Break Me Off a Piece of that Kit Attack (Patreon)

Our first-level heroes are just a little too complicated. I mean that literally—it’s just a BIT much. If we could slim down the complexity a TINY bit, things would be better. That’s what a lot of playtests were telling us. Luckily, we had a solution that went hand-in-hand with another problem we had to solve—players wanted kits to be more impactful.

Hey, it’s James again! I’m currently hard at work on the playtest packet for Patrons, which should be coming soon. By the way, the MCDM RPG has a crowdfunding campaign on BackerKit, you should read this announcement before you pledge!

In the meantime, I wanted to talk to you about some changes we’ve made to kits that affect the complexity of a first-level hero. First, let’s review what kits used to give you, then I’ll take you through some of the latest changes.

Old Kits

When we launched the BackerKit campaign, we gave a preview of four sample kits. In that version, every kit gave static bonuses to some of your statistics. A kit could contribute to your Health, speed, and attack damage, range, and reach. In addition, your kit gives you a special ability that you can use once per encounter. Because these abilities could only be used once per encounter, they had to be special and impactful. The abilities were a big part of what made one kit distinct from another.

Problems with Old Kits

While that version of kits was well-received, it wasn’t done. In fact, we knew it wouldn’t be the final version, because it’s rare for us to make something and have it be a homerun in its first iteration. That’s why we have development editing and playtesting.

The first issue with kits is that classes who primarily rely on magic spells or psionic powers in battle (caster classes) didn’t feel the same impact of kits as a class that relies on weapons (martial classes). All caster kits had the same broad category or armor (called wards) and a broad category implement, which could be any sort of spellcasting focus they wanted. Meanwhile martial kits had light, medium, and heavy armor and a whole bevy of weapon categories from polearm to thrown. Caster kits also granted the same static bonuses as martial kits, which meant that they felt like the less flavorful type of kit.

Special abilities were also an issue for kits. For one thing, the abilities behaved like almost nothing else in the game. There aren’t that many things a hero can do that happen once per encounter. Most are based on resources! Kit special abilities meant every character had to track something differently than most other abilities.

The other problem with special abilities was related to character advancement. How were these abilities going to scale with a hero’s level? Every encounter only lasts so many rounds, so what’s going to make a hero want to use the kit ability they got at 1st level when they’re 10th and have a bunch of options to choose from? There are a few ways to solve this issue, but some abilities scale better than others. In the preview, an ability like the Shining Armor kit’s Lead the Charge doesn’t really need to scale. Giving your whole party a free movement once per encounter is always going to be useful. The Cloak and Dagger kit’s Misdirecting Stab scales fairly well, provided you increase your Agility as you level up. The same is almost true about Chain Reaction for the Whirlwind kit, except that the extra bit of damage doesn’t scale nearly as well as Misdirecting Stab’s forced movement. We’d need an adjustment there. The Wizard kit’s Take Flight ability really leaves something to be desired at higher levels, because a one-time use of flight that only scales with a Characteristic score increase will likely be negated by more powerful character options that could grant permanent flight. It’s likely that Take Flight should be replaced entirely with something that better scales with level.

The final problem with kits was that many of the playtesters said they weren’t really feeling the effect of their kit on their character except when they had the opportunity to use their special ability just once each encounter. While the static bonuses were helpful, they didn’t do enough to actively differentiate a kit and make the player feel the identity of its equipment and fighting style.

New Kits

Matt and I had a meeting to talk about how to adjust kits to give them more identity and address scaling issues with special abilities. This is where we wound up.

Caster Kits

The first thing we did was talk about how to differentiate caster kits. Matt wanted us to break implements down further, into categories like orbs, rods, and wands. You can see that we already started to do that in the preview where we gave the wizard a staff instead of just saying “implement,” but at the time we didn’t really know what that meant. We just knew that was the direction things were heading for the sake of better supporting the fiction. During our meeting, Matt and I made a list of implements casters might use and came up with orbs, rods, staves, tomes, and wands to start.

Then we talked about what a caster might want to get out of a kit. More Health? Totally. Better range? You betcha! Better speed? Probably, though not as highly valued as a melee-focused martial hero who has to run from one target to another while simultaneously avoiding being surrounded. Damage? Who doesn’t like more damage? However, many casters might be willing to trade damage in exchange for more battlefield control. Reach? Ehhhh, with a range bonus and few melee abilities, most casters aren’t going to want increased reach.

If we keep bonuses to Health, range, and speed while losing damage and reach, what could we replace damage and reach with? Well, if the fantasy of a caster is better battlefield control, how about we go for increased areas of effect and increased target numbers (or TNs) on a creature’s resistance rolls to stop the harmful effects created by the caster’s supernatural abilities? Yeah! That sounds more in line with the fantasy.

So now that we know what kits can effect, we made a list of what implements are particularly good at doing:

Orbs harness magic and psionic energy to bolster a hero with protective wards.

Rods allow a hero to spread out the effect of their supernatural abilities and increase the size of their areas of effect.

Tomes contain incantations that make a hero’s spells and psionics harder to resist, increasing the resistance roll TN of their harmful effects.

Wands increase the range of spells and psionics.

Staves are combination implements. For example, a staff might be part rod and part orb, giving you the bonuses of each. Staves that can be used as kit implements are explicitly magical and their individual descriptions determine which kits a caster must be using to gain their benefits.

While an implement enhances the bonuses your kit gets, it isn’t necessary to have that implement to get a small bonus from a kit either. For instance, orbs are associated with Health bonuses. That doesn’t mean you get NO Health bonus if it doesn’t have an orb, just that your Health bonus will be among the best a caster kit provides if the kit does have one.

Just like weapons, the implement you take is customizable in terms of its appearance. If you want your orb to be a metal ball etched with eldritch runes, go for it. If you want it to be a rough-hewn hunk of cloudy purple crystal, so it shall be! Your tome could be paper pages bound in leather, a bunch of metal tablets bound by iron rings, or a long scroll. The appearance is yours to customize.

We also decided that not all caster kits need to use wards as armor. There’s no reason some kits couldn’t provide conventional armor. For some it even fits the fantasy better, like the Priest kit. That allows for some further distinction and narrative customization among caster kits.

Special is Out, Signature is In

We really wanted a way to make kits feel like a more impactful part of your hero’s build without overshadowing your class. As we were tackling this problem, I thought about another issue we had. First-level heroes were just a little too complicated. Honestly, if kit special abilities were cut entirely or pushed to a later level, it would make first-level heroes less complicated, but it would make the problem of players not feeling the impact of their kits worse.

Every hero has at least two signature abilities granted to them by their class. These are typically at-will attacks that we have plans to scale as your level increases. But what if one of those at-will abilities came from your kit instead? It could still scale with your level just like the signature ability gained from your class, and you’d use it so often that you’d feel its impact regularly. Your class also gives you a heroic resource to manage and other powers that are fueled by that resource, so your kit still wouldn’t come close to overshadowing it.

If you want a signature ability that fits in with your class, you can take a kit that compliments what your class does well. For instance, the fury class creates a mobile hero that can dish out a fair amount of damage in melee. You can lean into that fantasy take the Panther kit, which increases your speed and damage while also granting you this signature ability:

Devastating Rush

Keywords: Attack, Kit, Weapon

Time: Action

Distance: Melee 1

Target: 1 creature or object

Damage: 2d6 + 3 + MGT or AGL

Effect: You can move up to MGT or AGL squares straight toward the target before the attack. This attack deals 1 extra damage for each square moved this way.

Look at that! An ability that gives you more movement and damage, further backing up what you can do! Lean hard into the fantasy. Of course, if you want to create a fury that has more of a battlefield controller role, you could take the Whirlwind kit (which is all about whip and chain fighting) and gain this signature ability:

Whip It Good

Keywords: Attack, Kit, Weapon

Time: Action

Distance: Melee 2

Target: 1 creature or object

Damage: 2d6 + 2 + MGT or AGL

Effect: You slide the target a number of squares equal to your MGT or AGL.

Or if your fury wants to get a little psionic, you could take a kit like Ward Weaver and gain the following signature ability, which compliments your fury class features pretty well:

Energy Siphon

Keywords: Attack, Kit, Psionic

Time: Action

Distance: 11

Target: 1 creature

Damage: 2d6 + REA, INU, or PRS corruption

Effect: The next attack made against you before the start of your next turn has its damage reduced by an amount equal to your REA, INU, or PRS.

The Results

Honestly, we just started testing the idea of caster kits and kit signature abilities, so they may not stick around. However, I used them in a playtest last week and they seemed to be effective in helping players feel the kit more and taking some of the complication out of the heroes without sacrificing the feel of playing a powerful hero. We’ve put the idea into wider playtesting, and now we’re waiting to see what our testing team thinks! I’ll be running more tests on my own in the meantime. Holidays are a great time to game!

If you want to talk about this post, the upcoming Patreon playtest packet, or the crowdfunding campaign on BackerKit, head on over to our Discord to chat with other Patrons about the RPG’s development. You can also go chat with folks on the MCDM subreddit, where the conversation about the RPG has really been popping lately!

Ex animo,

James Introcaso

MCDM Lead Game Designer