Guile (Patreon)

We've been sitting with the Martial spheres for a while now, and for good reason; so much of the bonuses, actions, and mechanics that make up the game (especially combat) are tied to Martial spheres. I really like the idea of spheres focusing in on expanding specific actions players can take, and martial spheres cover a lot of those: hitting, running, taunting, helping, riding, etc.

Guile, then, covers a whole host of other actions a player can take, and with the ability to move some spheres that used to be Martial (alchemy, trap, tech, scoundrel, etc.) to guile, a pattern emerges.

Guile spheres cover a large range of options, including both in and out of combat activities, all of which cover a few broad categories (in a Venn diagram sort of way, several of these intersect):

Actions. Like Martial spheres, these augment individual actions a player could take in or out of combat (hiding, investigating, stealing, etc.) Some of these are actions anyone can take, but if a particular action requires training to even be able to attempt it (such as picking locks), its probably a guile sphere.

Socializing. Bluffing, convincing, detecting lies, and more falls under the purview of guile actions.

Crafting. Creating items, creating traps, and other items, which given how item slots work, could potentially be a stronger ability than in other games where you're expected to just be carrying anything you might need.

Using specialty equipment. Tying into actions above, sometimes something requires specialty equipment. Lockpicking, medicine, mechanical engineering, alchemy, cooking, maintaining equipment; there's lots of things someone can do both in combat and while exploring (or between adventurers) that uses specialty equipment to either accomplish great things or to empower their allies (read: give them powerful bonuses).

This doesn't cover everything, of course. And that's the real difficulty of adapting spheres work to a custom system: the old division was 'well, anything involving skill checks', aka, taking a preexisting mechanic created for a different system and adapting our ideas to fit their framework. Working on a custom system is a perfect time to re-evaluate the old assumptions of the previous system as well as the things we created to fit that system, which is a lot of re-considering for something that was already, by its nature, as amorphous as 'utility and guile'.

Over the next month or two, we'll try and make some regular posts showing individual spheres, discussing what we're thinking, how things might have been re-imagined for the new system, and more.

Thank you all again for coming along on this journey with us, I hope we can make something truly special for you.