Small Update: Cleric, Crafting, Monsters? and More.

Hey Folks - just a small update today, as I mentioned I'd send one out.

The Kickstarter Chosen one poll will go out tomorrow, but it won't be a patreon poll (as it includes the Kickstarter folks), but I imagine there's a fair bit of overlap there. This is the reason I've been working to get the last of the subclasses options for the poll out. The last of these is...

Cleric - Mystery Cult

Cleric is one I had a bit of trouble with. For a long time I debated if a Psionic Cleric made sense, as I tend to view these as something of opposites in terms of what power they represent, but after some consideration I decided that the concept of "Cleric" in 5e is a little less tied to "gods" than it is to "faiths", and in the concept of "faiths" there were ideas that made sense - these the Mystery Cults.

These are what D&D might call Cultists, but they are not Warlocks who have made a dark deal for power, they are people whose power comes from their faith in what they do. They might not be evil, and they do no necessarily worship the ancient evils or the beings of the far realm, but entities unknown and unknowable.

They are frequently a little nuts.

https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MWXsmNqwNGzsfMt2X9M

I did spend a lot of time seeing if an Inventor related Cleric made sense, but ultimately decided it didn't. I wrote several versions of an Innovation Domain, but it always just felt like it didn't work. Forge Domain covers a great deal of it, and everything else I wanted to do with it just didn't fit into the Cleric template. 

One idea I circled back to a few times was a Cleric whose technology worked due to the faith in it (sort of like Orcs from 40k), but while thematically interesting interesting, it never quite worked out. Perhaps I'll take another stab at it yet, but I think that one is tabled for now.

All the subclasses that have been posted in this series:

Barbarian - Raging Mind: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MV520TZb5248JAQb4M9

Barbarian - Exosuit: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MVFub23Z2reSitU0u8E

Bard - Thunder: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MWhH_zV5aAWEJTZEA9w

Bard - Ardent: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MWcQ4wj04V4z_Qg13IO

Cleric - Mystery Cult: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MWXsmNqwNGzsfMt2X9M

Druid - Nightmares: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MWY7LVWpX-XgxJ841ys

Fighter - Tech Knight: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M-I1FohdOA6CKSZOo4R

Fighter - Psionic Warrior: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LlK_x_XN70Om0fsacSA

Monk - Soul Knife: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LlNuBWzsP3xuHfyaf6A

Paladin - Oath of Sanity: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-L_8ZXM2qHb7mZ8N82lX

Paladin - Oath of Innovation: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MV_-YTYUln4UgEQly0e

Ranger - Mind Hunter: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MX1A18Q8-LHNgieR_-L

Ranger - Specialist: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MX19sDO5h-V8IAaVcZc

Rogue - Gadgeteer: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MUIadEZ8KkeYLakUYBs

Rogue - Lurker: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MUBOcuD_EewSn3aU8El

Sorcerer - Aether Heart: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LZhAGxKvYOsRhEpHMiZ

Sorcerer - Planetouched: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MWXsequqK5kEYw1E1lI

Warlock - Ancient Intelligence: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MUAubfXf3SXl5CCgSLD

Warlock - That Which is Beyond: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MV0UO6gHG37EXtuAUwc

Wizard - Order of the Unknown: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MVjCgcsgjM2mpDN9s_m

Wizard - Order of Creation: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MVjDNPGRDt95FNedFoL

...That's quite a few. There's a few that might still be added (Tech Cleric if I work out the issues, still on the fence if I want to use a version of my Aberrant Sorcerer) but I think that's the complete list to be voted on. From there we'll see what makes it into the book. All of these are in some process of playtesting - it's been a crazy month.

Crafting

This has a lot of small updates. Engineering, Runecrafting, and Jewelcrafting have started to show up, but aren't really in yet, just each have their basic entries as I started putting their content in the back end and balancing what their materials and assumptions are. Engineering will be fleshed out a little more soon, while the other two probably in the later half of this week.

I've also updated Alchemy and Poisoncraft to no longer use averages, but to work the same as all other crafting branches. Still fleshing out some details there, but things are going to be a little more unified.

https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MW1NwIyuvXpY0gGWDci

Monsters

This is probably before I should show much on it, but I figure I will show an update with the bestiary for some of the monsters that have made it through an early round of testing.

A handful of the creatures that will feature in the book are in their early version here:

https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MVK-tJLSKyvEU_PDSSb

Disclaimer: Ignore the CR and various details like the hit point formula. I don't really use those, so I've just sort of filled things in for now and will backfill those down the line. These will have some aspects of design that are odd, but I generally feel monsters should have at least one unique thing they bring to a fight - and at the same time now be a flood of new mechanics, just a few interesting dynamics. In the NPC characters and the major encounters you'll see a fair bit more design - while I'll have some of those (the NPC included there is just an early prototype I was testing), the book will primarily focus on a bevy of lower threat interesting tools - campaigns tend only get to use a CR 25 monster every now and then, where you get to use tons of monsters CR 1-10.

The monsters will tend to fall into three major themes - psionic or psionic adjacent aberrations, inventor tech constructs, and lost era tech constructs. These aren't guaranteed to make it to the book, just some of the early ideas that have gone out for testing and made it back :)

Spells Update

While I'm here, I'll toss in a small update for the Generic Spells document I'm working on. I've gotten to at least one spell for each damage type for levels 1-5, which was the first goal. Probably will slow down on these a bit, do another few rounds of testing with them, then add them to the spells compendium.

Fixed a few issues people had from these - the general idea is that these spells shouldn't be particularly controversial, just the fleshing out of ways to actually use each element with a consistent theme.

https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MW5r6wBJTW_lOU6gLyU