Class From Scratch: The Shadow! (Patreon)

Hey folks! Matt Colville here!

We’re covered a lot of ground so far on this patreon and obviously you all now have the first packet, so you can actually play the game! And I can imagine a distant future where “how we designed this game” is no longer the primary thrust of this patreon, and it’s more about sharing products at various stages of development.

But that time is not now! 😀 Looking back and what we’ve already covered I realized we’d never talked about how we go about building a class from scratch. How do we go from nothing and end up with something?

Let’s use the Shadow as an example.

Not From Nothing

This is one of the persistent lessons from this series. I think for someone on the outside it can seem intimidating to invent all this stuff “from scratch,” but in reality we’re never starting from 0. Just like we started development with a pretty clear idea what KIND of game we wanted to make, when we start with a class we have that same head start.

We knew our game was going to have a Thiefy/Roguey class in it, and we knew we wanted it to be more explicitly fantastical than a d20 fantasy “I have sneak attack” Rogue. There’s an existing archetype of the thief/assassin who is a master of shadow-magics, and we liked that. That’s a strong archetype and we get excited by the chance to implement that archetype for our game.

That’s really how new classes come into being. We know the game is going to have a class like this and at some point, usually while we’re working on something else, we realize “Oh! The Shadow should have an ability that lets them….!” Often we’re working on one general rule, and we realize it would be a cool idea if this class or that class broke that rule.

We know we’re gonna have to design the Shadow sooner or later but in the meantime we’re working on, say, Initiative. How Does Initiative Work? And while we’re noodling on the Initiative rules, someone says “Oh it’d be cool if the Shadow [who does not exist yet] could just DECIDE to go immediately after another Hero.”

That IS cool! So that person, in this case me, just opens up a new Google Doc and uses that inspiration to start a first draft of this new class.

But a class has a lot of components and details, and can be a lot of work! So, we start by…ignoring most of it!

Don’t Sweat The Details

I’m not the lead designer, that’s James. James has ALL the rules in his head, he’s the one who decides “how does health work?” How much health do different classes start with? How does this new change to our damage roll affect everyone’s starting health? How much damage does a Melee Striker do compared to a Melee Tank or a Ranged Striker?

So at this early stage, I’m not worried about any of that. I don’t need to invent “how much health does a Shadow start with?” I know when I’m done with my first draft I can give it to James and he’ll dial those numbers in.

In other words, I know the Shadow should start with “relatively little” health compared to, say, a Fury, but I don’t know exactly what “relatively little health” means right now? So I don’t even bother with that. My first draft won’t have any of that info in it. James will fill that stuff in.

Also, these details aren’t what define the Shadow. Its abilities define it, and that’s what I’m excited to get started on.

The Juice

All classes have an array of different things they can do, not all of them are 100% focused on Fighting Monsters. Like, eventually the Shadow might get an ability that lets all allies within 5 squares use the Shadow’s stealth roll for sneaking around. No die roll required, it just works. Shadows can make people more sneaky just by being around them. Maybe the ability is called “Move Like I Move,” to sell the idea that this isn’t magical, it’s just that the Shadow is so good at sneaking, they help OTHER people sneak better by example.

That’s cool, but it’s not a core ability. It doesn’t help you fight monsters. 😀 The Tactician and Troubadour will probably get different abilities that help them in Negotiation. The Mage probably has abilities that help with Research and Crafting. It’s all super cool! But it’s not core.

For this 1st level First Draft, we need abilities that help sell the core fantasy of the Shadow. Or prove the archetype will work. Remember these classes come with evocative names and cool illustrations designed to inspire new players. So when they actually read the class abilities? Those abilities need to deliver on the promise the art and name are making. The player thinks “Oh I bet this class can do a bunch of….,” and then they read the actual abilities and it DOES do those things. Ideally, it does even cooler stuff a new player hadn’t thought of!

That’s the juice. Those core abilities that sell you on the fantasy of the class. They need to be effective, and flavorful and that is what the First Draft is.

So you open a google doc, or a spreadsheet, and just start inventing stuff.

The Trigger

There’s no right place to start and I don’t remember exactly which ability we invented first, but all classes have a Trigger, so for this post that’s a good place to start.

Triggers are in-combat abilities designed to be used every round (remember, a round is “everyone on both sides taking one turn”). They’re different from a 5E reaction only in that they are designed to be broadly useful. 5E reactions are much more situational. And it may be that as you level up you get more triggers and some of these can be more situational. But 1st level, your trigger needs to be the kind of thing that’s going to come up most rounds.

The Shadow is a “squishy.” A glass cannon. High Mobility, High Damage, Low Health. But! It’s also a melee hero! There may be ranged Shadow subclasses and you may be able to customize your 1st level Shadow with some ranged abilities, but for this first draft, we can’t have any customization. We need to prove the core idea works before we can start thinking about how the player might customize it.

So! Squishy hero, easy to kill, needs to be in melee. But! Only on their terms. The Shadow moving into melee with an enemy? That’s fine. Someone else moving into melee with the Shadow? Danger! Alert! Something horrible is about to happen!

In this context, seems obvious that a good idea for a trigger would be a “get out of jail free” card. The Shadow is all about using shadow-magics, so I just write this:

This was the original design of the Shadow’s trigger, back when you were Overwhelmed when 3 or more enemies were adjacent to you. We don’t (currently!) have an Overwhelmed rule, but the principle is the same. Someone moves into an adjacent square, you do damage to everyone next to you, and teleport away.

Maybe the damage is too good, and just “you teleport away” is good enough? But that’s not the goal here. Let future testing determine which ability is “too good” and why, for this first draft make it cool! Make it awesome! So! You do some free damage to all those poor souls foolish enough to think they can get the drop on you, and you teleport away! Ideally to safety!

This was easy to do, it took a total of maybe three minutes and arrived as you see it here straight out of my brain. There were no other steps. At the end of the day, you just need to start making shit up.

Names are important and it took maybe 8 seconds to come up with the name for this ability. It doesn’t make any literal sense. Who is speaking? But it captures the idea that when there’s 3+ enemies all surrounding the Shadow things get hectic and all of a sudden…the Shadow is gone! You could imagine someone trying to explain what happened after the battle. “You idiot! You let them escape!” “I’m sorry boss, I don’t know what happened. I guess in all that confusion they slipped away.”

It’s not literal, it’s not something the Shadow says (though it might represent what they're thinking!) but it’s evocative as hell. It works because, when you read the title it’s a little ambiguous. It’s not even a complete sentence! But then you read how it works and you think “Oohhh, I get it!”

Yeah, that’s what makes a cool power. Mechanically useful, tactically advantageous, evocative name and presentation.

Signature Abilities

Each class has a couple (like, literally two) abilities they can use every turn, they cost nothing and, depending on the class, they might earn you some of your Heroic Resource.

These are called Signature Abilities and we flavor the category by class. So the Shadow’s Signature Abilities are called deceits. Everyone has two because two is the minimum number necessary to give you a choice every round. Then it’s just a question of what two abilities would be broadly useful without being too good. These are free to use, you never run out of these, so they need to be useful, but they’re your least exciting abilities. And the choice needs to be meaningful. It can’t be “one ability you’ll always want to use, and one really situational ability that’s only useful in this one specific situation.”

Your other abilities, the ones that cost your Heroic Resource, they can be very situational.

So, broadly useful but not too good, meaningful choice, and they need to reinforce the fantasy of the class. This is what I came up with.

Both of these abilities do damage, so they’re good for fighting monsters, they both do the SAME damage (that’s not unusual with signature abilities) and they each have an effect. So really it’s the effect that distinguishes them.

Fade lets you attack and then, like I Work Better Alone… lets you get away. A shift is a movement that does not provoke attacks of opportunity, so being able to attack and then get away, for free, should be obviously useful.

I just thought “this class is ABOUT mobility.” Being able to move freely, be where you need to be to inflict maximum damage, but then get away so you don’t get killed. So Fade seemed like a good idea and I just gave it what sounded like a dramatic name. You strike, and fade away. Fade into the background, fade into the distance. Not literally! You’re not hard to see or anything, but the name sells the idea of “losing” your opponent. Getting away from them, before they can react.

This kind of class is called (by me at least) a Harrier. Their defense is their mobility. They can strike and get away all as part of the same action.

Then we want a High Damage ability to sell the notion that the Shadow is a striker. I could have made a Signature Deceit that just does more damage, but that seemed unbalanced to me. Fade does Normal Damage With An Effect (you get to shift) so if your other choice does MORE damage it needs some kind of rider. An asterisk. “More damage IF…” Otherwise it becomes SO useful you’d never use Fade. And I liked the idea that the Shadow is the 1v1 class. The solo class. So I invented an ability that does more damage if you’re the only hero attacking this monster.

“I Work Better Alone” just seemed like a great name for this idea. It sells the idea of the Shadow as the 1v1 class. I imagine as the Shadow levels up they’ll get more abilities that let them pull enemies out of a crowd, abilities that let them withstand a solo monster’s attacks. Really lean in to the idea that the Shadow can pick an enemy, even or maybe especially a boss monster, and basically solo them. High Risk! High reward! But for first level we don’t need all that, we want room to grow, so for now this is enough.

If you’re reading this wondering “yeah but HOW did you decide that?!” There is no answer. I just had an idea and wrote it down. I was inspired. Every post like this, every video, no matter how many people like it or get value out of it, there are always folks who say “I wish he had gone into more detail about HOW he….”

But that imagines things quite wrongly. There is no more detail. I’m not leaving anything out. At a certain point, you just need to make some shit up.

Now, is I Work Better Alone a real final ability? No! This is a first draft! Maybe the Real Shadow doesn't even have that ability! But it’s working so far. And it works even if you’re not alone! Still does damage, just not as much.

We’ve seen players who feel like “well this is my best ability so any round where I’m not doing this extra d8 damage? Is a wasted round.” But in general we suspect those folks are not customers of this game. You’re always going to have some ability that is VERY effective, but more expensive, or more situational. The fun is making those situations happen.

Heroic Resource

Each class gets its own cool resource to manage, that’s a foundational part of the design and hasn’t changed. HOW you get that resource changes all the time, but the basic premise was: your signature abilities grant you a cool resource and your heroic abilities cost that resource.

Some classes, we have an idea for how their resource can or should be unique. Like the fact that the Fury can spend Rage on their Heroic Abilities just like any other class, but they ALSO unlock cool buffs the more Rage they have. No other class works that way (currently). Just having 4 Rage means you are a tougher, faster Fury.

That’s a fun choice for a player. Save their Fury and be more Furious, or SPEND their Fury and be differently Furious. 😀

With the Shadow, I never had any ideas for how their heroic resource might be unique and that didn’t bother me. It just needs to work and be fun. We liked the idea that the Shadow builds insight. Representing their growing understanding of their enemies, learning their weaknesses. Similar in vibe and function to the Tactician’s Focus. That’s fine. The resource doesn’t need to be weird or funky, as long as the Heroic Abilities feel unique and flavorful, then the class will feel unique and flavorful.

We toyed with doom as the name for the Shadow Resource, but we felt like it made the class seem too magic-focused. “Doom” felt like a curse you were putting on your enemy and that’s not this class. Just changing the name back to Insight made Shadow players feel like it was their smarts that won the day, not some magic curse.

Armed with Insight, it was time to figure out the Shadow’s Heroic Deceits.

Heroic Deceits

These are the fun powers that let you break the rules or do something flashy and cool and they can BE powerful and fun because they cost Insight. They’re not free.

This is an important point. Sure, the class needs a good spread of abilities, something low-cost, something medium-cost. But this also means we’re free to just make something really cool, because we were inspired, and not worry too much about whether it’s too powerful. If it’s really powerful? Just costs a lot of insight!

That means we’re free to sort of…make up whatever we think is cool and flavorful, and then balance everything by fiddling with the cost.

But in reality that’s not how we think. We know there’s going to be “three or four” Heroic Abilities and therefore they need a range of costs. You need something cheap, but it still needs to be fun and useful, so make it situational. The situation might be rare, but when it comes up, you can do this really cool thing!

Then you want a couple of medium-cost abilities that are more broadly useful and more expensive. Then an “ult.” The most expensive, and therefore most powerful, “ultimate ability.” The one you’re saving for, when you choose to save your Insight instead of spend it on the cheaper powers. So let’s see what we came up with when we first sat down to make this class.

Here are the first two heroic deceits. Hesitation Is Weakness is probably the most iconic Shadow ability, along with In All This Confusion. It costs 2 insight (so it needs to be a little better/more useful than an ability that costs 1 Insight) and it lets you break the rules!

You already know how initiative works in our game and, under that model, there’s basically no way for two heroes to go one right after the other, except maybe at the end of one round and the beginning of another.

So, something that happens all the time in d20 Fantasy; two heroes acting one right after another, almost NEVER happens in our game. As a result, “two heroes acting one right after another” becomes really powerful. It’s so powerful, it might not even be a 1st level Shadow ability! But it's exactly the kind of thing the Shadow should be doing, so let’s try it at 1st level and see.

It’s a really straightforward ability. Spend 2 Insight, immediately take your turn. We saw folks asking “does this mean I get TWO turns this round?” But we think the rule as written is perfectly clear and unambiguous, folks just get excited there might be a free lunch on offer. 😀

Again, the name helps sell the ability. It’s not like the Shadow says this when they use the ability, but it expresses their point of view. You’re not only learning how the Shadow works, but how they think. You’re learning the philosophy of being a Shadow.

I didn’t spend any time on these names. I think I started with the ability first, then I came up with a name. I might have spent a few minutes wondering “what makes a good Shadow Power Name?” I don’t remember which power was first? But I do remember that once I had the first name, I felt like I knew how to name Shadow powers. I don’t remember there being any debate in my mind, I didn’t brainstorm a list and then winnow it down, I thought “Hesitation Is Weakness! That’s a cool name!” And that pointed in a certain direction so it was easier to come up with other names.

This is another one of those “if you need a more detailed explanation of how I did this, there is none.” At a certain point, you just need to make something up.

I can tell you now, having done this for a couple of other classes, they’re not all home runs. Some names just…say what the power does. “BURN!” For a Fire Mage ability that sets someone on fire. 😀 The name doesn’t need to be cool, the power does. Then, if the name IS cool, that’s just a bonus. And we got plenty of time to revise names.

Why did I think Hesitation Is Weakness should cost 2 Insight instead of 1 or 3? No idea. Just felt right. You can sort of grade things based on broad categories of usefulness. Ranged powers are less risky to use than melee because you don’t have to get in striking distance of your enemy, so ranged powers should either cost more, or do less damage. Same with abilities that affect everyone in an area. That can be a lot of enemies! So it either needs to cost more or do less damage than a single-target ability.

So, it’s not a science, but it's also not random. There are guidelines and that’s good enough. If it turns out our first guess is wrong? And an ability should cost more or less? No worries, that’s literally what testing is for!

Vanishment lets you spend an insight to teleport after countering. Very cool, very useful, but we cut countering altogether. The current Shadow has no such ability. If for some reason we wanted to bring this ability back, I would say; ok what was the point of this? It let you teleport after countering someone’s attack. So it was something you did, when it wasn’t your turn. It’s basically Another Trigger, ok.

No more countering, but that’s no problem, everyone has a trigger! Every class has an ability they can use when its not their turn. So I might reword Vanishment to say “Trigger: after an ally uses a triggered action, teleport a number of squares equal to your Reason.”

Is that the same? No. In some ways, it’s less useful. The old ability worked only when you countered. That meant it was something you could do as a reaction to someone attacking YOU. That’s really good! Another “get out of jail free” card!

But that is a very specific circumstance. Being able to teleport as a reaction to ANYONE on your team using their trigger? Well that’s a broader set of circumstances. Less directly useful, since it no longer requires someone attacking you. And it might not be useful enough. It might not warrant being a power. But look, you’ve already got In All This Confusion! You can already teleport away when someone attacks you! Vanishment doesn’t need to save you from an attack, you can already do that!

Probably I’d write it down, think about it for a second, and think “That’s not very good.” It just doesn’t seem that useful. An ally is using a trigger, that means they saw some opportunity. What opportunity? No idea! So what are the odds you would want to teleport after they exploit that opportunity? No way of knowing so…probably not that good.

But! Enemies have triggers too! So maybe Vanishment 2.0 is a trigger that fires after an enemy uses a trigger? Well that seems more useful now.

Or! Maybe it’s a maneuver! Maybe Vanishment 2.0 is just a maneuver that lets you teleport. How useful is that? I dunno! It’s a little useful! Teleport means you ignore terrain, you ignore other people in your way.

But there’s a reason we cut this ability, maybe it’s fine staying cut.

Here are the last two Shadow abilities. No Retreat is super cool because, for a mere 2 Insight, you can just instantly teleport to wherever a retreating enemy ends up. Someone’s trying to get away from you? Too bad! You’re a Shadow and there is no retreat! The power is deliberately designed in such a way as to ignore the Shadow’s movement. In other words, it doesn’t matter how far away they move (within reason, see the note with the little arrow) No Retreat isn’t limited by your movement. HOWEVER far away they go? You can follow.

I cannot explain why I thought this was a good ability for the Shadow, I was just inspired. The hardest part of class design is often just getting started. Unlocking that first really cool, definitive power, that makes you say “Ah HAH! This is what the class is about!” And the other abilities sort of…fall out of that.

2 Insight? Mmm. Maybe 1 would be better? Enemies don’t try to run away that often. But they do sometimes! And it seemed like, in actual play, whoever the Shadow was attacking really wanted to get away because….

Assassinate is the Shadow’s Ult. Literally just a shitload of damage! You could imagine a rule: “no one can do as much damage, at 1st level, as a Shadow using their Ult.” That sounds like a good rule! And it’s very useful to have benchmarks like that. “This Fury ability should be really good, the best the Fury has. How much damage should it do? Lemme check the Shadow’s ult….” Perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Both of these abilities; the name and the effect came to me at the same time. I knew what it was called AS I discovered what it did.

That’s it. Those are the Shadow’s 1st level abilities. Or rather, they were back when we invented this class. One trigger, two signature deceits, and four heroic deceits. Everything else, how much health they start with, what OTHER things can they do when they’re not fighting? Those were problems to solve later. Once we had these abilities, we had something we could test.

Sweat the Details

I’m not the lead designer, so I don’t always know…in fact I rarely know…exactly what bonuses everyone should be using, how much damage this ability should do. Because James is usually working on the core rules and he is free to change stuff based on the feedback we’re getting. So I usually write up a new class or system in what I call Design-lish. A hybrid of Actual Design and just Normal English.

My assumption is; James will convert everything into real numbers. In d20 terms, I don’t worry too much about “should this be +3 to hit or +4?” Well, there’s math to figure that out so those answers become obvious once we know more about what level this monster is, what type of monster it is, etc…

What I do worry about at this stage is a kind of gross balance. Abilities must be obviously useful, but they can’t be too good, they can’t cost too much, or do too little damage. I’m thinking about “what are the limits of this power?” That’s important from the very beginning. How often can you do this? How many people does it affect? Is there a resistance roll? Should the TN be high or low? What stat does the target use to resist?

I put a lot of thought into that, even knowing the final numbers might change a lot. But relative to each other, I try to balance the powers to the best of my ability out of the gate.

So James should be able to see “Oh this is a single-target melee weapon ability, THAT’S why it’s doing so much damage.” Or “Oh the range is 20 squares, THAT’S why it does so little damage.” That kind of stuff.

I need to believe, from the very beginning, that this power is balanced in terms of the cost, the action economy, how hard it is to avoid, to resist, whether it’s melee, range, single-target, AoE. Whether a bonus is +2 vs +3 is just a detail. Whether an ability affects many targets or just one is a big deal! So, better get that figured out first!

Um. That’s it! Different classes might implement their heroic resource differently, some classes have special passive abilities. But in broad strokes the thing we need, to test a prototype, is these powers. One trigger, two signature powers, and three or four heroic powers. Then you’re ready to test.

You don’t worry too much about “will the finished class have ALL these abilities at 1st level?” That’s something we worry about when we start working on progression. For now, we just need something we can bring to the table to get the ball rolling. Give everyone, including me, something to react to.

I very much doubt you’re going to get a post like this for every class. The point is to show you how we do it, and we’ve done that. But I suspect you’ll get at least one more Class From Scratch post in the future.

Until then, please keep being awesome! We’re going over TONS of playtest feedback and already looking forward to the next packet.

Peace, out!