Sabre 2.7 update and February Devblog

Hello all, this month we have a few tweaks and additions to the core system, and an update on that pesky scifi system that refuses to be ready for release.

Leadership is something I've wanted to expand upon for some time now, so I've added a bunch of new talents pegged to using Luck Points, which are themselves linked to high Charisma. They let you play a party support role and make high CHA characters very useful (it's not always a dump stat!)

In addition to this, I've modified the penalties for playing a character of the Young age category. Now they're just lower on Strength, which makes more sense, but to compensate for this and their lower starting skill points, they can learn new skills at half the usual time and cost. This should make younger characters more interesting to play, instead of having to deal with a lot of negatives to stats and skills with no upside.

Finally, I tweaked the bonus you get from your Damage Modifier to your Brawn skill. It was a bit bonkers having a +10% result bonus per point, so I've pegged that back to 2%. Soon, I'll be going through the Bestiary to update the monsters with this and a few other tweaks, but for now this will do.

Scifi

So, I nearly gave up on releasing the scifi game, as the art issue was really bothering me. My style isn't yet professional quality, and pushing myself to lift my style is wearing me out. With all the projects I've been juggling I decided to delay further development indefinitely, until I could scrounge together enough money to pay a proper artist to get the art done. Creating a Kickstarter campaign to generate the money needed to pay an artist to do the job was very appealing too, but after I had some time to think about it, I realise I'm not too far off in terms of art quality and I just need to keep practicing and get these done. There are ten species, so that's ten pieces, and I have three completed as of today.

This third piece I just finished is an alien race and it's been very challenging, as I have been designing the look as well as creating the image itself. So much for getting all this done by the end of the month! Some species will be easier than others, such as androids (basically human in appearance) while others will be very challenging indeed. At least my style is evolving, no longer needing the heavy outlines I've been using in earlier works. So when I get all of these done, and a cover for the Encounters manual, then it's ready for release. I'm hoping that'll be before April but I'm not going to give hard dates anymore! I now understand why developers of games often miss release dates or just give a generic Soon(TM) for when it's going to get done. Rest assured it's being worked on and it's going to happen in the near future!

v2.7 Premium Codex Changes

* Brawn skill bonus when grappling or other contests of strength is now +2% per DM point.

* Herbs and Poisons moved to their own section in the manual.

* Replaced mentions of 'Tincture' with 'Tonic' (basically the same thing, more commonly used word).

* 'Strong Back' talent now requires 50% Endurance skill, and can be taken additional times.

* The 'Engineering' skill is now part of the 'Lore' skill.

* 'Assault Formation' and 'Defensive Formation' Leadership manoevures now have a 5 metre range.

* Removed 'Leaders Luck' leadership manoevure.

* Added 'Leaders Luck', 'Battle Hardened', 'Comrade in Arms', 'Legendary Leader' and 'Not on my watch' leadership talents.

* 'Blind Sense' talent now also reduces unopposed perception check difficulty penalities by 10%.

* 'Blunt Trauma' club talent causes Hit Point loss, not damage.

* Clarified in the Career stage of character creation that you can't put points into background OR species skills, only new skills that you buy (the idea being to spread skill points around).

* Characters of the Young age category now only have -2 to their STR attribute, and can learn new skills at half their normal cost.

v1.64 Basic Codex Changes