So, in case anyone’s wondering why there were three or four updates in quick succession and then a gap, it’s because I’m making quite a large change to the game.
Blood, Guts & Glory only went to 20th level, while the game that inspired it went all the way to 50th level.
So I’ve spent the last couple of weeks expanding Lightmaster to go all the way to 50th level.
The biggest job, which I’ve nearly finished, is reformatting and updating all 147 spell paths to add the higher level spells to them. As I say, I’ve almost finished that (I’ve done 135/147 so far) and it has the side effect that the spell paths are now laid out in a much better manner as well as containing more spells.
While that’s the biggest job, there’s now a whole list of other changes I have to make too…
- The skill chart needs to give skill bonuses for up to 100 ranks in a skill, rather than just up to 40 ranks. I think that I’m going to remove the inflated bonuses for low level characters – I’ll have to, because otherwise higher level characters will have ridiculously high skill totals.
- There might be a couple of skills that need revisiting because of this. I’m thinking in particular of the Sneak Attack, Mana Transfer, and Toughness skills. They are all currently balanced for the 1-40 rank scale and might get weird at high levels.
- Speaking of which, I probably need to add a “Behind the Curtain” sidebar talking about how high level skill totals mean that characters are almost supernaturally talented, and that characters with high skill totals should be allowed to get away with stretching realism to breaking point with what they can do.
- I need to re-visit how the Spell Path Research skills work.
- I need to revisit the pre-generated item lists for crafting spells. Since there will now be three more higher level spells on each crafting spell path, I need to add higher level items to the lists that can be made with those spells.
- Those higher level crafting spells contain at least one new type of item: constant items. I therefore need to update the crafting chapter with how these work. I think I’ll need strict guidelines so they don’t get out of hand.
- I need to extend the level table for characters of level 21-50. Not only does this need experience totals for those higher levels, I also need to consider what to do with ability score increases. Currently you get these every other level, but over fifty levels that will be too much. Or will it? I need to think about this. Saving throw bonuses aren’t a problem, because I’ve already got them going up to level 100 for monsters.
- I need to think a bit about the economy. High level characters will be stinking rich – especially if I continue to use the gold-for-xp rate that I have currently. I might need to tweak that.
- I should probably add something somewhere about demographics. If characters can go up to 50th level, and NPCs are intended to use the same classes as PCs, how many NPCs of different levels should you see. Should there be a 10th level priest in the village temple? Should there be a 20th level runesmith in the city? How many 50th level necromancers actually exist in the world? And so forth.
- I need to go through all the examples in the books checking the numbers to make sure that they match the new skill ranks and totals rather than the old ones.
- The info on magical materials in the crafting chapter needs updating because there are now more different types of metal that can be enchanted.
I’ve taken time out of updating the spell paths as I’ve gone along, and so far I’ve done numbers 1-4 on that list.
Gurbintroll Games 