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Jacob Rodgers
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Designers' Journal

Thu 27 Aug 2020, 13:54

Everyone needs a little class...

With the fantastic response to The Promised Land, we've begun work on a complete set of rules to help bring Symbaroum to 5e players. One of the first steps in that process is working on the classes, which are mostly derived from Symbaroum's archetypes. That means not only does the Hunter class join the already-previewed Mystic, Scoundrel, and Warrior classes but we also have a new class — the Captain. Inspired by the occupation of the same name for the Warrior archetype, we've promoted the Captain into their own class, with several brand new approaches. The Captain class not only provides a way to represent the stalwart leaders so often needed for success, but also provides 5e players with new opportunities, as it is a class all about helping the rest of the party be as effective as possible!

We're going to continue these journal entries, to the tune of about one a week. We've got a lot to talk about, but we'd also like to know what questions you have. While everything is still in development, we'll share as much as we can. We would love your feedback!
Last edited by Jacob Rodgers on Fri 28 Aug 2020, 14:42, edited 1 time in total.
 
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pagnabros
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Re: Designers' Journal

Thu 27 Aug 2020, 16:19

That's really amazing to hear, I was really hoping for this project to be full developed. I cannot wait to see more updates about classes, races/Ancestry and new mechanics!

Just curious tho, beside the internal playtest/feedback would there be an open playtest document of the progress made, just like WotC did with D&D Next?
 
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Rangertheman
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Re: Designers' Journal

Thu 27 Aug 2020, 23:40

Looking forward to reading your weekly posts!
Proofreader Extraordinaire
 
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Jacob Rodgers
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Re: Designers' Journal

Fri 04 Sep 2020, 14:04

Just curious tho, beside the internal playtest/feedback would there be an open playtest document of the progress made, just like WotC did with D&D Next?
The structure of any outside playtesting is, as yet, undecided. Note that Wizards of the Coast had a tremendous amount of resources to apply to their flagship product, which helps us... we know the core systems have already been playtested and have held up for 6+ years now as the number of players continues to grow and grow.

A quick aside about that — we know that a lot of current players of Symbaroum love the system as much as the world and would like more players for the original system. From our experience, that will happen with Ruins of Symbaroum — the 5e product will introduce the setting to many people who would not otherwise consider it and some will become intrigued and dig into the original system, especially as Symbaroum will always lead, since that's where new development is happening.

Our development continues to focus on the player's side of the rules and we've been working on how much variety each approach can provide a class as we continue to flesh out all of the class and subclass actions. Choosing between the approaches can really change the look and feel of the class: two Scoundrels with different approaches can be very distinct from each other.

Next week, we'll talk more about Backgrounds and our intentions there.
 
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Falenthal
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Re: Designers' Journal

Mon 14 Sep 2020, 23:42

...a lot of current players of Symbaroum love the system as much as the world and would like more players for the original system. From our experience, that will happen with Ruins of Symbaroum — the 5e product will introduce the setting to many people who would not otherwise consider it and some will become intrigued and dig into the original system, ...
Now that a mock-up of the Starter Kit for Symbaroum has been showed, it looks like releasing a 5e conversion and a Starter Kit for Symbaroum (original rules) would be a great move, if possible to coordinate: many people that only follow D&D products can pick up the Ruins of Symbaroum PDF and ask themselves "where does this come from?". Then, a quick search will show them there's an unexpensive beautiful box, with the original simplified rules, a few adventures, maps and an amazing dice set (which they could use for their D&D games too!) waiting to be acquired just a click away.
 
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Jacob Rodgers
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Re: Designers' Journal

Tue 15 Sep 2020, 03:00

Yep, we (of course) love the original game and anyone who becomes interested in the original rules by virtue of the 5e Ruins of Symbaroum rules is a double win in our books!
 
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pagnabros
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Re: Designers' Journal

Thu 17 Sep 2020, 15:38

I have some interesting questions about the development of the 5e complete ruleset. While I think that the frameworks of 5th edition as be proven quite solid and adaptable, I also think that there some room to address well known problems.

1) Do you have plans on expanding the "exploration pillar"? In the 5th edition DM guide, there isn't much about making it more interesting/dangerous and guidelines are also pretty scarse. Since a big part of the Symbaroum setting is about exploring the ruins that lies in the Davokar forest, I think it would be very useful to expand the exploration rules while also making the 5e Symbaroum book more attractive to 5e fan which are not interested in the setting itself but wish to expand the exploration pillar.

2) Over years of playing the game, one of the main flaws of 5th edition for many on the forums/reddit is the lack of customiziation on the "pace" of the game and the balance assumption of "6-8 medium encounters per long rest, with 2 short rest in between". I think it would be extremely beneficial to design the game around different pacing and gave GMs guidelines on how to adjust that basing on the need of the campaign (for example, if you wanna have less but harder combat encounters without making long rest classes be king).

3) Last but not least, do you have plans for optional/variant rules to enchance modularity, similar to how you did with the Symbaroum Core Rulebook and Advanced Player's Guide? I think that it could be very useful for people that wish to increase certain theme of the setting, like the brutality of combats, the mysteries of magic and difference betweeen their traditions.

Thanks in advance for any answer!
 
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Jacob Rodgers
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Re: Designers' Journal

Fri 18 Sep 2020, 16:14

I have some interesting questions about the development of the 5e complete ruleset. While I think that the frameworks of 5th edition as be proven quite solid and adaptable, I also think that there some room to address well known problems.
.
Absolutely this is the place to have that discussion.
.
1) Do you have plans on expanding the "exploration pillar"? In the 5th edition DM guide, there isn't much about making it more interesting/dangerous and guidelines are also pretty scarse. Since a big part of the Symbaroum setting is about exploring the ruins that lies in the Davokar forest, I think it would be very useful to expand the exploration rules while also making the 5e Symbaroum book more attractive to 5e fan which are not interested in the setting itself but wish to expand the exploration pillar.
.

Yep, rules will be provided for exploring Davokar and expanding this pillar. Also remember that resting works differently in Ruins of Symbaroum, you don't get back all your hit points on a long rest or any of your Hit Dice (normally, character features can improve this). So a character out in the wild has a very different resting strategy, which also feeds into the next question.

.
2) Over years of playing the game, one of the main flaws of 5th edition for many on the forums/reddit is the lack of customiziation on the "pace" of the game and the balance assumption of "6-8 medium encounters per long rest, with 2 short rest in between". I think it would be extremely beneficial to design the game around different pacing and gave GMs guidelines on how to adjust that basing on the need of the campaign (for example, if you wanna have less but harder combat encounters without making long rest classes be king).
.

Ruins of Symbaroum does expect (usually) that there will be less combats but they will each be individually tougher. And, as above, the new resting rules change what encounter pacing means as well. There's no easy way to fully recover while you're in danger and thus you always have to mindful of how hard you can push yourself.

.
3) Last but not least, do you have plans for optional/variant rules to enchance modularity, similar to how you did with the Symbaroum Core Rulebook and Advanced Player's Guide? I think that it could be very useful for people that wish to increase certain theme of the setting, like the brutality of combats, the mysteries of magic and difference betweeen their traditions.
.

Yep. Just like many classes and approaches will offer a variety of choices for the players; we will provide the GM with a series of 'rules-chunks' that provide options for how the game runs.
Thanks in advance for any answer!
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No problem!

In more general designer notes, we promised some information on Backgrounds. Backgrounds have grown to encompass both the innate aspects of a character and then the particular personal history of that character. For example, just like in the Starter Set, you can have a goblin that was raised by the Church of Prios, or now have a human barbarian tasked with raising crops for the new kingdom. We're still settling on terminology, but it's certain that the players will lots of options here.

Next time we'll talk even more about customization, especially in the form of feats.
 
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Jacob Rodgers
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Re: Designers' Journal

Fri 09 Oct 2020, 14:36

Ruins of Symbaroum strives to include as much freedom as possible in how players build their characters, both in choosing origin and background, class and approach, and even in feat selection. Most Abilities from Symbaroum have become part of a class or approach, with the Novice/Adept/Master system guiding what is a higher level feature vs a lower level feature. But for those abilities that are truly optional, the 5e system of feats allows you to continue to customize your character. Also we're doing an exciting thing with Boons and Burdens, like Abilities they sometimes fit as a default feature for an Origin or Background, but many of them will integrate into the feat system in an interesting way, further rounding out your character.

October has a bit of reputation for spookiness, so next time we'll talk more about magic, rituals and other powers.
 
AmbrianLeonhardt
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Re: Designers' Journal

Mon 19 Oct 2020, 08:51

Good stuff. Looking forward to the next installment :)
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