Schedule & Update: The upcoming items

It's been a bit and we are at the end/start of the month, so I want to send out an update for what's coming up, and what I've been up to, as we didn't get a ton of new options this month (just the Psion update and 3 subclasses, by my rough count).

But this doesn't mean I have been exclusively spinning in my chair, I have worked on a few things, so here's what's in progress.

The Crafting System. 

Likely stylized as Kibbles Crafting Compendium, you patreon folks will see the beta/early version soon. It might not look like a ton when you get it, but I've put at least much work into it as I put into a new class - this has ended up being quite the project (it is currently around 20 pages, though some may be added or trimmed by the release). Just like a new class though, I'd expect the pre-1.0 and even the 1.0 to have a lot of room to be refined. It will be released with three subclasses (branches of crafting) with Alchemy, Blacksmithing, and Enchanting (Engineering was the close 3rd/4th, but had to pick the top three at some point to start really digging into the mechanics, and Blacksmithing was higher at the time I picked).

Like with my classes, more branches will release in time, sort of like new subclasses. I expect that it will probably not work for everyone, I've tried to strike a balance between depth and detail, between flexibility and giving structure, and that will take some more fine tuning.

I would expect the draft of this to be sometime during this upcoming week. This will probably be the next item, and where a lot of my D&D pondering time has gone.

I sort of wonder if this was too big a bite and maybe this should have been left up to WotC, but on the other hand, I asked you guys what you wanted, and this was one of the higher voted items, so what's the point of asking if I don't work on what people want? We'll give a shot anyway!

Artificer Expanded Toolbox

I think this might be the thing that people probably want the most. More people are here for the Artificer than anything else, and it's quite a bit overdue.

This will be a pretty big update, but may come in phases as I don't want promise too much that ends up delaying it. This biggest items here will be for Fleshsmith, but everyone will see at least something new.

There may be some stuff here that ties into the crafting system. I cannot say for certain that will happen, but that is something I plan to do more thoroughly once both exist, as many Artificers are interested in the crafting system, and is naturally in the mind of many a "soft line" or "gradient" between where the Artificer class stops and The Crafting System begins and visa versa; the Artificer class was written to add Artificer into a game without Crafting, and that won't change, but for a game with Crafting, I'd like there to be some degree of integration.

Feats and Spells

Two things we are going to see more of next month (I'm hoping) is some Feats and Spells. These are both things I want to work with. Feats are a very underdeveloped area; they are hard to use in 5th Edition, but I feel the current Feats empower certain play-types while leaving others behind; my interest here wouldn't be to make things stronger, per se, but to make more interesting options. I've tried to include a few feats with most of my new options, as I like Feats that make someone better at something they specifically want to be good at that are not easily captured by Generic feats - the Beastmaster feats I included with my version of that are a good example of what I may hope to add here.

Spells are less about me writing them and more about me collecting and codifying the dozens of spells I've written for my own games into things I would feel reasonable happy to publish.

Subclasses

College of Requiem came out, but needed a bit more polish before it was ready for prime time. We'll see a tweaked version soon, and as many as two more Bards are in the pipeline, but not firm ETA on them yet. We are likely to see a Divine Bard (College of Miracles, potentially; some of you might have seen my rough draft on that like... most of a year ago? long time ago) and an Evocation Bard that plays increasingly destructive melodies whose power increases over time the longer they play. I think this is a pretty big aspect of magical music (or performance) that is currently antithetical to what you can make with a Bard, so something I want to visit.

Outside of Bards, we may see some other subclasses - this is sort of the bread and butter of character options, and I like to release these as I have good ideas.

I am hoping that we will see at least 1 or 2 more Psionic Subclasses this month. I was just sort of getting started on those, so I want to get at least 1 or 2 more rolled out, and maybe a small update to the Psychic Warrior (a small buff and a few more power options).

Lineage Levels

The racial levels system is something I've been promising for a long time, and I'm not going to update that promise here. It's still in the works, but needed some fundamental tweaks, so isn't ready for a wider release yet. I think a release in the next month is likely, but I thought a release last month was likely too, so what do I know? :)

A Stream?

This is potentially something that might happen near the end of the month, but I don't know if I can make a promise there yet. This has more conflict with my work schedule than just working on content, but let me know if you are interested, and what sort of time would by viable for you if so. I know some people really want this, but I also doubt it has the numbers to make too much sense as beyond just a thing to do. I might give it a shot though - something like the Happy Fun Hour streams Mike Mearls did, this wouldn't be a production quality dream come true, more just a live discussion of and working session of how this stuff gets made.

Thank You!

Last but certainly not least... thank you for a month of support! I'm not super great at expressing how cool it is, but it's pretty cool indeed.

The last month or two have been a bit of chaotic for me (a trifecta of car, housing and work problems, the three great modern plagues :) ), and my D&D schedule (and the content creation there of) have suffered a bit, but the patreon has given me a solid reason to keep coming back to it, and it's a thing I'm happy to have a reason to come back to.

I look forward to bringing you more stuff; there are few things I enjoy more than people having fun playing D&D, and I love being able to contribute to that.

Hope you guys all have a great month with many awesome D&D games, and I'll keep you posted as we move forward! :D