as an action.
No resource, unlimited use
Includes passive Powers, which are either buffs to stats or a mechanical effect (like a companion)

Major Powers

Consume an energy point to use a significant power.
For Mages and Martials alike
Mages the Energy Points are akin to spell slots, Martials they are akin to limited time per rest options
Energy points can be recovered on a short rest with a successful DC of 10 (attempting to recover more points requires higher DC - +2 per point to recover)
GM Note - Energy Points - For Fantasy settings we'll want to use Spell Slots, but a sci fi game shouldn't have to modify "spell slots" - something more lightweight like Energy Points or Power Points (SWADE uses Power Points which is why I was looking for an alternative) - and powers can have effects dictated by the number of points consumed. For Fantasy settings we can have this base mechanic overwritten as Spell Slots but if we keep DofA rules setting agnostic we'll want to think about a different solve here.

Suit Powers (Element Powers in Fantasy Setting)

Having a primary suit allows you access to specific suit-only mechanics that fall under the Suit Powers mechanic
These can only be used Nx per day, where N = Character's Suit Level (a.k.a Elemental Affinity Bonus)
Elemental affinity bonus the bonus to draws made from a specific suit, goes from +0 at level 1 to +1 at level 2, +2 at level 3
These Suit Powers allow you to activate certain mechanical effects throughout the game, and often involve discarding additional cards or interacting with your card deck in a unique way.

from above, regarding replacing Archetypes and Roles

Distinction for ruleset:

Roles

The 4 main roles a player character can fall under more generally within Deck of Adventures settings. Each setting has a core group of Archetypes based around each of the roles, often with a unique twist.
In Deck of Adventures: Pelagia, the elements are each represented by a different Archetype. See https://github.com/DeckofAdventures/TheGame/blob/main/1_Mechanics/04_Archetypes.md for more information.
GM Note We should think about moving Archetypes to Lore for Pelagia specifically and let's make a new 04_Roles instead with the information in this issue.

DeckofAdventures / TheGame