Some Big Changes Around Here

I've been working on a thousand different things recently, but swung back around to thinking about CRYSTALLINE. I've played it a few times, had some friends playtest it without me as well. The notes are in, and I've figured out or had pointed out to me a lot of the things that weren't working or could have been working a hell of a lot better.

So I decided to fix them. 1.1 is a fairly major set of changes for CRYSTALLINE. Basically all of the core mechanics are still what they were before (with at least one superfluous subsystem chucked to clean out the clutter), but the screws have been tightened all around.

The changelog can be found on the product page as well, but I thought I'd include it here so you can see what kinda "major changes" we're actually talking about here.

• A Heritor’s turn now consists of moving 1 range band and taking 1 action. Using powers now counts as an action. Heritor weapon options have been adjusted (mostly weakened) to reflect their position as the “free” alternative to using a power. Most ranged weapons belonging to casters had their ranges or damage reduced, and Far range weapons mostly had their damage reduced to match the new premium placed on range.
  • Most melee and tank classes have had little or no changes made to their weapons. Slow effect added to Berserker’s Rending Labrys.

• Limit Charge is now also generated every time a Heritor spends a point of Aether.
  • More than one playtest came back showing that Limit Breaks were hard to actually get to use. Almost impossible for a lot of players, really. Adding a new, easy way to get Limit Charge will help with that a lot.
    

• Aether quantity has been reduced by -1 for all classes across the board. Casters and Healers now have 5 max Aether, ranged and melee now have 3 max Aether, and tanks now have 2 max Aether. Health has been unchanged.

• The GM Turn was reworked to include enemy activations, allowing the GM to activate a number of enemies equal to the number of Heritors in play each turn. These enemies can move 1 range and then either inflict their harm or use one of their moves.
  • Boss monsters can be activated twice if there are an insufficient number of non-boss monsters to cover the GM’s normal allotment of enemy activations.
  • This combined with the reduction to aether pools and changes to player action economy means that healing in combat will be more important and viable, giving healer characters more to do.

• The Drop table has been reworked to the following: 1-2: Coin & Treasure - gain 10 Gilt, 3-5: Aether Crystal - Recover 1 Aether, 6: Essence Crystal - Recover 1 HP.
  • The 16% reduced chance of getting HP essence further enhances the importance of healing in combat and using consumable items.

• Added a choice of two elements to every Heritor power except Black Magus powers whose powers each remain single-element. Another exception is Summoner, who has 2 powers that can count as any element instead of just your choice between 2 elements.
  • Black magi have gotten slight buffs to two of their powers (Foul Scourge and Glacial Shock). Black Magus was already quite powerful, but has become even more so comparatively, as most other casters had slight nerfs to their offensive powers to bring them more in line with melee characters (and to accommodate the other adjustments to the combat system). 

• Removed the Overcharge system entirely. It was extra guff that added very little, took up space, and was rarely used at-table. With the changes to other parts of the system it started looking more and more superfluous.

• Slow property greatly worsened to make up for the fact that its effect is overall lessened by weapon attacks no longer being essentially guaranteed every turn. Slow triggers on attack rolls of 1-4 instead of only rolls of 1-2 (or automatically if a part of a power, as before).

• Errant instances of “Bloody” tags replaced with the correct “Bleeding” tag.

• Reworked the advancement buys to reflect the new stat balances and dynamics of the game, reducing the maximum number of buys down to 20 total.

• Made some changes (mostly buffs) to healer spells.
  • Healer Limit Break improved to heal 4 Health immediately, up from 3.
  • Clarified the text of White Magus’ Asylum to specify that the healing is tied to the area around them, and not a fire-and-forget buff like Esuna-Regen.
  • Holy of Holies healing and damage both increased to 2.
  • Academician’s Bellator Tacticum improved to 2 healing.
  • Barrier Equation improved to 3 temporary armor. 
  • Increased Benefic Arcana’s range to Far.
  • Changed Cross Spread’s text to read: “One close ally may either heal 2 HP or 1 HP and inflict +2 Harm with their next attack. ”
  • Improved the healing of both of Benefic Arcana’s options by +1 each.
  • Improved the healing component of Stellar Conjunction to 2 HP, but shortened the distance of the healed target to Close.