Last time we showed off probably the biggest new addition to the Runed Age 1.3. In this post we’ll go through some changes that will impact every part of your game.
Skill Changes
Starting with the Sigil System 1.2 and then going on to Z-LAND, the base Skill System that began with the Runed Age has seem some changes, and those changes are now coming back full circle to the Runed Age 1.3. There’s a fair bit that will change, and in particular how the runes and runic arrays interact with the Skills have been completely overhauled.
Out with the old…
The biggest changes you’ll see will be the absence of a few Skills. Perform, Contacts, and Runes have all been taken out. That doesn’t mean you can’t use these anymore, just that doing so will look a bit differently. The three social Skills (Deceive, Diplomacy, Intimidate) will now handle any type of performance you might want to create, and the Contacts subsystem (a whole dev journal is coming up just about this) will be dedicated just handling all your contacts in Middelburg.
Losing Runes was tough, because let’s face it, it is called the Runed Age and the entire magic system is all about runes. But it was one Skill that encompassed the entirety of the runic magic system and the nearly infinite amount of things you could do with it. That is way too powerful, and we saw far too many characters that put all their EXP into Runes.
What we’ve done instead is divide everything you can do surrounding runic arrays, and split them up into various other Skills. Now you can be amazing at drawing out runic arrays, but not the best at thinking up designs, and vice versa. The two Skills that will now handle the bulk of the runic business are two somewhat new Skills: Fine-Craft and Logic. Fine-Craft as the name implies will be the go-to Skill for seeing how well you’ve drawn the runic arrays, and Logic will be all about designing the arrays themselves.
And speaking of these skills
… in with the new.
Not only has Perform, Contacts and Runes gone, we’ve split up some other Skills into two to make them feel more like real individuals with a good spread of talents. The old Athletics now becomes Athletics and Might: Athletics is all about how dexterous and quick you can be, while Might is your raw brute strength. Craft has now become Fine-Craft and Broad-Craft, not the most creative of names, but we wanted to get their meaning across easily. Fine-Craft is all about the fine details, like putting together a clock, while Broad-Craft is about the bigger picture and working in broadstrokes, like building a cupboard, making a meal, etc.
We also have two Skills who have undergone a name change to make them a bit broader in use: Insight has become Intuition; and Lore has become Logic. They still fulfil their old roles, but Logic can now be used to overcome puzzles, and Intuition can now also be used to see what your gut has to say about a situation or even what you can remember.
Lastly, and straight from Z-LAND, we are putting the Luck Skill into Runed Age 1.3. Luck is a powerful Skill, and not only because it will determine your Sigil Threshold. You can use Luck in almost any situation where chance is a factor, and so can your GM. The muggers with loaded guns, who do they target in your party? Roll a Luck Skill to figure out who is the most unlucky between you. Are you lucky enough to find what you need in the first place you look? Your Luck Skill will tell you. Was anyone close enough to hear the vault door you blew up? Roll Luck to find out. We will also be putting in some looting mechanics that will depend on your Luck Skill.
And that’s it for the changes to the Skills in the Runed Age 1.3. Tell us what you think of it, any other changes you can suggest, and what you will do with these new Skills.
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