The Champion and the Master | Patreon Weekly #181

Hey Patrons! In this weekly I’m going to talk more about design details for the Duelist, and her two subclasses!

Also, next week’s weekly will have an audio Q&A segment! Feel free to ask questions either here or on the Patreon discord.

Base Class Development

Progress is going well on the Duelist herself. Here’s a little splash art teaser, you might notice more details compared to the last time her art was teased!

One thing I’ve been considering this week is the specific charge mechanic for the duelist’s weapon abilities. I was originally just going to have a simple percentage system, but I think I’ve now changed my mind and want to go with a charge system, similar to wands and the rogue’s cloak. Charges are simpler to parse for the player, are more common (especially with starting equipment), and provide an easy way for me to scale up ability uptime as the game progresses. Probably weapons will start out with 3 max charges and will steadily increase to 10 as the duelist levels up. Most weapon abilities will use one charge, but some might use 2 or 3.

Now here are some more subclass details!

The Champion

As mentioned previously, the Champion is a subclass that directly enhances the Duelist’s starter ability, by letting her equip two weapons at once! One of the main benefits of this is being able to get two weapons worth of ability use, but I’d like to try and add some true dual wielding combat mechanics too.

One major sticking point on this is going to be making dual wielding feel powerful without making it actually busted though. Obviously just getting two weapons outright is extremely OP, but there are other subtleties as well. For instance, without some limiter on upgraded off-hand weapons, the Champion’s power will be highly dependent on finding a second naturally upgraded weapon. I really don’t want to have to balance the subclass around the assumption that the secondary weapon is +2.

Of course, limiting things too heavily will make the Champion feel underwhelming though, there’s definitely a balance to be struck here.

The Master

I’ve also decided on the second subclass: The Master! This subclass is themed around physical technique and martial arts. I opted not to call this subclass the Monk, as I don’t want to railroad it into light armor and unarmed combat, though that definitely should be an option.

The general idea for this subclass is to behave a bit like the Gladiator, where ability points are built up during combat. These points can then be spent on a number of abilities, mainly focused around utility and defense. To help differentiate, the limitations on building these points will probably be more relaxed than the Gladiator, but the abilities will be a bit weaker as a result.