Cryptic Correspondence
March 21st, 2011
Cleric Week was an unmitigated success. None of us here at the office were terribly excited about it (we're more of the wizard-style of necromancer, when you get right down to it, and we don't get along with those deity-loving, positive-energy-channeling types), but it generated a lot more mail and hype than we typically see. As a result, we've put a new divine-magic-oriented book into production (named The Book of Faith, due for release on April 4th), since clerics seem to be something that you would like to see get the NNW treatment.
While all of the mail and feedback we got was friendly and positive, some of it was more in the realm of critical advice (something we're also always happy to receive, by the way) than anything else. I wanted to take an article to respond to some of this feedback, not just because it gets me out of coming up with an article for the week, but because I think that some very good points were raised, and I'd like the opportunity to address them. Here is the letter in question:
Hi Alex,
Nice creation with the Miracle Worker, couldn't help thinking:
Divine Boon = One-shot, bazookoid cannon every four levels ??
I would have made the class ability less powerful but accessible more frequently, for example say "Limited Wish" as a Spell-like available once a week....just my 2p.
The Recurring Boon is almost the opposite, having a "Miracle" as a spell-like once a week is almost over-powered. Finding the right balance is very tricky with Pathfinder...
Prophet's Step = nice flavor but many PCs can gain the "Fly" ability by 8th (Witches at 5th, Dragon Disciple by 9th etc..), so probably not really necessary.
Saint's Resurrection = intermittent regeneration..."My God ! This thing won't die" ! Too overpowered in my book. Having True Res at level 10 is way OTT (don't forget this is a Level 9 spell so only accessible by a Level 17 Cleric and you want to put this into a Level 10 finale ?!?).
Keep up the good work though. Enjoyed the Valkyrie class too...Have you thought about collating all the classes you created into one PDF reference document ? Would be most useful rather than gamers looking up separate web pages sporadically...
I want to point out really quick before going on that there are some good points brought up here, and even though I'm going to spend the rest of the article explaining why I chose to go in another direction, I think it's important to say that these positions are at least as valid as my own, and this isn't so much an issue of who's right or wrong or which method is best, but about the reasoning behind the decisions that were made.
Firstly, in regards to the point on divine boon: personally, I like abilities that allow you to sort of "save up" your power and release it in one impressive burst. I'm always looking for a balanced way to give people access to spells before they should be able to get them—it's exciting to be able to play with high-level spells and abilities at low levels. The easiest way to balance that is to limit its use severely, which is what I was doing here.
Your suggestion isn't that far off of what I went with: limited wish is really only "limited" in an academic sense, as it's nearly as powerful as wish or miracle. Of course, once a character hit level 13 (or 6 levels in the class) it wouldn't really be that exciting, rendering the last divine boon kind of pointless.
As for once a week instead of every so-many levels, I feel that this ability is powerful enough that it warrants a tighter control than a time-based one. What do I mean by that? Well, time in a game of D&D is pretty relative, and isn't tied directly to progress. One game might level up once or twice in a week (game-time) of play, while another might level up seven times, or not at all. More importantly, if you have a limited wish once a week, well, you may very well never go adventuring again, but instead spend your time hanging around in town and waiting for your next boon (or else just "re-charging" boons between adventures). That sort of thing is O.K. with curing diseases, or what have you, but with something like wishes, well…
As for recurring boon, I think you may be overestimating its power: ultimately, it amounts to an extra 9th-level spell slot each day (which has to be spent on miracle), and effectively 25,000 gp per week. It's powerful, sure…but I don't think it's going to break the game. If anything is overpowered here, it's the 25,000 gp per week, not the one extra spell slot each day. After all, think of all the extra spell slots they would have if they took some levels in mystic theurge, instead.
You're completely right about prophet's step: it's just there for flavor. It's a pretty hard case to argue that constant air walk and water walk matters at 15th level (minimum). It's really there because I liked the flavor, and needed an ability to fill a level (so the class would be fun), but which wouldn't be overly powerful (since we're already pushing it with this class already, especially at the end). It may not be mechanically powerful, but I know that some people will really like it, and, after all, it's important to cater to your whole audience. Some people like cool flavor a lot more than powerful mechanics, and we try to have a good mix of both form and function with everything we do.
Finally, saint's resurrection: once again, I think there was some slight confusion here. Based on the class's prerequisites, you need to be 7th-level before you can become a miracle worker, which means that a 10th-level miracle worker is actually a 17th-level character. Bearing in mind that they really do have access to true resurrection (presumably, at least: I suppose other divine classes may not have it, and there's no restriction that says that the miracle worker has to be a cleric), I'm not sure that, essentially, a free contingency once a month (coupled with waiving the 25,000 gp material component) is quite so overpowered. If you use up your saint's resurrection, then the next time you're dead you're dead. Really, it's the rest of the group who benefits: once the healer/resurrecter dies, everything always seems to fall apart, in my experience at least.
As for a handy-dandy From the Workshop compilation book…it's not a bad idea. I've heard it from a couple of places now, and the desire to have more portable content is behind the alternate .pdf versions for Masters and Minions (and sometimes From the Workshop). I don't want to make any promises, but, well, let's just say we're listening.
Here’s another piece of mail I’d like to address, as long as you’re all here:
Mr. Riggs,
My name is Brian Berg, and I'm the co-owner of TPK Games. I have recently revisited your work, and I must say that I really like what I'm seeing. I am eagerly looking forward to trying out War of the Goblin King.
We are going to eventually try our hand at some PF OGL products, and I was wondering if you would be willing to share with us what Paizo and DriveThru charge you for selling your products on their site? I've read some very good tips on your site before, and thought you might be a good person to ask.
Anyway, I would really appreciate a response, and we all wish you
continued success.
-Brian "Necroblivion" Berg
Co-Owner, TPK Games
I tried to write Mr. Berg back, but kept getting errors saying that it couldn't be delivered. So, let me just say to everyone who might be reading: working with paizo and drivethrurpg has been simple and easy. They both have representatives who are very friendly and helpful, and have been nothing but fair to us in our dealings. As far as "charging," the service is free, but they take a percent of the sales. The exact numbers escape me, but if I remember correctly we get 65% of our revenue at drivethrurpg and 70% of our revenue at paizo. In fairness to drivethrurpg, if you agree to be exclusive with them, their rate gets better, and they have a number of really cool publishing tools available.
Hopefully that answers your question, and, if not, I urge you to get in touch with either drivethrurpg or paizo, as, again, they're full of very friendly people.
Finally, I wanted to address some concerns we’ve gotten since the release of our book A Necromancer’s Grimoire: Marchen der Daemonwulf. In the foreword for that book, I said that we had a lot of ideas we wanted to include in the book, but, due to size constraints, weren’t included, and would be seen in a future supplement. Some of you took this to mean that we have a bunch of content for that book already written up and ready to go, but which we chose not to include because we wanted the book to be smaller. I just wanted to clear up that misconception.
Everything that we designed for the book made it in. We’re not hoarding content for future books. We just knew when we started that we were only looking at a relatively short book, and so we needed to decide what sorts of things we were going to make for it. There were a lot of good ideas, but we weren’t going to have time to make all of them, if we wanted to get Marchen der Daemonwulf out on time, not to mention Secrets of the Staff, or Ancient Warriors: Way of the Ninja. Though we have enough werewolf ideas for a much larger book, we chose the ones that we thought would fit the book best, made those, and put down the others to be made at another date, then moved on to the next book. Believe me, we always like to see as much content as we can in any given book, and aren’t likely to deliberately hold out on content we’ve already written.
Anyway, I'd just like to thank everyone for coming by every week and reading our articles, and an extra-special thanks to everyone who takes the time to write to us.
Thanks for reading another Dark Designs, everyone. Join me next week for Fey week, when we’ll be giving a closer look to those icons of folklore. In the meantime, always be sure to listen to constructive criticism: after all, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?