Okay, now that I'm done with my AC6 hiatus, let's return to design. I am re-examining my playbooks for Heroes By Hearthlight, a Forged in the Dark game inspired by D&D and other such fantasy nonsense. I'm going through my personal experiences with the classes and what role and fantasy they are meant to serve at the table. Then I look through my playbook's abilities to see if we need to shake things up. There's been a few of these now- check em out!
Okay let me get the low hanging fruit out of the way here.
So there's a big problem when it comes to Clerics. You NEED one in D&D. They are your healer, your support... and a lot of people simply do not want to play one because it is thrust upon them. And even if you do play one then your party might push you towards being a life cleric to maximize the amount you can heal them and at that point you might as well just let them write up your character and make your rolls, right? There are other classes that have access to healing spells but being able to channel is different, it gives a separate pool just for healing. No one else has that and coupling it WITH healing spells and you have the most potential output. This is even more pronounced in Pathfinder where Channel Positive Energy is the most effective healing ability from level 1 to level 10. However any good or neutral cleric has access to it there so at least you are free to go nuts with gods and domains. Once again, you want to be a cleric of lust and revenge? Go for it- here's 3+CHA healing channels for you! So this is the big thing right? Clerics need to have healing and it should make them special, but I want it to feel like having a cleric changes things in your favor- but not that you NEED one in order to play HbH.
The other thing that comes up as an issue is... religion. So this is an echo chamber situation for me but a lot of people I run with are not fond of it- well they aren't fond of christianity. And this is again a thing where I have run with small groups of people. No one I know watches Yellowstone- that doesn't stop the show from being massively popular. But people don't really want to be playing games proselytizing at the other players. So I tried to think about how I would want a cleric to be. They are healers. They support others, not just in combat but emotionally. While a Paladin is going off on a grand quest for their god, clerics are with the people taking care of them. They are leaders in their communities because people listen to them, not because they've seized control.
So this feels like they are going to have a good amount of support abilities and moves that will let them operate as the party face. I am fairly certain I've got that covered. The main thing I'm worried about is that there isn't enough wow factor in the playbook.
As for personal history I have played a LOT of clerics. I'm usually the player at the table who will go last and let others pick out what they are doing so I can find something that fills in the holes. I think there can be a lot of fun to use this to make a sort of prompt for your character and build it from there. We don't have a rogue or a healer? Alright, let's make a cleric of the god of thieves, pick up disable device, and boost my dex way up. This was something I really loved about Pathfinder is that there were so many domains and unlike 5e you got to pick two of them. You could make one to fit just about any spec you need and have a completely different vibe. Personal shoutouts to Deschain Montehaven, my cleric of Selune who ran in one of my groups longest games and he remains in my head even now. That party left things off fighting Illithids on another plane so it's really tempting to just make him for another BG3 playthrough (I'm real interested how that would interact with Shadowheart).... Okay, let's get into some mechanics.
Our power is CHANNEL, naturally, and you can spend a charge to reduce harm down a level. This is pretty much unprecedented in FitD games as they usually do not let you just heal on a mission. You can usually find abilities that let you ignore harm penalties but not things that will just heal you. While this does grant a huge bonus- you can only heal 1 harm down a level per charge. At maximum strength that's gonna be 4 levels of harm, enough to save someone's life if you have the right position. The key thing here is that you aren't just channeling to heal everyone at all times, you are doing triage. Heroes by Hearthlight is made to be pretty deadly, enemies can throw out serious harm. Health Potions are common gear that let your ignore a harm penalty for a roll. So you have a options for dealing with the issues, this is pretty much the only ability that will treat the cause. It's powerful but I also haven't seen playtesters thinking they NEED it in their party.
However, we need to talk about AURA OF PEACE, our push ability which makes it maybe TOO good? When you push you can do one of two things, the first one ceases hostilities if just for a moment. I love that one and it really suits the cleric. The other option makes your Channel affect all nearby allies.
Don't worry, this won't be the last time I feel like an idiot while writing about this class.
So... do I get rid of this? Like it really works with what we expect of a cleric. Now they can blast healing out and help everyone at once at a stress cost... but it essentially multiplies the amount of healing they are capable of by the number of party members. I am torn, is this the power boost clerics need to be cool and fulfill their power fantasy? Is it TOO good? I think right now I'll just take the coward's way out and leave it- hopefully I can get some playtest feedback on how the audience feels.
Nope, I've changed my mind. So here's the thing, this is a game BUILT for multiclassing and taking abilities from other playbooks. One of my big rules is that besides the "alternate power" ability each class has- any other playbook should be able to take it and use it. If someone else took aura of peace, then they wouldnt be able to use the second half at all. So it needs to go. I'll figure out what I want to do for the second half in a moment but the question becomes... do I make the Cleric like the Berserker? Should Channel become "Heal a harm down 1 level. Push yourself to affect more than one nearby ally"... again playtesting is gonna be key here. Still glad I somewhat sorted this out. We will return to Aura of Peace once I've examined the other abilities and I see what we need.
Okay let's get the other problem child out of the way. DIVINE INTERVENTION is a repeat. It's the exact same ability as the ranger's STEP INTO THE STORM...
I have been working on this game for over a year at this point- I am FURIOUS that this somehow got by me this long. Not only me but no one who has played the game ever noticed this. Like I get it, there's 96 special abilities in this game- I made twice as many playbooks as most FitD games... but I was CERTAIN I'd sorted any of this sort of thing before I first hit publish. Okay so, one of them is going to lose it. The problem is it works really well for either class with different flavoring. Right now I'm leaning on letting the Ranger have it. Which does give Cleric an open slot for something potentially juicy.
The cleric's alt fire ability is DESTROY UNDEAD which lets them spend a charge of channel to attack all undead in area rolling the Will score. I like this a lot- it gives the cleric a powerful attack (area spells are always good) but more than that it is based off their Will rather than Strike or Volley- all clerics start off with points in Charm and Perception and start with a Will of at least 2. The only thing I think needs changing here is... I want to open it up. I like the idea of letting a player choose a foe type and being able to strike at them in particular. This game lets you roll up your most common foes for your realm and while undead are REALLY common on those charts I like the idea of creating flavor for your god by deciding who their foes are.
MY LORD'S DOMAIN is one of the best multiclass abilities in the game. You get to pick a spell and have it prepared on every adventure for free. While anyone can prepare basic spells in this game- warlocks, sorcerers, and wizards all get access to heavy and rote spell slots. Rotes don't run out and are usually magic that fills in for a tool or weapon. Heavy spells take up more gear and can only be used once but are more powerful. Having access to them is the main thing arcane classes have going. By taking this you get to just have one. Always have a fireball in your back pocket. Why carry a bow when you can cast magic missile now? But I also like how this represents the kind of magic your god would give you. It also creates an easy way for other players to take an ability rewarding whatever faith their characters have. Also yes, I'm sure some Wizards will take this for absolute MAXIMUM spell slots. Love this one- print it.
PURE OF HEART and COMFORT AND SUPPORT are your social moves. Pure of Heart gives you potency when speaking honestly and from the heart. This paints the picture of that soft supportive cleric I talked about before. But it doesn't stop a different type of cleric from using this with intimidation to talk about how badly they want to murder someone. You just need to be open and honest- I never said you had to be nice. Comfort and Support lets you and a party member clear 1 stress when your provide insight or advice that they follow. This is a really easy way to clear stress but it requires you both roleplaying and making choices. The name of his move comes from MASKS The New Generation, my favorite TTRPG. In that game the move would trigger whenever you comfort or support someone in the fiction you can roll to help them. And obviously over the course of play people would trigger it just by playing their characters- so it became something of a meme in my group to have others point out "COMFORT AND SUPPORT" so people would you know... actually roll dice on the move they were triggering. I hope this works like that, where characters will naturally become supportive of each other in a way where the cleric is just able to help them through roleplay without even meaning to trigger the move. Obviously, this is also a move Monks will enjoy stealing.
GUIDANCE lets you spend 2 stress when assisting another to grant them both +1d and potency. As BG3 has taught us, maybe even more than healing, the most vital role of the cleric is to cast guidance. This is a classic FitD move that boosts assisting and it was an obvious fit for the cleric.
SEEKING A SIGN is one that's very fun to me but your mileage could vary. It lets you ask your god a question once per session and have the GM respond with a portent of things to come. I like the idea of being able to just ask for help by having your god answer a question but that gets dangerous real quick. "HEY GOD! WHO MURDERED LORD EMBERMARROW?" "WHO DID THE CHANGELING IMPERSONATE?" That kind of carte blanche can kill any subtlety or mystery, so letting the GM drop a hint that a cleric can misinterpret is a lot more fun and keeps things going. It's the difference between asking for a hint and looking up a walkthrough when you are stuck in a video game, we want to let them find the answers.
Okay, so honestly Cleric has some issues but it doesn't need the full rework that Monks did. We've got one ability slot open and the other half of a push to write. We can do this!
Okay, so I was looking who I could steal from- like all great artists. And found a push ability I love from the Iruvia playbooks. The Janissary has the ability to push and pull someone from to freedom. Let's go ahead and broaden that to pull someone from danger. It's a good heroic use. The fighter can protect an area but this let's the cleric move someone out of the area. Think I will probably wind up just renaming this move SANCTUARY.
And since we are in a stealing mood, Scum and Villainy has a move called UNDER PRESSURE that we can adapt over. Something like "When a player suffers level 2 harm, gain Advantage". The player hast to have suffered that level harm not reduced it to level 1- but this creates a really good silver lining for player's taking heavy hits.
Alright, cool. I can rock with all this!
Let's do some fucking comics.
I've already mentioned Wicked + Divine for bard but it has some really interesting conversations about divinity in it so I'll bring it up here again. A funny thing about comics is I think its maybe easier to find stories ABOUT gods than stories about the faithful. That being said though...
MOON KNIGHTby Lemire & Smallwood. BUT ALSO
MOON KNIGHTby McKay - I can hear my friends groaning BUT DID YOU THINK YOU COULD GET AWAY WITHOUT ME TALKING ABOUT MOON KNIGHT?! We have two BANGER runs here. Lemire and Smallwood create a standalone series that tells one of the best Moon Knight tales that both recounts his origins while also delving into his mind. The show cribbed a lot from this AND THEY SHOULD. It asks interesting questions with faith when your god makes demands of you and how much your faith in them really matters when they have a job for you to do. McKay's run is the current one and could wind up being my favorite MK series if it sticks the landing. It feature Moon Knight actually being a priest and tending to people in his charge. It also has one of my favorite tropes: superheroes in therapy. It finally addresses Mark's history and faith- he is the son of a rabbi, what did it mean for him to throw all that away to serve a different god? It rules. Also, expect to see McKay come back later.
THOR by Aaron - THE Thor run. This one went on for years and covered a wide swath of topics. But I really want to draw attention to the first two arcs which are specifically about gods and faith. The comic opens with Thor answering a prayer on another world and bringing rain to a desert planet. It's something we haven't really seen up to that point and the comic just makes its thesis that Thor is a god and can hear and respond to prayers. This is the one "book about a God" I will put on the list because I think it does so much interesting stuff with divinity. Also a lot of fantasy settings let gods be people you can interact with in ways that could be very compelling if done right.
ETERNALS by Gillen and Ribic - Man, today's recommendations are just comics I never shut up about huh? Okay, so this run pretty much got made because the Eternals movie was coming out. The big problem is Gillen finally found a way to make the Eternals work as both characters and a construct- and the movie DESPERATELY needed that. It's such a weird ouroboros situation where the tie in material was what would have been the inspiration the originator needed. Anyway, whats an Eternal? It's a robotic angel made by space gods when they came to our planet. They experimented on early life- so there's humans, essentially the control group/base. Deviants who are constantly changing, each one a singular species. And Eternals are unchanging arbiters there to keep the experiment running and in check. Each one was designed for a certain function, if they die they resurrect, and they are hard programmed with laws to keep them doing their jobs. The problem is that they've recently discovered the space gods that made them, don't care about them. They were not a chosen people, they are the command functions. How do you continue on when you discover that your people, your whole existence, was just to safeguard the people your gods did care about. You can see the angelic parallels here. Some really excellent bones to chew on for your next cleric and opens up some fun ways for your GM to play your god.