Update - 13/06/2022

Hello, Everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend! I had some visits and played Shadows of Brimstone, so it was fun! These last days I've been as usual focused on editing Across a Thousand Dead Worlds, and I've kept working on the Masteries for Empire Undying. Right now we have:

- Personal Mastery: this is mostly Traits that grant passive bonuses to your character, things like +1 max wounds, or being better at orienting yourself underground. This first iteration of the rules has 40 of them, I'm pretty sure that the final number will be closer to 60.

- Weapon Masteries: For this iteration I'm going to only include One-Handed Sword, Dagger, Bow, and Two-Handed Sword. They each have 15 Traits to unlock among 3 different tiers. It's pretty likely I'll add a few more before the game's release. I'll be adding new weapons here on Patreon as time progresses, I imagine on a monthly basis.

Sorcery Masteries: This is where I am at right now. Once I'm done the game will have 8 different sorcery masteries, which are essentially like schools of magic. I think that for this first release I'll give you guys two of them, the water and mind control masteries. Each Sorcery Mastery has 15 traits divided into 3 different tiers, same as the weapon masteries, but I'm pretty sure I'll be adding more once I finish the first pass, to have at least 20 different effects/spells per mastery.

I spent most of the time these two last weeks coming up with an XP system for the masteries. Weapon Masteries are simple, you kill enemies with a weapon, you gain XP with said weapon. Personal and Sorcery Masteries are different though. This is straight from the rules:

"Whenever you successfully perform a meaningful (i.e. there’s something at stake) Skill check, you earn a number of Personal XP equal to your unmodified roll.

Example: Erkana is trying to sneak past the temple guards so she performs a Stealth check, her skill is 12 so her chances are good. She rolls an 11, for a total of 23, which is a success! Since this was a successful skill check to overcome a non-trivial situation, she earns 11 (her unmodified roll) Personal XP. "

Same goes with Sorcery XP, you cast a spell successfully, you earn XP. This will need testing but on paper it looks nice to me so far!

I think this is enough theorycrafting for today, haha. I'm going back to Sorcery Masteries. Have a great week!