Tacticians Academy: Advancement 101
MOTHERSHIP FREEBIE: Cosmoptics "Rogue" FR2 J2C-II ship!
Having a character grow and change over time is really key to a lot of TTRPGs and Tacticians of Ahm is no exception in that regard. With the leveling design for Ahm, I wanted to lean into the game’s inspirations of attempting to streamline things like Final Fantasy’s Job system and DnD 3e multi-classes/prestige classes down to their core essence so it stays quick and easy at the table but retains as much of the feel of building your character along a rewarding path.
When creating a character, you select a class (which dictates your starting Health, Speed, Damage and Base Attack pattern), Aptitude (check/save sats) Increase, and one Ability (from the class you leveled).
After creation, when you Advance you may level any eligible Class. Right now, all 4 Classes are eligible to any character at any time, inviting multi-classing. When you take a level, you simply select a new ability from that Class. Your Health, Speed, Damage and Base Attack only shift to another Class when it’s overtaken the levels you have in your previously most-leveled Class. So if a character started Mage 2 and then leveled Fighter 3 times, on the last level up their Health, Speed, Damage and Base Attack would now become that of a Fighter (though they retain any trained Abilities from any Class forever).
At every 3rd level, you take +1 to a Stat of your choice. This helps you develop and improve beyond just Abilities and Aptitude Bonuses and opens up a lot of unique build possibilities while still being really simple. A level 6 Rogue who took the Damage increase twice for example would be a proficient Assassin with a powerful backstab but wouldn’t have nearly the utility of one who took a Health and Speed bonus instead, for example. And that’s without considering the specific Abilities either took for all of those levels.
I am hoping to incentivize the multi-classing potential as well by adding streamlined Prestige Classes soon. These Classes would have a requirement, but unlike the typically quite involved prerequisites of games like DnD and Pathfinder, these would be much simpler to achieve and plan for. Instead of needing “14 Intelligence or Better, 10+ Levels of Cleric, Good alignment and proficiency with heavy armor” for something like a War Priest, you would need “Cleric 3, Fighter 2.” Multiclassing itself can be extremely useful already in the game - having more heals never hurts or being able to throw a spell across the room with your fighter can be clutch in the right situation, especially one where a single point of damage or a key bit of positioning can make all the difference in a fight.
My aim is to make a system where bringing just a 3 Ability/Weapon kit into each and every fight means that you can feel better about being a jack-of-all-trades by opening your utility across a campaign and worrying less about min-maxing your effect in a single fight (but that option will still be there for those players that want that maximum damage or maximum speed approach). Plus, more and more options would open to you at higher levels in terms of Prestige Classes as well and leveling this way could be used to easily support characterizations. For example, a Cleric loosing touch with their faith and becoming more of a mundane Fighter would actually reshape their stats over time to reflect the RP-side change.
Originally, Advancement centered around more free form, table-dictated milestones. In this week’s upcoming playtest, I’m switching instead to a dead simple version of traditional XP-based advancement where 1 battle fought or successfully avoided = 1 XP with additional XP being granted for certain actions, defeating special enemies, etc. The “successfully avoided” aspect is key to me and will be something I’ll likely need to explain a bit further in the text but in my mind, if the GM or adventure had prepared an encounter and the players are able to avoid it through smart play, diplomacy, etc. then they should still be rewarded for that. While Tacticians of Ahm is a combat-oriented game overall, it is not a game where only combat is rewarded.
In my longer-running weekly campaign, one character destroyed a number of ancient, evil texts they uncovered and that rewarded extra XP. Another found a secret tunnel allowing the group to bypass a whole area of the dungeon, bypassing several encounters. When the group could have overlooked or left a powerful undead priest to fester in the hills, they instead chose to come back in force and purge him from the region entirely. All of those granted additional XP.
I’ve started doing public playtests on top of the ongoing weekly playtest campaign as well so expect a lot of changes and developments between now and the game’s final form. I really want to get the core machinery on this game 100% before I start to build everything I want on top of it.
Next Up: Corrupt1on 101!
NEW PHYSICAL RELEASES
Last week, I launched my new storefont via Plus One Exp as part of their Independent Collective. As a designer, this means I get to spend more time creating and less time doing backend service and fulfillment work while also having a considerably higher payout to me than traditional wholesale to retailers. Simply put, this is the best place to guarantee that the most of your purchase actually helps support me directly.
As part of the launch, both Corpo Culture Killed My Dog (my lo-fi, in-universe space punk zine for Mothership) and Tunnels in White (my Liminal Horror adventure of corporate and cosmic horror) are now available in print!
In the coming weeks, the rest of my catalog (including The Bloodfields at Blackstar Station and The Mole on PIRAD ONE) will be coming to the storefront. Going forward, it will be where my new modules and games first hit print!
MISSIVE EXCLUSIVE
Over in Mothership 1e land, the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit just released to backers (and pre-orderers) which means it’s been on my mind and the mind of a lot of Mothership fans lately so I decided to knock out my first attempt at a third-party ship using the new rules and structure laid out in the SBT.
The Rogue is a fast and light stealth ship, using by small black ops units, brokers of sensitive information, or anyone looking to fly well below the radar.
MORE COOL STUFF
Disaster Tourism has a new quarterly zine coming up that is accepting submissions for short fiction, photography, art, and more. Dead Horse’s first issue is themed around “unsettling horror.” It’s going to be a TTRPG-adjacent zine that isn’t solely focused on adventures, stat blocks, etc. I think it’s going to be really cool! You should SUBMIT!
I’m writing an adventure for You’re in Space and Everything’s Fucked! It’s a comedic corporate horror slasher where you are service workers as a space theme park that’s under siege by its own corp so they can write it off on their taxes as an “unforeseeable failure.” The game is on Kickstarter now, and we’ve already hit the goals! Check it out!
I also recently got to play You’re in Space and Everything’s Fucked on stream!
I am going to be writing a mission as part of Triangle Agency’s year-long adventure subscription, THE VAULT. I’m so stoked to be a part of this killer lineup. It’s going to be a monthly mission for a full calendar year to folks who back at that level or pick it up after the fact so it’s a full year of missions for you and your group. Pretty incredible support for a game. You can follow the upcoming Kickstarter HERE.
See you next month and thanks so much, as always, for your support! - Christian
Absolutely hyped for your continued work!
Multiclassing is such a cool feat, love what you're scheming