Vigilant Core Update - Aug 25 2024

Quick update to the main book to balance some heavier weapons and touch up offensive spellcasting. File size was somehow reduced by about 10mb too:

General

• Poison added to bookmarks 

Equipment

• Blade maul from unwieldy(2) - unwieldy(3) - this was a typo, should have always been 3
• Maul crit from Triples(6+) - Triples(5+) - buffing critical to compensate for disadvantages from changes to cumbersome and heavy
• Cumbersome weapon trait changed 
  • Old text: Wielder may not make attacks of opportunity with this weapon.
  • New text: Wielder may not make attacks of opportunity and cannot block or dodge while wielding this weapon.
• Heavy trait changed
  • Old text: Heavy(x) - If a character’s Body score is lower than x they suffer a penalty to attack rolls equal to the difference.
  • New text: Heavy(x) - If a character’s Body score is lower than x they suffer a penalty to attack rolls equal to the difference. Drawing a heavy weapon costs 2 dice.
• Quick Draw perk now excludes weapons with the Heavy trait

Cumbersome and Heavy traits were changed to apply more dramatic defensive penalties. Some of the bigger weapons had damage scaling that was outside what felt reasonable, but these options remained immensely satisfying to use in combat. In order to preserve the absolute rush that is smashing your opponents for upwards of 20 damage in a single hit, I've chosen to make heavy weapon usage more high-risk by removing the ability to block or dodge with these weapons, making them an 'all-in' option that rewards hyper-aggressive play.

Spellcasting

• Missile and Scorn spells now cost 1 physical die to cast in addition to their normal cost and use their channeling result as the attack roll instead of triggering a separate attack action with a +5 bonus.
  • Scorn proficiency changed to: You may use mental or physical dice to pay the physical dice cost when casting a scorn spell.
  • Missile proficiency perk changed to: You may use mental or physical dice to pay the physical dice cost when casting a missile spell.
• Returning magical weapon trait perk requirement reduced from master - experienced for double-bonding - the dual-bond allows for some really neat combat tricks within a party that aren't too strong. Dropping the requirement to allow parties to play with these items earlier in a campaign.
• 'Unique' School changed to ‘Forbidden’ (sounds cooler)
• Clarity edit in Animate Object spell description

Balance-wise I'd liked where missile and scorn spells had landed, but functionally the implementation required too many rolls and de-emphasized rank investment in these spells. New change of a physical dice cost preserves the dice cost of the old system without requiring an additional attack roll; without the additional physical dice cost a spellcaster can rattle off 6+ spells in a turn at higher levels which both really slows down play and allows them to outscale every other archetype for damage output which is not something I want. A lot of playtesters implicitly compare their channel result to the TN of their target to see if the missile hits, so this change also makes things more intuitive for a lot of people.

Next planned update will begin to migrate over the loot rules from the GMG errata document to the main book in addition to some expansions to the Bestiary to flesh out some mid and low-level creature options. Hopefully dropping mid-late September.