Posted August 29, 2023 by Binary Star Games
Hi there! #2 in our design series, meet the Blazemagus and Champion!
As noted in #1, all role/sub-role talk is referring to Total//Effect’s role and sub-role concepts.
I wanted to go elemental for explicit “magic user” types - just the four basic elements, earth/air/fire/water. It felt very on-brand. And the first one of those four that I made was Blazemagus.
Fire magic in games is usually a damage-over-time kind of thing when it’s not just direct damage. In video games I think that’s mostly fine because there’s an expectation of fights lasting for enough increments that that matters. I’m not so keen on damage-over-time effects in tabletop, though, or at least not slow-trickle ones. I generally think the ideal tabletop combat fight is 3-4 rounds, so at most any such effect would matter 2-3 times - and that’s assuming an enemy who takes forever to take out! VH isn’t that kind of game, really, even Prime enemies will generally not last all combat.
The Blazemagus’s roles/subroles are Attacker (Spread, Break) and Supporter (Heal). Instead of that damage-over-time, they largely make it easier for themselves and others to launch more devastating attacks. Area effects are another classic fire thing (fireball!) so Spread was an easy second choice.
Part of my goal with some of these classes is to have things that surprise people for all of them. In this case, I wanted something that really contrasted the idea of the aggressive destructive mage type. I generally associate warmth with comfort (at least if you’re in a part of the world that has winter as such!) so that seemed like a good fit.
Based on this, I tweaked the suggested tales as such: two that sound a little more “standard” for aggressive wizard/sorcerer type, but one that has less of a martial or dark tone to it. The archetype ends up as more of a crusader than a destroyer, which feels right.
I always want the fighter-type to feel cool. I firmly believe most fantasy games live or die by how well they do martial classes - not just because of the elephant in the room usually screwing that up badly, but in general because it’s indicative of what level of abstraction the game is working on. Champion started life as “Warrior” but that felt boring and I wanted to give off more of a “veteran”/“duelist”/“gladiator” impression. Someone extremely skilled, maybe a little flashy and overconfident, and hard to ignore. So, Champion!
The Champion’s roles/subroles are Defender (Provoke, Shield) and Attacker (Spike). I wanted to really emphasize “unignorable”, not just by classic taunt abilities (which it does have) but by indirect abilities. In this case I interpreted “provoke” as being mostly retributive: it does have one taunt ability but a lot of its kit instead just does Harm or extra Harm if they weren’t attacked by a given enemy last round, so a Champion who gets to the center of the battlefield will either be the center of attention or an offensive menace. In the event of the former, it’s got a few tricks to stay alive; in the event of the latter, it’s got a few moves to further increase its output. That said, its kit doesn’t have a lot of movement (minus one defensive ability) so it pairs well with abilities that move it around.
On the note of wanting martials to feel good, all of the Spike roles/sub-roles went to martial or part-martial attackers. This is intentional!
Next time: Commander and Dark Knight!