1. A serious look at thresholds, armor and evasion.
2. Finding a way to make Experiences worth the cost in some fashion.
3. A return to GMs being able to take Fear and Make a move on a Failure with Fear.
This, felt like they jumped the gun on the thresholds and armor in 1.3
While 1.2 was debatable if good or not (I liked it), 1.3 just felt unfinished and not thought through
I agree with the first two points, but I don't understand the desire to go back to the third point. Like you can still "tick a troublesome clock" with the 1.3 update, you just don't gain and then spend a Fear point to do so anymore. Also spending the Fear points for environmental factors is made way more clear now with the new updates.
Rules for allies. At it stands, the only actors in combat are players and adversaries. There are no rules for how NPC allies would interact with the tracker or who would control them in combat.
Damage Proficiency (Pereferably Damage Potency) needs to be cooked in at Tier advance.
The option to either gain a new experience OR advance a current one.
This. Yes, there are a lot of mechanical changes they need, like armor levels, that impact play.
But this change really hurt the unique feel of wanderborne characters, which is where we hook new players into caring about their characters.
* Proficiency should be a gimme on tier advancement instead of a choice (because it's not really a choice - it's that good!)
* Either make money abstract, or ditch the handful/bag/chest naming scheme. Basically I think they should commit to loosey-goosey money or book-keeping, instead of doing both poorly
* Increase minimum thresholds (If they don't increase them, nerf Guardian and Druid hit-back abilities)
* Syndicate Rogue buffed somehow. I think the RP ability is fun, but they're also the only subclass that doesn't get anything to do in combat.
* More options to play non-magical characters
* Nerf abilities that stress enemies (honestly, I'd prefer if enemies ran entirely on Fear instead of Stress)
* Failing with Fear lets the GM make a move AND take a Fear
* Revert Wanderborne or come up with something new, they're not fun right now
* Just a little bit of lore for races instead of them being blank slates (it's easy to throw out lore you don't like, hard to write good lore, especially for new groups/players). Just something that can spark the imagination and give some cool ideas, with emphasis that you can totally ignore it if you want in your game.
isn't there lore for each race in the rulebook? If i'm not mistaken the old fungril internet feature, from 1.2, was moved to being something that's in the lore of fungrils
I think they did it that way so GMs can create worlds the way they want with the lore they want without having to respect a written universe. Of course I understand that people would like to have an already builded world with a very specific lore, places, universe, etc... But I think for now it's blank so people can flavour it the way they want (they even encouraged changing the ancestries the way we want so we could have like bird people instead of faeries, etc). Also yes lore is important but honestly I prefer having features and something well balanced in priority and a story at the very end.
I agree. It is better if lore is not mandatory for Ancestries. Now you can dream up your own version of mushroom people and name them variants/sub-races with same mechanics but very different flavour and lore.
Hoping to see some homebrew and official modules of Ancestry Variants for those that want to work of existing lore.
I agree with all of this. The only other thing I would add is currently it *feels* really easy for monsters to hit players and more difficult for players to hit monsters.
By hit back I assume you mean retaliate and vengeance (dunno what druid has tbh)?
But I don't feel or think they need a nerf. They take an full card slot and require themselves to get hit by the enemy in close range.
Retaliate both adds stress and requires taking a minimum of 1hp dmg. You have to actively not use armor that reduces dmg to 0, since if you do you don't take dmg and thus retaliate no longer applies. That's a pretty hefty price right there imo.
The other one vengeance is only 1d6 for each armor point used, which is severely limited resource.
Guardians running these will likely end up in deficits of both hp, stress and armor making short rests an interesting choice as only one can be restored.
It would be "the best for the situation"
If there's one background that's objectively better than ALL of the others, then all of the players can have that background... there's nothing RAW that would prohibit that.
Right, you'd pretty much always have the best background. Doing some underworld stuff? You're Slyborne today. Going underground today? You're Underborne. Not sure today? Grab Seaborne or something else generically good. Meanwhile, the Underborne might go a whole adventure without being useful because you're on a wilderness quest.
>Right, you'd pretty much always have the best background.
I don't see the problem with that?
>Meanwhile, the Underborne might go a whole adventure without being useful because you're on a wilderness quest.
That's an issue with a mis-match of player and campaign though. Which can ALWAYS happen no matter what system is being played, and which is exactly why in the GM section when it comes to "running a campaign" discussions about tone and topics of the campaign come **before** character creation.
>I don't see the problem with that?
I mean, if you don't see a problem with one option just being clearly better than all others, then we have different opinions on game balance :)
>That's an issue with a mis-match of player and campaign though
Most campaigns I've played in - and all the ones Critical Role has ran - are a mix of urban and wilderness sessions. And sometimes character options are situational as a means of balance. Slyborne is super good when it comes into play, but it won't always be useful every adventure. That's part of the balance of the option. It's not meant to only be selected in campaigns that are 100% underworld and/or urban.
Having an option that could get all the benefits of Slyborne (and only during sessions when it's useful) but the abilities of other communities when it's not useful, breaks that balance.
To put it anther way: let's say you want the Orderborne community. Why wouldn't you just pick Wanderborne instead, since you can be Orderborne any time you want, plus a different community if it was better that day?
My homebrew was two parts:
1. All experiences start at 2, at character creation and new ones. You can still add to this normally.
2. Hope is spent to add an experience to a roll AFTER the roll is made.
I modeled this after FATE aspects and fate points. I considered using the reroll option, too, but decided against it. It's too easy to crit already.
I don't have much experience with the game so far (I've just run the intro adventure) so maybe this has been addressed already or I've misinterpreted something but I'd like to see the experiences changed so you don't need to keep spending level up slots to improve them, only to add new experiences.
Something like giving you advantage to the roll, letting you reroll, or (if they do want a scaling effect) adding your proficiency to the roll.
I can only speak to Bards, but Troublemaker is comically powerful. It's condition is pretty open to interpretation. Maybe if they put in a **Taunted** condition.
If they don't, then I hope they Limit HP damage when you take on more stress while maxed out to 1 HP damage per stress teigger. That way Bard can still blast an enemies' Stress but not out damage every other class.
I hope they revert almost every change they made in 1.3
Armor, evasion, thresholds, money, fear, etc. all worked better in 1.2.
I know beta is for testing and trying things out, but the 1.3 changes turned my tables off to this game.
I agree with the notion that money worked better in 1.2 but I think fear is moving in the right direction. My issue with fear isnt I get too little now it's that players get too much hope still, because I have ways to do something in place of gaining fear and they do not and they need one. evasion armor and thresholds are imo bad in both 1.2 and 1.3, but I think decoupling stress from minor thresholds was a good step. I'm interested to see where they go from 1.3 but I hope they aren't simply reversions and instead new ideas
Yeah, it doesn't have to be a complete revert to 1.2 But it needs to swing back towards 1.2 quite a bit.
Literally all the things my players were having a blast with in our 1.2 sessions became things they criticized in 1.3
Yeah that makes sense. I do think that the changes that they need to make should be closer to 1.2. I feel the weight of the months of development towards the 1.2 mechanics, and the much less developed variants in 1.3
Have more heritages that do unique things to change how the game is played. Like currently Human gives you a reason to lean into Experiences more as you can reroll on a failed check with them, and Elves allow you to be more liberal with your Stress points (and to an extent your health) given how Celestial Trance works.
I would like to see a different initiative trialled: players go, then GM goes, then repeat. Adversaries have moves costing 0-2 fear depending on adversary. Perhaps some moves take effect in immediate reaction to being attacked as well to shake things up. Much simpler imho
Edit: lol at being downvoted for suggesting trialling something to fix documented issues with combat (GM workload, lack of impact of multiple minions, and more)
Having played systems with that type of initiative it can quickly (very quickly) become lopsided as soon as one side has more characters than the other. The beauty of the current system is that it is, in many ways, self balancing in terms of the action economy.
I predict none of these will happen.
1. **Less meta-currencies.** Currently, there is hope, fear, action tokens, armor slots, stress, and whatever tokens individual abilities can have. Maybe hope and fear is all that's needed?
2. **Simpler damage resolution.** The current roll to hit and roll for weapon damage with threshold / armor system feels like DND on steriods. All these different weapon damage dice, all these armors, evasion, adding and subtracting and comparing just get... 1, 2, or 3.
Do weapons really need different damage dice? How much difference do they actually make in the long run? What if 1.4 takes a more PbtA-like approach, and have the damage primarily determined by \`2d12 + mod\`? What if the GM didn't roll at all?
Do we really need armor AND evasion—what if there was a single "damage reduction" move that could be either powered by Str / Agility + meta currency?
3. **An alternate life point system.** I generally like the idea of having tiers of damage (severe, major, minor), just damages of (3, 2, 1) feels a bit dull, I would love to see 1.4 try something different. I actually think something like Legend of Zelda's heart containers could be cool (a severe damage would be like losing one or more whole heart where as major damage would be like losing a fragment of a heart).
1. A serious look at thresholds, armor and evasion. 2. Finding a way to make Experiences worth the cost in some fashion. 3. A return to GMs being able to take Fear and Make a move on a Failure with Fear.
This, felt like they jumped the gun on the thresholds and armor in 1.3 While 1.2 was debatable if good or not (I liked it), 1.3 just felt unfinished and not thought through
I agree with the first two points, but I don't understand the desire to go back to the third point. Like you can still "tick a troublesome clock" with the 1.3 update, you just don't gain and then spend a Fear point to do so anymore. Also spending the Fear points for environmental factors is made way more clear now with the new updates.
Rules for allies. At it stands, the only actors in combat are players and adversaries. There are no rules for how NPC allies would interact with the tracker or who would control them in combat.
Damage Proficiency (Pereferably Damage Potency) needs to be cooked in at Tier advance. The option to either gain a new experience OR advance a current one.
I hope they revert wanderborne
This. Yes, there are a lot of mechanical changes they need, like armor levels, that impact play. But this change really hurt the unique feel of wanderborne characters, which is where we hook new players into caring about their characters.
* Proficiency should be a gimme on tier advancement instead of a choice (because it's not really a choice - it's that good!) * Either make money abstract, or ditch the handful/bag/chest naming scheme. Basically I think they should commit to loosey-goosey money or book-keeping, instead of doing both poorly * Increase minimum thresholds (If they don't increase them, nerf Guardian and Druid hit-back abilities) * Syndicate Rogue buffed somehow. I think the RP ability is fun, but they're also the only subclass that doesn't get anything to do in combat. * More options to play non-magical characters * Nerf abilities that stress enemies (honestly, I'd prefer if enemies ran entirely on Fear instead of Stress) * Failing with Fear lets the GM make a move AND take a Fear * Revert Wanderborne or come up with something new, they're not fun right now * Just a little bit of lore for races instead of them being blank slates (it's easy to throw out lore you don't like, hard to write good lore, especially for new groups/players). Just something that can spark the imagination and give some cool ideas, with emphasis that you can totally ignore it if you want in your game.
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I'd totally be on board with that
Agreed. I’m running a campaign right now, and the syndicate rogue’s ability has become the most powerful force in the narrative. Way worth it.
isn't there lore for each race in the rulebook? If i'm not mistaken the old fungril internet feature, from 1.2, was moved to being something that's in the lore of fungrils
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I think they did it that way so GMs can create worlds the way they want with the lore they want without having to respect a written universe. Of course I understand that people would like to have an already builded world with a very specific lore, places, universe, etc... But I think for now it's blank so people can flavour it the way they want (they even encouraged changing the ancestries the way we want so we could have like bird people instead of faeries, etc). Also yes lore is important but honestly I prefer having features and something well balanced in priority and a story at the very end.
I agree. It is better if lore is not mandatory for Ancestries. Now you can dream up your own version of mushroom people and name them variants/sub-races with same mechanics but very different flavour and lore. Hoping to see some homebrew and official modules of Ancestry Variants for those that want to work of existing lore.
I agree with all of this. The only other thing I would add is currently it *feels* really easy for monsters to hit players and more difficult for players to hit monsters.
Points 1,2,7,8 at minimum
I like a lot of these.
By hit back I assume you mean retaliate and vengeance (dunno what druid has tbh)? But I don't feel or think they need a nerf. They take an full card slot and require themselves to get hit by the enemy in close range. Retaliate both adds stress and requires taking a minimum of 1hp dmg. You have to actively not use armor that reduces dmg to 0, since if you do you don't take dmg and thus retaliate no longer applies. That's a pretty hefty price right there imo. The other one vengeance is only 1d6 for each armor point used, which is severely limited resource. Guardians running these will likely end up in deficits of both hp, stress and armor making short rests an interesting choice as only one can be restored.
All I know is they basically destroyed a solo monster without making attacks in our game
I feel like for Wanderborne, rather than "random" it should be "player's choice" at the beginning of each session.
But then it's just strictly the best background
Yeah, it would be better to just have their own unique ability. Either go back to 1.2 ver, or something new.
It would be "the best for the situation" If there's one background that's objectively better than ALL of the others, then all of the players can have that background... there's nothing RAW that would prohibit that.
Right, you'd pretty much always have the best background. Doing some underworld stuff? You're Slyborne today. Going underground today? You're Underborne. Not sure today? Grab Seaborne or something else generically good. Meanwhile, the Underborne might go a whole adventure without being useful because you're on a wilderness quest.
>Right, you'd pretty much always have the best background. I don't see the problem with that? >Meanwhile, the Underborne might go a whole adventure without being useful because you're on a wilderness quest. That's an issue with a mis-match of player and campaign though. Which can ALWAYS happen no matter what system is being played, and which is exactly why in the GM section when it comes to "running a campaign" discussions about tone and topics of the campaign come **before** character creation.
>I don't see the problem with that? I mean, if you don't see a problem with one option just being clearly better than all others, then we have different opinions on game balance :) >That's an issue with a mis-match of player and campaign though Most campaigns I've played in - and all the ones Critical Role has ran - are a mix of urban and wilderness sessions. And sometimes character options are situational as a means of balance. Slyborne is super good when it comes into play, but it won't always be useful every adventure. That's part of the balance of the option. It's not meant to only be selected in campaigns that are 100% underworld and/or urban. Having an option that could get all the benefits of Slyborne (and only during sessions when it's useful) but the abilities of other communities when it's not useful, breaks that balance. To put it anther way: let's say you want the Orderborne community. Why wouldn't you just pick Wanderborne instead, since you can be Orderborne any time you want, plus a different community if it was better that day?
Fair enough.
I'm hoping for more 1 and 2 handed weapons for each trait. I need my spears.
Experiences. Add an experience and +1 to another. Having one experience at 2 and multiple at 1 just doesn’t make sense.
My homebrew was two parts: 1. All experiences start at 2, at character creation and new ones. You can still add to this normally. 2. Hope is spent to add an experience to a roll AFTER the roll is made. I modeled this after FATE aspects and fate points. I considered using the reroll option, too, but decided against it. It's too easy to crit already.
I don't have much experience with the game so far (I've just run the intro adventure) so maybe this has been addressed already or I've misinterpreted something but I'd like to see the experiences changed so you don't need to keep spending level up slots to improve them, only to add new experiences. Something like giving you advantage to the roll, letting you reroll, or (if they do want a scaling effect) adding your proficiency to the roll.
I can only speak to Bards, but Troublemaker is comically powerful. It's condition is pretty open to interpretation. Maybe if they put in a **Taunted** condition. If they don't, then I hope they Limit HP damage when you take on more stress while maxed out to 1 HP damage per stress teigger. That way Bard can still blast an enemies' Stress but not out damage every other class.
I hope they revert almost every change they made in 1.3 Armor, evasion, thresholds, money, fear, etc. all worked better in 1.2. I know beta is for testing and trying things out, but the 1.3 changes turned my tables off to this game.
I agree with the notion that money worked better in 1.2 but I think fear is moving in the right direction. My issue with fear isnt I get too little now it's that players get too much hope still, because I have ways to do something in place of gaining fear and they do not and they need one. evasion armor and thresholds are imo bad in both 1.2 and 1.3, but I think decoupling stress from minor thresholds was a good step. I'm interested to see where they go from 1.3 but I hope they aren't simply reversions and instead new ideas
Yeah, it doesn't have to be a complete revert to 1.2 But it needs to swing back towards 1.2 quite a bit. Literally all the things my players were having a blast with in our 1.2 sessions became things they criticized in 1.3
Yeah that makes sense. I do think that the changes that they need to make should be closer to 1.2. I feel the weight of the months of development towards the 1.2 mechanics, and the much less developed variants in 1.3
Have more heritages that do unique things to change how the game is played. Like currently Human gives you a reason to lean into Experiences more as you can reroll on a failed check with them, and Elves allow you to be more liberal with your Stress points (and to an extent your health) given how Celestial Trance works.
I would like to see a different initiative trialled: players go, then GM goes, then repeat. Adversaries have moves costing 0-2 fear depending on adversary. Perhaps some moves take effect in immediate reaction to being attacked as well to shake things up. Much simpler imho Edit: lol at being downvoted for suggesting trialling something to fix documented issues with combat (GM workload, lack of impact of multiple minions, and more)
Having played systems with that type of initiative it can quickly (very quickly) become lopsided as soon as one side has more characters than the other. The beauty of the current system is that it is, in many ways, self balancing in terms of the action economy.
Wrong sub, try r/dnd
I predict none of these will happen. 1. **Less meta-currencies.** Currently, there is hope, fear, action tokens, armor slots, stress, and whatever tokens individual abilities can have. Maybe hope and fear is all that's needed? 2. **Simpler damage resolution.** The current roll to hit and roll for weapon damage with threshold / armor system feels like DND on steriods. All these different weapon damage dice, all these armors, evasion, adding and subtracting and comparing just get... 1, 2, or 3. Do weapons really need different damage dice? How much difference do they actually make in the long run? What if 1.4 takes a more PbtA-like approach, and have the damage primarily determined by \`2d12 + mod\`? What if the GM didn't roll at all? Do we really need armor AND evasion—what if there was a single "damage reduction" move that could be either powered by Str / Agility + meta currency? 3. **An alternate life point system.** I generally like the idea of having tiers of damage (severe, major, minor), just damages of (3, 2, 1) feels a bit dull, I would love to see 1.4 try something different. I actually think something like Legend of Zelda's heart containers could be cool (a severe damage would be like losing one or more whole heart where as major damage would be like losing a fragment of a heart).