Intro
I'm joined by Spyger, the designer behind the Huntsman class that's crowdfunding as this episode drops. We talk about how the class is a ranger class for Draw Steel, but how it moves away from the pet theme covered by the beastheart, and goes in the opposite direction as a monster hunter. Monster hunter to hunt the monsters.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview
Jon de Nor: Welcome to Goblin Points, Kyle!
Spyger: Hey there.
Jon de Nor: So give us a introduction of who you are and how you ended up in the Matt Colville/Draw Steel community.
Spyger: Yeah, I actually just reviewed this. I threw a little bit of a blurb in my, like, "story" on the Huntsman Backerkit, so it's fresh in mind. I have always been into games generally, but particularly video games. I think the first thing I can remember is playing The Legend of Zelda when I was like three. And I just kept up with games for, I don't know, 30 years since then. (laughter) And I had some nerdy friends back in high school who were big into Magic: The Gathering, and probably as a consequence of that, D&D, so they pulled me into that.
And we played it so badly. We did everything wrong. Just like clueless, hot-headed 16-year-olds. So we were like, you know, antagonistic play and hardcore power-gaming and like...at one point, one of my friends got really mad that we killed his Skull Lord. So he plopped down two more Skull Lords, and we just laughted him out of the room, and we left on bad terms.
But like, I saw the potential of role playing games and kind of stayed enchanted by that. Fortunately, I found better groups later on. And long story short, come like 2015, I had a couple of different friends drag me back into the hobby, and I got way into it. I was a big fan of a now-defunct actual play channel called Roll Play.
Spyger: They were just inverting the Critical Role thing, I guess, where like, Critical Role, R-O-L-E. So they did Roll Play, "R-O-L-L Play". But they had GMs like Stephen Lumpkin, who as far as I know was mostly a video game designer. He's done like some Warhammer stuff and whatnot. And then Adam Koebel, who is a coauthor behind Dungeon World and ran one hell of a Stars Without Number campaign.
But they did a really excellent short podcast series teaching people how to actually GM well, and there was not a lot of that at the time. It was actually near the time when Matt Colville started his channel, too. I mean, this was just...this is around like 2015. So a bunch of people were getting into the hobby. I guess that was part of the surge.
But yeah, I've played all kinds since then. I've been running usually one, sometimes two games a week. And I got more and more into designing. Like when I was a kid, I wanted to be...an archeologist, because of Jurassic Park. But then I wanted to be a game designer. So now I guess I'm doing the thing. I've done, like some mods for, like, when the Oblivion remaster came out and Monster Hunter and things like that. And I was trying to, like, remake the D&D martial classes in a more action-oriented way, but now Draw Steel's out, so I don't have to do that. So I figured I'd make a unique class.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. That's a great segue to the Huntsman, which is the class you're currently crowdfunding, both as we're recording this and as the episode drops. Can you give, like, what's, like the elevator pitch for the for the Huntsman as a class?
Spyger: Oh, there's a few. How memey do I want to be about it? We'll go on the safe side. The elevator pitch, I suppose, is I just felt there was a space open for...especially, like, some more modern popular characters. Speaking of 2015, that's when The Witcher 3 came out.
Jon de Nor: Wow.
Spyger: Yeah, it's been a while. Game dev takes a long time. But yeah, if you are into characters like Geralt of Rivia or Trevor Belmont, or maybe you go back to like, Dante from Devil May Cry — apparently I really, really need to watch Blade. Yeah, those like, monster hunters who have some monster in them. That's what we're going for with Huntsman. So it's like a, you know, a weapons-based character. You know, they do sort of fighter-type things. But then there's that special sauce. They have a little bit of magic and like a darker side to them. And I've been encouraged to crank things up a bit, so now from level 1, you can actually full-on transform into a monster, so. That's more taken from like Bloodborne or Mob Psycho 100, where if you crank that stress up enough, then...kind of lose your humanity and freak out.
Jon de Nor: This is the "cruelty" resource that the class has, correct?
Spyger: Yes. Yeah, so, I wanted to have a resource that persisted between encounters. Other than Victories, I guess, that's kind of a resource. To have the sensation of like gradually building up toward like being more, like showing more of that monster side and eventually having potentially a transformation. And so I needed a number that could persist through encounters. And I think very few people have done much consideration of it yet, but every class in Draw Steel does have two resources. They have a heroic resource and an epic resource that they get at level 10, and that does persist through encounters. So I was like, well, what if I just grab that and bring it down to level one?
Jon de Nor: Ah, yes! I did notice you calling it an epic resource, and initially I was confused whether or not you'd accidentally named it the same thing as the epic resource. But that's very intentional, then, actually, to bring that down to level 1.
Spyger: Yeah, it's really nice, too, because it makes things work natively with like Forge Steel and Codex, presumably. It's like, yeah, we already have this framework for this. It's just, in most cases it's relegated to 10th level.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Nice side effect.
Spyger: Hey, whatever makes less work for me. Work smarter, not harder.
Jon de Nor: I was wondering, because I've been in games where someone's played the Huntsman, and...especially coming from the outside, before having read the class — I've now read the preview that you've included in the crowdfunder — but cruelty as a resource, and talking about your cruelty being higher and increasing...it sounds really sinister, but I guess that's part of the flavor of the class?
Spyger: Oh, definitely. And oh, you know, it's a little tough because people may or may not be familiar with kind of the source material I'm drawing from. It's like, what is ensuring the class is not oatmeal, right? But I think Geralt's probably the most popular example where you potentially see him in cases where, you know, just circumstances push him to the edge because of, like, discrimination against witchers or just, you know, monsters being overwhelming. And so he's, like, chugging weird potions, and like any witcher goes through, you know, the mutagenic process. And so, you know, one day you might see him and it's like, "Oh, you know, it's just some like, pale, white-haired warrior." And then other times he's got, like, black veins and cat's eyes and he's, you know, butchering people. And it's like, all right, is this person more like a monster or a man? And yeah, that's kind of the theme that I'm going for.
Jon de Nor: So the cruelty is it resets on respites.
Spyger: Right.
Jon de Nor: And you can increase it as you play, including whenever you use the Catch Breath maneuver, it automatically increases by one.
Spyger: Yeah. When the Director uses Malice, you are, like, picking up on that energy. And I actually was originally calling cruelty "malice", but that was potentially confusing, and there were some other reasons not to do that. And so, you know, it's very much mirroring the Director's side there. And in the mechanics of the Huntsman, there tends to be a back-and-forth with Malice and cruelty, where you're kind of amping up each other's being a jerk. You know, the meaner the Director gets, the meaner you get, and vice versa. I may have lost track of the original question.
Jon de Nor: I was just wondering...rying to dig down into the cruelty mechanic, because you've got this growing resource that keeps going further and further, or higher and higher throughout the, in quotation, "adventuring day".
Spyger: Right.
Jon de Nor: And you've also got a corresponding table that gives you different effects based on how much cruelty you've accumulated.
Spyger: Yes. Your monstrousness manifests in progressively more ways. So probably the closest analogy in the base game to that is Growing Ferocity for the Fury, where, in the space of one encounter, your resource is potentially building up and you're getting bonuses off of that. This concept is expanded out through all the encounters until you have a respite. And so it's a slower, gradual process. So like, you know, a Fury may be getting between like 3 and 6 ferocity each turn, and each 2 ferocity, there's a new level of buffs from that chart.
Huntsman is much slower. You're getting like 1 or 2 cruelty per turn, and you only hit a new level every 3 cruelty. So you may only go up like one level in the space of encounter. But there are three effects associated with each level, one of which is negative. You become more powerful in, ideally, ways that can be sort of interpreted as monstrous, but you're also becoming like more isolated from your team. And contributing to the monsters' side, potentially.
Spyger: For example, the big one is, once you get close to transforming, once you're up at 9 cruelty, with 12 being the max, then your allies can't heal you, but you get some significant damage immunity. And so it's like, you know, I'm starting to almost like Hulk out, like I'm really tough and mean and whatnot. I'm getting my edgelord on. Especially because I'm not taking anybody's help. It's all me.
But if you don't want to lean into the monstrous stuff, then you can spend your cruelty in a couple of different ways to augment your abilities. Each ability has an additional effect for spending cruelty, kind of in a way similar to how all the Talent abilities have strain effects. So it's up to you to sort of moderate, "Oh, do I want to build up these passive benefits, or do I want to spend my cruelty for up-front effectiveness?" And I think players will find that there's like...certain kind of strike zone where they want to get their cruelty up to a point and then generally spend it to like, maintain that level, but also get to use their, like, cool extra add-ons to abilities.
Jon de Nor: You included some suggestions, or tips, I guess, for players playing the Huntsman at the end of the document.
Spyger: It's kind of in the middle.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, the Huntsman Player's Guide, where you mentioned that you want to you want to take a bit of damage because you want to both make use of...get some of your damage immunity, but also you want to use Catch Breath to build up your cruelty. And you've added that writer on Catch Breath to make it a more desirable maneuver for the players to use.
Spyger: Yeah. I think typically in Draw Steel, good tactics involve never needing to use Catch Breath, because it's, you know, it's not directly contributing in that race against the enemy, right? It's just keeping you alive, and there's more efficient ways to spend Recoveries. You know, like, Healing Grace, or Tactician marks, or whatever it is, where you're kind of getting Recovery spend as a rider, or like a cheap resource cost that's not actually taking like a maneuver or an action or anything. And you certainly, will probably want to do that for the most part still.
But the idea behind getting cruelty from Catch Breath is...and, like, it almost makes me wish Catch Breath had a different name, like Fight On or Dig Deep or, you know, the idea is like, you're just persevering through your own, stubborn, you know, heroic or potentially villainous conviction, and that's stressful. That makes you more likely to stop pulling your punches and bring out that monstrous nature. And like, on a mechanical side, you're using Catch Breath when things are going badly, when you're getting damaged too quickly for your allies to be healing you. So you have to augment that, and getting some cruelty on top of it helps you out in those troublesome moments where it's like, hey, you get more resource when things are going poorly.
Plus, like I said, once you get up into high cruelty, the other players can't heal you. So, what you'll probably want to do is go into that high tier of monstrous manifestation while you have some decent Stamina still. And between using Catch Breath and having that damage immunity, and using some other techniques to pump up your cruelty faster, you'll probably be shooting for getting to that 12-cruelty mark, where you'd go through your Dark Metamorphosis and literally take on a stat block of a monster with an extra Stamina pool on top of your own.
Jon de Nor: Yes, because when you reach that 12, you do have the option of burning a Recovery to reduce your cruelty by 2. But if you choose to, I guess stay at 12, you transform into a monster depending on your subclass right?
Spyger: Yeah, there's a unique monster for each subclass. And the subclasses — I guess I'll throw in the other pitch for Huntsman, and kind of the origin. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably way into RPGs, and one of those probably includes D&D, which means you may have seen 50 bajillion ranger reworks because people were not happy with the ranger in Fifth Edition, and I have never been into the ranger. Sorry if that's blasphemous.
But I think it has been having an identity crisis, and Huntsman started out as my idea to resolve that, where I figured, we need to expand this concept. Kind of like how "thief" became rogue, and got kind of more archetypes around that. My thinking was like, if fighters are your...they adhere to like martial traditions of different civilizations and whatnot, then rangers can be experts in like, monstrous combat, essentially, like the battle techniques of the wilds. And instead of having Favored Enemy be a bland numerical bonus that comes up in certain situations, that could be your subclass.
So the Huntsman, the subclass is determined by the kinds of monsters you have an affinity for. And it's not that you get bonuses against them, it's that your techniques are either suited for them particularly, in that like, you know, they may do the damage type corresponding to them or tactically be suited, but also you can use their techniques.
So maybe the best example of that would be, the Night Watcher Huntsman is mostly inspired by, like, Castlevania, where you have people who for the most part are going after — or at least their techniques are based on — like undead and accursed enemies. So they wield some divine magic the way that like a sensor might. But they also use dark magic. So they can become ethereal, like a ghost can. they can do like, a ghoul-style tongue lash. That kind of thing. You know, they can utilize the, sort of the spooky, you know, nighttime enemy-flavored techniques. So, yeah, I feel like that's a lot better than just, "Oh, yeah, you get +2 on skill checks relating to orcs!"
Jon de Nor: You've got three subclasses included in the class as it is. And part of the stretch goals is including up to two extra subclasses, if you reach them.
Spyger: Three, even, actually.
Jon de Nor: Three, even! I haven't read this well enough. (laughter)
Spyger: Well, the sixth one — which is a crazy number to say. I mean, I guess Elementalist will end up with 7, right? Like I said, I was never a big fan of the ranger. So the six subclass is actually the ranger subclass. Working title is Wode Weaver. And so the idea there is leaning into, like, plants and beasts and more, like natural wilderness, druid-y stuff. I'm looking at getting a co-designer on that who is more into those themes, because I'm more into, like, monster monster stuff.
Jon de Nor: The reason I pivoted into the subclasses, because you mentioned the Night Watcher, which is, Castlevania-themed, I guess. (laughter)
Spyger: Yeah.
Jon de Nor: The other two subclasses are Blood Warrior and Planeswalker. What do those two subclasses kind of lean on as inspiration, and where they going thematically?
Spyger: Planeswalker, I'll start with. it's more straightforward. It is like the Far Realms, eldritch horrors, psionics subclass. Like I would expect more memoneks and time raiders to be this, and for it to show up more in like the timescape-y, space-y campaigns, and it was very convenient to have sort of three quintessential monsters in this category to base abilities off of, being mind flayers, aboleths, and beholders. Or you could use like the new Draw Steel names for these things — what do we have, voiceless talkers, olothecs, and overminds, I believe?
Jon de Nor: Yes.
Spyger: So, yeah, if you like those and you want to have abilities like them, and also basically Jedi powers because, you know, Huntsman is...like, the class abilities are largely based around like, weapons and traps and such, whereas the subclasses are more where the, like, magics and monster abilities come in. So if you're wanting a psionic character that wields, like, you know, a sword or a crossbow or a lightsaber, dare I say, and can, like, push people around with telekinesis and that kind of thing, then, yeah, that's your bag.
And then Blood Warrior is kind of a fusion of two ideas. So, the name is riffing on the Blood War, the notion of demons and devils fighting, and it has some flavor from both of those kind of monster categories. But it also — like, at least in Draw Steel, I don't recall either of those leaning into blood at all. That's more coming from my Bloodborne inspirations. So the Blood Warrior, sort of half of the abilities and passives are relating to blood. And like, when you are bleeding or winded, which was formerly known as bloodied, then you get bonuses, and you're better at fighting other creatures that are bleeding or winded.
Yeah, it tends to be kind of a savage, like, more like, brutal and quick warrior. Like, I could imagine Karlach from Baldur's Gate 3 as a Blood Warrior, being more of a savage combatant and bringing in, like, hellfire and that kind of thing. Oh, I guess I should mention, Devil May Cry as well. And even Inuyasha, actually, there's a bunch of white-haired, red-clad half-demons who fight monsters. You're not obligated to have white hair or red clothes, but.
Jon de Nor: Since we're on the topic of the subclasses, the two subclasses mentioned in the stretch goals, those are the Dragon Acolyte — apart from the Wode Weaver — the Dragon Acolyte and Spell Warder. What are the ideas behind those subclasses?
Spyger: So Spell Warder definitely stems from witchers, and they're kind of dual-natured. And I'll add the caveat that, like, these are very much work-in-progress. I don't have a bunch of stuff laid out and tested for these yet. But the Spell Warder has both an element of, like, learning some basic magics in the way that, like, you know, a wizard or Elementalist might. Particularly, I think they'll specialize in magical barriers. And, the other part is more, like, creatures resulting from sorcery or like, you know, hybrid creatures like owlbears and chimeras, or golems, you know, those sort of constructs — the kinds of monsters that are the result of, intentionally or otherwise, wizards messing around. (laughter)
Oh, and, Dragon Acolyte. The main inspiration for that may be like Dark Souls and Elden Ring, where they tend to have...I think they all have, all those games have a cult where people kind of worship and aspire to become like dragons. And I am also kind of folding in giants or lumping them under the category of, like, "the ancients". Like I think one of the abilities right now is named, like, Might of the Elders. So, yeah, you're kind of a big game hunter leaning into elemental magic and getting real brawny. I imagine it'll sort of end up almost being like a multiclass of Huntsman and Fury in that, you'll probably tend to be kind of like, Might, melee brawler, with a bunch of elemental stuff.
Jon de Nor: In the crowdfunder, you're also including, apart from the class, new kits and treasures and other stuff. And I'm intrigued by the kits that you're including, because they are...are they all ranged-focused?
Spyger: No, although I am highlighting that. The Heroes book, as it stands, is very much up my alley, which is melee-heavy. I love hitting stuff with other stuff, and there's a lot of classes that tend to do that in the core Draw Steel book there. Oh gosh, I have...I got it ready. I have a spreadsheet of the kits, and if I remember right, I want to say there are just three purely ranged kits in the Heroes book: Arcane Archer, Sniper, Rapid-Fire. And then there's like a couple of...I tend to call them hybrid kits, that have both melee and ranged bonuses, being the Raider and Ranger.
So part of the impetus behind...well, maybe a lot of the impetus behind Huntsman, is kind of filling out...what I perceive as gaps in the Heroes book. And, so, like, I could see it kind of filling at least half of the slot that ranger would fill, if it was a thing in this game. I love that MCDM and I are kind of splitting up the work, in that they are just tackling the pet element, and then I can handle the other stuff because, yeah, it like if you're coming from Fifth Edition, and you wanted Beastmaster to be a whole class and Hunter to be a whole class, then that's essentially what you're getting. (laughter)
But yeah, I felt like I needed to add more ranged options, especially, and throw in a couple more hybrid options while I'm at it. So even if you're looking to playing like a Shadow or Tactician or whatever it is, focusing more on ranged weapons, then my stuff could be helpful. And those kits are available for free, by the way. I should have them just kind of automatically up on Forge Steel at some point here. You can download the source book or the PDF off the crowdfunder right now.
So yeah, so we've added four more ranged kits, which is, I guess just over doubling the ranged kit options. And then there's a couple of hybrid kits, like one I had to get in there, and I realized I even needed to tweak it slightly to match the artwork that I commissioned for the Huntsman, because I have them wielding a whip and a crossbow. There wasn't any kit that could do that. I was like, "Oh no, I've made art that you can't actually emulate!" But now we have a kit that I particularly like now, the Excoriator. Or no...yeah, yeah, the Excoriator. And I, in the flavor text, I kind of poke some fun, I say like, this is favored by vampire hunters and adventurous archeologists.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Spyger: So if you think of, like, Indiana Jones with the whip and the gun, that's kind of what this is. And then I've even thrown in a couple of other melee kits where combinations of weapons and armor didn't exist. So, like, there was no way to do light armor with a heavy weapon. So now I have the Crusher kit, and then it seemed wrong to just have the one kit with 12 Stamina, Shining Armor, especially because it's so defense-oriented. So I was like, alright, I need...I'm big on polearms. I love my polearms. I actually just commented on somebody else's thing they're making recently, where they were like...I think they were scolding Dark Souls for calling something a scythe. It's like, "No, it's a bardiche! Get it right!"
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Spyger: "It's not a halberd, it's a billhook! They're different!" But anyway, yeah, so there's there's the Strongarm now, which has heavy armor and a polearm. This might be outdated, actually. I think they're called the Battle Bully, and their signature ability is called Strongarm, where you can kind of manhandle people. So, yeah, if you want to be more of a aggressive, bullying 12-Stamina kit, instead of the Shining Armor taunt things, protect-your-buddies thing that you got there.
Jon de Nor: Oh, yeah, here we go. Battle Bully with Strongarm. "Actually, I can just push you around." (laughter) Speaking of the art for the crowdfunder, you have a lovely piece of art at the top, for the banner image, and you're using...
Spyger: Forward all compliments to Mikołaj Dołhun, who I was lucky enough to stumble across on Reddit, and we connected so easily. He's like — well, he says, since he's Polish, he's obligated to be into The Witcher, and we're also both big into like, FromSoft games, and — coincidentally, actually, I didn't know this until recently — he saw me posting about Huntsman and I mentioned Mob Psycho 100 as an inspiration, and he was like, "Oh my gosh! I love that too!" And so apparently we just share a lot of media preferences. And so we connected easily. And he rendered my poorly described imaginings so beautifully. Really. That's my first time commissioning art, and it just makes me want to do a bunch more. So give me money, and I'll get more cool art. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: Yeah. According to the text, you're planning on using Mikołaj for any more art that you will be able to commission.
Spyger: I'm thinking he'll probably do those monsters within, that each subclass can transform into. He...go check out his stuff. His monsters, oh, man. They're peak. But I'll be utilizing other artists as well. For example, my sister, actually, I'll be giving her a go on...she's actually whipping up a logo right now for Chuckling Chest Games. And she's done some projects in the past...like, I'm big into cocktails. That was my COVID hobby. It should have been working out, but it was cocktails. And for a friend of ours, she made...I think she painted them. I am not a visual art version, but like, little depictions of, you know, those fancy drinks with all the garnishes and whatnot. And it's like, "Hey...(snap) you'd probably be pretty good at also making, like, potions and bombs and that kind of thing for my Huntsman Arsenal here."
Jon de Nor: (laughter) In the timeline — the estimated timeline, I should say — on the crowdfunder page. You're planning for a release already in October.
Spyger: Right.
Jon de Nor: And that kind of aligns with...you mentioned somewhere in the text that you've done all 10 levels, but not necessarily everything for each of the subclasses already.
Spyger: Yeah. Admittedly, I'm toying around a lot with the 8th-level subclass features, but I have all the abilities and all the core class features. I think I remember you talking to, SurfingBird, regarding the Scion, and he was expressing the difficulties of, like, pushing through on those upper levels, like, trying to find, you know, the spark for those last few things.
But yeah, before too long here, like...presumably, like I think I mentioned I want to have a preview out in June for backers that'll probably be fully featured and at least somewhat tested of those three starting subclasses for Huntsman. So, you know, if people are really gunning for having all their levels at that point, you know, if, like, they want to start a Huntsman in a campaign now, then theoretically that should be okay.
But yeah, I mainly wanted to have the full thing ready for Crack the Sun, because that's what a bunch of Draw Steel fans are hyped for right now, right? So yeah, for that big, ambitious campaign that I am betting a bunch of people will want to start when, or soon after, it releases, like, "Alright, I gotta have my class all ready to go for that."
And, just regarding timeline, like, at least with those core three subclasses — way more than halfway done on the rules text for those. So October is something I'm super confident in being able to do, especially because we were talking about — a little bit, before we went live, or, recording, not live, technically — a lot of homebrewers and designers and whatnot, they're spinning a lot of plates. I am not. I am wholly focused on this project. So, yeah, I'm confident that I can deliver on the estimated timeline there.
Jon de Nor: One of the questions that I got from my patrons was regarding testing and how much testing you're doing of the Huntsman.
Spyger: Yes, I have made a lot of friends quickly over in the Draw Steel Brewery, because I'm running and participating in so many tests. That has kind of unintentionally turned into my main hobby. My Steam library cries in loneliness as I continue to neglect it in favor of just Draw Steel all the time. I think I've been averaging between like three and four playtests a week? I mean, now a lot of those may not include a Huntsman, because I just wanna check out what everybody else is making and give them feedback, and that makes them come and give me feedback. And you got the whole ecosystem going there.
But, yeah, I'm pretty sure we recently hit 20 playtest sessions for Huntsman, and I have 2200 words in my changelog that I've been maintaining. I'm the kind of guy who loves to scroll through patch notes for video games and things, so it's been fun to make my own as I've been going along. And yeah, there's there's been all kinds of iteration and like refining and rewording things to where they work from the perspective of people that are not the designer, me, and I'm very grateful to have had some harsh and brutal feedback at times.
Spyger: I'll shout out Zetesofos and Schmarauder for basically just being like, "This isn't fun enough." (laughter) "These are rookie numbers, you gotta pump this up. You need to, you know, Draw Steel-ify this. Make it more extreme and unique." And it's like, you know what? You're right. Let's do it. So we've gone through some bigger changes, like, a good example of that is Dark Metamorphosis, where you can straight up turn into a monster. I was originally planning that as a 6th-level feature. That's where a lot of classes get more significant things like that. Like, mechanically, Huntsman, I imagine, is kind of a sibling to the Shadow. They're both like a relatively squishy weapon specialist, like damage-oriented. Although, if they were playing hide and seek, then Shadow would always be on hide, and Huntsman would always be on seek.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Nice!
Spyger: But, yeah, so Shadow has, what is it, like Umbral Shroud, or like...they have some transformation thing at 6. But no, I like, I knocked — as I was iterating on Huntsman, I knocked the Metamorphosis down to 4th and then down to 2nd. People were like, "If it's at 2nd, you might as well make it 1st." And so I changed and shuffled and simplified some things to where it's like, yeah, I think I can actually get this into 1st level without being too overwhelming. So yeah, that's a good example of how things have shifted dramatically, specifically as a result of playtesting. And I have, I don't know, twelve playtesters credited in there already.
Jon de Nor: Your credits list is already impressive. (laughter)
Spyger: Yeah. Big props to SurfingBird and Jonas and all the other, like, mods and folks who kind of kickstarted that Brewery Discord. It has been insanely helpful.
Jon de Nor: Is there anything else about the Huntsman that you want to be mentioned that you feel we haven't touched upon yet?
Spyger: Oh, I will say, I've kind of accidentally become a weird area ability guy? I've gotten some really good feedback on some of the abilities that I've got in that vein. So like, one of the crowd-pleasers is Holy Chakram, as an example. Let me scroll through and snag it here. So, yeah, Night Watchers, who are slinging both holy magic and dark curses, one of their options is, straight-up inspired by the Cross sub-weapon from Castlevania. Kind of like a piercing boomerang deal. So it's a 10 × 1 line that targets three enemies in the area. So that's kind of, like, a power limiter. You can't hit ten things with it, because you throw it out in a 10 × 1 line, and it does damage. And then...I'll just read it.
"The chakram lingers in the furthest square until you call it back as a free maneuver, or until the end of the turn. It then travels back to you along a second line, dealing its damage again. So you can get pretty creative with it, where it's like, oh, maybe you just want to do like a basic, send it through a few guys and then back through those same guys. But if you're like, for example, trying to knock out a whole bunch of minions, then you might throw it through one line and then dart over somewhere else and then call it back and it goes through a different line. So you hit six different guys.
Jon de Nor: Oh, that's interesting!
Spyger: Yeah, there's that. And then I have kind of like a, I imagine it sort of like a lightsaber throw, where it's a 2 burst, but it only hits enemies in the outer ring. It doesn't hit the ones adjacent to you. And it incentivizes you to kind of use your, like, Force push/pull ability to line things up there. And you also, as a Huntsman, have a really big bonus to Disengage, which lets you reposition more freely. So you can kind of line up like a ring of enemies to hit with that, and...yeah. I've been having fun coming up with unique frameworks for abilities like that, especially since, like, so many of the Huntsman abilities are capable of use with ranged weapons. So trying to come up with some more fun kind of tactical shapes for things.
And, it also means I can have some more interesting modifiers for spending cruelty. So, like, as an example on that Holy Chakram, if you spend cruelty, then instead of targeting three enemies in the line, you just hit one, and it deals damage to them three times. So I'm imagining, like, you're chucking this spinning boomerang-type thing, and it's just buzzsaw grinding into the one poor bastard.
Jon de Nor: One of my solo monsters was on the receiving end of that one. (laughter)
Spyger: Yeah, they were definitely abusing the...somebody had applied some damage weakness, and it's like, oh, I have this thing that hits three times.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah. That was a nasty combo. (laughter)
Spyger: Yeah. They came up with their own blender strategy.
Jon de Nor: We're coming up on the hour, already. And I always ask my guests to bring some kind of recommendation that they want the listeners to check out or be aware of. So, what have you brought?
Spyger: Oh, yeah, I was waiting for this. I cannot recommend enough — especially because, like, in this space, I've been talking with a lot of, like 20-somethings, you know, people born in this millennium, who may not know about this lesser-known and much-underappreciated movie — My Cousin Vinny. This has been my family's favorite movie for like 20 years, now. It is a riot. It's Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei and it's so good. It's so good. It's like you get the clash of cultures, like New Yorkers down in Alabama and I think actually, I saw Legal Eagle talking up the movie, because it's like relatively accurate to actual court procedures. And the plot is excellent. Like the pace, just, oh, man, it's such a good movie. And it's from like, '93 or something, so people may not know about it.
And then...I don't know, this is probably less underappreciated, but I got to go Deep Rock Galactic. That was my other big COVID hobby, besides getting into cocktails. A lot of people got into Animal Crossing because it launched, like, right about that time. For me, Deep Rock Galactic. Oh, my goodness. I'm sure it's super cheap at this point. It's a game in the vein of like Left 4 Dead, or, like, Vermintide. It's a four-player, class-based co-op deal. It's a first-person shooter, but unlike those other games I just mentioned, combat is only one element of it. It has procedurally generated caves to go spelunking in, as these space-mining dwarves.
And again, the pacing is so good in that you have waves of space bugs crawling out of the tunnels every so often, but you're also, like, finding your way through these dark caverns, and managing your light situation, and using different gadgets to clamber up on the walls and mine out minerals, and interact with different mining machinery and objectives and things. And so it is just super consistently entertaining, great design, mechanically. And in regards to the tone, it's like way positive. Even if you just jump in with randoms online, there's good communication tools. Even if you can't chat or type yeah. I can't recommend Deep Rock Galactic enough.
Jon de Nor: Two solid suggestions I think, or recommendations.
Spyger: Yeah, both with dwarves. Space dwarves, and Joe Pesci.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Kyle, it has been really interesting and fun having you on Goblin Points, and I — you've kind of brought me — I wasn't too interested in the Huntsman, but then, especially now, I'm actually really looking forward to seeing the rest of the class. I think it's really grown on me. Because I'm not usually the ranger type myself, but...maybe after all! (laughter)
Spyger: Yeah, maybe that's the pitch. The ranger for people who don't like ranger.
Jon de Nor: But it's been really great having you on.
Spyger: It's been a blast being on, and also joining your playtests for your Look Out! monsters. So, yeah, I'm sure we'll be crossing paths more soon.
Outro
Thank you so much for coming on Kyle! I mentioned that I'm not usually interested in the ranger as a fantasy as a player, but the design and flavor of the huntsman has won me around. I think there are some cool characters in that class.
The huntsman is currently crowdfunding on BackerKit. Link is in the link section.
I want to thank Antan Karmola and Ananam for submitting questions for Kyle.
If you want to be featured on Goblin Points, or know of someone else who should be, leave a comment on YouTube or Spotify, or send me an e-mail on tips@goblinpoints.com.
Links to everything, including this script can be found in the show notes, and on goblinpoints.com.
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Next episode is on the 25th. I'll be joined by ChaosOS, developer of the Draw Steel system for FoundryVTT and the new Draw Steel modules published by Metamorphic Studios.
See you next time. Snakkes.