Character Paths

[NMyers17]

Character Paths Think of Character paths like the Classes of Artichron. They are the specialisation of your character but with a wider degree of freedom. Upon character creation after each "Delve" aka the completion of a dungeon, you will recieve a number of points which you can allocate into one of four paths. As you advance along these paths and allocate more points to them, you will recieve features (feats?) that represent your chosen specialisation.

The Paths: There are four core paths:

• Fighter
• Rogue
• Cleric
• Mage

You can allocate points as you see fit into these classes, there are no prerequisities for allocating points to a certain path, however you may only ever have points allocated to a maximum of two paths at once.

Specialised Paths By combing two paths together you can instead follow a more specialised path, showing your devotion to both paths that has evolved into something new. These paths are followed as long as the point allocation between them maintains between a 40% - 60% ratio. An even split between both paths.

The specialised paths are as follows:

• Fighter + Cleric = Templar
• Fighter + Rogue = Swashbuckler
• Fighter + Mage = Spellblade
• Cleric + Rogue = Inquisitor
• Cleric + Mage = Shaman
• Mage + Rogue = Warlock

This gives a total of 10 possible Paths for the player characters to choose from.

Features: Your specialised path does not override you current path up to point you become "Specialised". You gain abilities in sequence based on what class you have the most investment in.

Example: You start of the game and invest all your points into Fighter, hitting the first Fighter tier you gain the first tier Fighter feature, you then go on number of delves, gaining some additional points to allocate to a path you decide to invest these points into cleric, your investment in Fighter and Cleric is now equal so instead of gaining the Cleric second tier feature you gain the Templar second tier feature. You continue to adventure, allocating point equally to fighter and cleric and therefore keep gaining Templar features, but you then decide to start heavily investing in Cleric. You invest so heavily your fighter and Cleric ratio tips over the 40% - 60% ratio, whilst also hitting the next cleric tier. You would then gain the appropriate tierd cleric feature. This does not erase the Templar features you have gained thus far, but you are now following the cleric path rather than the specialised Templar path.

Tiered Feature Example:

5th Tier - Cleric Feature ^ 4th Tier - Templar Feature ^ 3rd Tier - Templar Feature ^ 2nd Tier - Templar Feature ^ 1st Tier - Fighter Feature

Tiers also have titles that come with them, a first Tier wizard might be an "Apprentice" but a 20th Tier Templar might be known as a "Holy Avenger".

Can you change your path? Through a story beat you can replace a path, with another path. The new path replaces it in the same sequence as you gained the original path. For example: Cleric 1-4 then Templar 5 and 6. Becomes Mage 1-4 and Spellblade 5 and 6.

Questions?

• What Tier should be considered the max?
• How many points should need to be allocated for each tier? Should these grow as you go up in tiers?

Obviously we will need to work out the mechanics of each feature granted by each particular path, that will then need be balanced. But I believe the path system adds necessary depth to Artichron allowing players to specialise in a particular role or combining 2 paths to be something different entirely.

[krbz999]

How strongly do we feel about the 4 names, fighter, cleric, mage, rogue?

[NMyers17]

How strongly do we feel about the 4 names, fighter, cleric, mage, rogue?

Not strongly at all. Purely placeholders realistically, they just got across the theme off each path in an effective way.

[krbz999]

One mild blocker to implement this (from a mechanical point of view) is consideration for what the 'features' can be. To me, there are two kinds.

An unlocked property, a passive feature. This would be something like, "When dealing fire damage, the dice explode on 3 or higher," which would be a simple unlocked flag on the actor.

The other type is a more active thing, something that will need to be added to the actor as an item. A new active thing that the actor can do.

So the question is: Do we have passive unlocks, active unlocked features, or both? If there are unlocked features that need to be their own item, we would also need a new item type for this.

[NMyers17]

So the question is: Do we have passive unlocks, active unlocked features, or both? If there are unlocked features that need to be their own item, we would also need a new item type for this.

I would say both. As it'll entirely depend on the path and tier. I imagine a world where you may also get a passive and an active feature at certain tiers.

I would assume "Path Feature" would be the new item type name?

[Mythacri]

I would personally like to recommend each path have a basic passive feature at Tier 1. An active feature can come in a bit later which makes it so the active ability can relate specifically to the path or paths being progressed on.

Let's assume each basic path has 6 tiers for the sake of example. Each combination path can have 4 tiers.

• Tier 1 is a general passive feature relating to the path.

• Tier 2 is a choice of 1 of 3 modifications to the passive feature in tier 1.

• Tier 3 is where a character receives their active ability. A character focusing on 1 path then has 2 passive abilities from the 1 path and a character focusing on 2 paths has 2 passive abilities, one from each of the paths they chose.

With this method, a solo path or a combined path is always completed after 6 Tiers.

NOTE: This concept is assuming that path progression is a linear style similar to 5e and not a selected pool style like other TTRPGs. The style of progression is important to defining how paths are split and tiers are arraned.

[krbz999]

Each unlocked tier cannot rely on a former tier as there is no guarantee the previous one from the same path was obtained. You can obtain your first three unlocks in order as {Fighter1, Templar2, Cleric3} for example.

[Mythacri]

Okay, so.

What I'm understanding from that is there are not 'combo' paths but are instead 4 general paths and 6 specialized paths. Quick questions just in general.

Are tiers a character label or a path label? I.E. are their 6 Tiers of fighter or does fighter have a pool of options that can be chosen as a character gains tiers?

If Tiers are a path label, can a character choose multiple Tiers of a lower degree? Could I choose the Tier 1 ability of 6 different paths?

[krbz999]

• There are 10 paths, but six of them are derived from being split (nearly) equally among two of the 4 'core' paths (fighter, cleric, rogue, mage).
• The fighter path, for example, has 6 tiers (or some other number we decide on later). If you are considered a Fighter at the time you expend a certain number of points, then it is the Fighter's feature you gain.

To be clear, you can miss out on features of one path by having been considered on a different path.

[Mythacri]

To be clear, you can miss out on features of one path by having been considered on a different path.

OKAY! Now THIS clears things up! So what we have is essentially a parallel linear progression system. Are there requirements for getting access to the 'combo' paths or no?

[krbz999]

An even split between two core paths. With some leeway for what is considered 'even' (I am thinking 40%/60% is fine, but could be smaller).

A player can put points into at most 2 core paths at a time.

[krbz999]

Exponential distance between each tier would be logical and simple.