V9: Change Log - 240209

This page is part of the Official Amtgard V9 Alpha-Playtest Rulebook.

• The Amtwiki is the official home and primary source for Amtgard V9 Rules as of February 25, 2023.
• These rules are currently in Open Alpha Playtest. See the Playtest Disclaimer for more details.
• To learn more about Amtgard V9 Development, please visit Amtgard.com.
• To view the current Amtgard V8 ruleset, please see the Amtgard V8 Rulebook.

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February 2024 (9A.6.2402) - Caster Sustain & General Balance Update

Read Me First

Hello Amtgard and welcome to the February Update Preview! (V9A.6)

As many of you already know, this month’s update is mostly focused on the casting classes. While this update contains changes to many things, our primary goal is to improve the casting classes. Each one has had significant adjustments made to their spell lists, updates to their archetypes, and/or changes to specific abilities. However, these classes do not exist in a vacuum, and we’ve made changes to all parts of the rules to help facilitate this goal - as well as some extra balance changes to address priority issues.

NEW: EXPLAINER TEXT
We’ve heard the desire for more information about the why of each update. Now that things have settled down into a more regular update cycle, we have a bit more time to devote to this.

The first bit of text in each extry will outline the reasoning behind some of the changes in this update.

Text in the purple box will show the specific changes made.

EXPERIMENTAL CHANGES
Anything listed with a 🌶️ is a potentially spicy change that we are looking to explore and get first-hand playtest data about. Many of these experimental changes are inspired by player feedback and we feel there is genuine merit to exploring these options sooner than later so we have time to iterate and/or roll them back within the alpha period.

OTHER ICONS
🔴 = Important and Significant changes.
🟡 = Functional-but-minor changes.
🟢 = Changes that alter text with no functional impact on the rules.

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Over-Arching Game Mechanic Changes

🔴🌶️ Remove Enchantment Strips

By far the most common feedback we’ve received about Enchantment Strips (aka Indicator Strips) is that people do not look at them to identify enchantments. For simplicity’s sake, and to save people the effort of making many different colored strips to use for their enchantments, we’re going to try removing them. (Strips will remain as an option for people wishing to identify their Specialty Arrows that way!)

This is a very spicy change so please let us know how it affects your games!

• Remove indicator strips from the game.
  • This includes all “enchantment strips” and the red strips for SC/AB weapon variants, relics, and natural armor.
  • Optional Strips for Specialty Arrows will still exist and be specifically defined in the section about arrow covers.

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🔴🌶️ Allow Enchantment Pre-Casting

Many classes have per-life self-enchantments that somewhat resemble traits, however they remain enchantments rather than traits because we want it to count against their enchantment limit and to be declared during combat. Unfortunately, many players feel the process of casting these per-life self-enchantments each life is a bit of a process, especially for the classes that can enchant themselves twice. With this update, we’re letting players simply spawn with their self-enchantments already active, so a Barbarian could come alive and say, “Berserk! Blood and Thunder!” and immediately get back to fighting. This is something many folks have been asking for so get out there and let us know how it feels!

• Players can now start the game / respawn with any of their self-targeting enchantments pre-cast on them.

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🔴🌶️ Remove 10ft Restrictions

We originally kept the 10ft distance requirement for V8 “Kill Trigger-style”. The logic was that suddenly regaining abilities or wounds mid-combat could be surprising or confusing. However, most of these effects in V9 simply give back abilities, which shouldn’t matter much to opponents in the area. For consistency’s sake, we want to try removing this requirement from all relevant abilities (including Adrenaline and Scavenge) and see where it goes from there.

Fun Fact: V8 had never tested Adrenaline and Scavenge without the 10ft rule so we don’t actually know if this would be problematic in practice! Get out there and let us know!

• Remove 10ft restrictions from all ‘Motivation’-style abilities.
  • Prerequisite: Cannot be used while there are living enemies within 10ft.
  • Affected abilities: Adrenaline, Conviction, Cunning, Inner Fire, Insight, Mulch, Scavenge, and all new abilities created in this style.

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🔴🌶️ Remove Natural Armor

For this update, we’ve decided to remove natural armor from all classes. While the Natural Armor option has been popular for many players, we’ve found that its widespread use has colored a lot of the feedback we’ve received about V9 as a whole. Natural Armor was intended to be an accessible option for players who couldn’t utilize the physical armor of their class, but it has proven strong enough to draw people to it even if they would otherwise wear physical armor. Those playing classes without natural armor access - including all four spellcasting classes - have reported quite a bit of difficulty. One of our goals is to make physical armor more accessible and commonplace, so we’ve decided to change tacks for now. Depending on what we learn, we may return to Natural Armor with some modification, continue without it, or find a middle ground. (The rules for Natural Armor will remain on the Amtwiki, though unused for now.)

• Removed natural armor options from all classes and monsters.

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🔴 New Universal Ability: Dragging

This is an old-but-new rule by which dead or wounded players can be moved by their living allies, which may help enable more commonplace resurrection of players.

• Added Dragging rules to the Core Combat Rules section.

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🟡 Proliferate Low Armor Compensation

After the feedback we’ve received in January, we’ve decided to implement the ‘low armor compensation’ system that we piloted with the Monster class. We feel that this system does a better job of encouraging people to use what armor they have than our previous method. Previously, players felt incentivized to wear only their gambesons or other light armor for the ‘lower maximum’ system, where this system gives players who own a few high-point pieces some incentive to utilize them. The presentation for this system isn’t as straightforward as we’d like it to be, yet, and improving that is something we’ll be aiming for! As always, we’re looking forward to any feedback or suggestions to streamline this system.

• Implement Low Armor Compensation mechanics (previously seen on Monsters) to all classes.
  • See the class-specific entries for what this looks like on each class.

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🟡 Allow Meta-Magic vs Enchantment Abilities & Magic Items

Meta-Magics are now universal! It was sort of odd to delineate when it was allowable to use Meta-Magics on abilities you acquired through items, enchantments, or spells you’ve cast. We’re going to try allowing meta-magics to be used on any valid ability, regardless of its source (unless an item or enchantment specifically states otherwise, like the Staff of Doomsday!)

• Allow meta-magics to be used on abilities granted by enchantments or magic items unless specifically listed otherwise.
  • Related update to Staff of Doomsday
  • Firestorm, Discordia, and Pestilence will continue to disallow meta-magics from being used on their respective abilities. (No change to existing text).

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🟡 Create 'Shoved' State

A few different abilities utilize the ‘you move back X feet’ effect, and the ability to resist Shove and Shove Strike is something that people have been missing from the most recent iteration of Adaptive Blessing. With Shove as a state, you can now opt to resist it with Adaptive Blessing and game designers also have a new codified keyword for “move back X feet”.

• Created the “Shoved” a state.
  • Includes all the text from the Shove ability, except the distance and direction traveled will be left up to the ability text. This allows a quest effect to say something like “You are Shoved 50ft sideways!” and make sense.

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🟡 Traits Turn Off While Dead

Since custom traits are often created by slapping (T) on an existing enchantment or effect, we wanted to make sure that this didn’t cause any problems down the line by making traits also become disabled when the player is dead. The only effect this has on the current ruleset is that Monks are no longer immune to Sever Spirit.

• Traits now become disabled while dead unless otherwise noted, similar to enchantments.

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🟡 Engulfing Clarification

It was unclear whether arrows, throwies, and other non-blocking equipment counted for engulfing. Now it should be clear!

• Add the highlighted text:
  • Strike-based effects with the Engulfing keyword will impart their effects even if attack strikes carried equipment such as a weapon or shield. This includes arrows stored in quivers, and other similarly carried projectiles.

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🟢 Pink Sash Tweak

We’re clarifying the Non-Melee Participant sash color to “Light Pink” (Color Swatch unchanged) to better express in text what we are expecting for Non-Melee Participant sashes, especially when compared to Magenta, which could be considered a “dark pink”. If you’re a non-melee participant or have such players on your field, we would love to hear more feedback about the mechanic as a whole!

• Clarify Non-Melee sash color from Pink to “Light Pink”.
  • No change to actual color swatch.

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Equipment Changes

🔴 Allow 1-Handed Rocks

Not many people were trying to use Rocks as a 2-handed option, and we would like to find out if they are an attractive option if they can be more easily thrown while holding other equipment.

• May be thrown with one hand. Remove the following:
  • Rocks must always be thrown with two hands. A rock thrown single-handed is rendered harmless.

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🟡 Measure Tower Shields by SQFT

The maximum dimensions (length and width) proved odd to explain to those who are used to the traditional square foot method, so we have decided to roll Tower Shields into this method and see how it plays out. Break out your towers and let us know how it feels!

• Define tower shield size by sq.ft.
  • “Shield Size must not exceed the bounds of 54" x 40"” → Shield Size is no larger than fifteen square feet (52.44 inch diameter).

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Magic Item Changes

🔴 New Yellow Curio Effect

This Curio, which granted Break Concentration, proved to be obnoxious and very common. It now offers Innate instead, which should be more of a personal benefit for the player instead of a nuisance for the enemy.

• Change ability on Yellow Curio:
  • Curio of Disruption (Grant Break Concentration 2/Refresh) → Curio of Power (Grants Innate 2/Refresh)

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🟡 Doomsday Cannot Be Swifted.

This change is in light of our decision to let meta-magic affect items… Swift-Doomsday bad.

• Add: Doomsday cannot be affected by meta-magic.

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Ability-Specific Changes

The following updates are listed in alphabetical order instead of by scale of change.

🔴 Incantation Changes

We’re continuing to work towards more ideal incantations for many spells. Our goal is to make sure each incantation is clear in its effect, not too awkward to say, and a reasonable length for its effect. Thank you for bearing with us through this process! We are very interested in feedback on these, since we’d like to settle these into their final forms as soon as we can.

• Change Banish incantation:
  • “"I banish thy spectral form" x3” → “I banish thy ghostly form” x3

• Change Cowardice incantation:
  • “"Envision death and become a coward" x3” → “Cower and be afraid of all” x3

• Change Dimensional Rift incantation:
  • “"Thy spectral form shall disperse and die" x3” → “Aether consume thy ghostly form” x3

• Change Flame Blade incantation:
  • “The element of fire shall infuse these weapons.” x3 → “The element of flame shall infuse these weapons” x3
  • Normalizing the use of the work 'flame' across all fire-based abilities.

• Change Lightning Bolt incantation:
  • “The strength of storms is mine to evoke” x2 → “The power of storms is mine to evoke” x2
  • Normalizing the use of 'power' across all spellballs.

• Change Suppression Bolt incantation:
  • “The strength of suppression is mine to evoke” x2 → “The power of suppression is mine to evoke” x2
  • Normalizing the use of 'power' across all spellballs.

• Change Iceball incantation:
  • “The strength of ice is mine to evoke” x2 → “The power of ice is mine to evoke” x2
  • Normalizing the use of 'power' across all spellballs.

• Change Entangle incantation:
  • “The strength of earth is mine to evoke” x2 → “The power of earth is mine to evoke” x2
  • Normalizing the use of 'power' across all spellballs.

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🟡 Adrenaline

Adrenaline granting Renew instead of just a resistance makes it clearer and a little more versatile.

• Replace one of the options:
  • Target declares and restores an expended resistance. → Target is affected as per Renew.

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🟡 Aegis, Harden, and Ward

We would like to see how these abilities plays without being exclusive from one another.

• Remove the prerequisite from each ability.
  • Prerequisite: Cannot be cast on a player already affected by Aegis, Harden or Ward.
  • Note: Players are still unable to have two of the same enchantment, so no stacking Harden with another Harden.

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🔴 Ancestral Weapon (New)

Like Imbue Shield, but for weapons. A more defensive replacement for Vorpal Blades on Warrior.

• Added Ancestral Weapon to the game.

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🔴 Bravado (New)

A motivation ability for Swashbuckler that encourages them to Taunt players and then fight them. Notably this is the only way to restore confidence faster than resting at normal speed.

• Added Bravado to the game.

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🟢 Barkskin and Stoneskin

Clarifying to avoid oddities when players remove these enchantments and reapply them, notably with the new Wildborn archetype.

• Add Prerequisite:
  • Cannot be cast on a player already affected by Barkskin/Stoneskin.
• Adjust the armor-boost text to the following:
  • +1 to current and maximum armor points in each hit location with physical armor. This does not count as restoration.
    If this enchantment is removed while the bearer is still alive, reduce both the current and maximum armor points by 1. This does not count as damage.

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🔴 Contagion (Removed)

We’re removing Contagion from the game since it was somewhat out-of-role and unpopular on Wizard and no other classes were using it.

• Removed Contagion from game.

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🔴 Dark Pact(New)

Steal Life Essence was an effect like Adrenaline but it had to be used immediately (rather than within 30s) because it also Severed the victim. This placed a lot of immediate mental load on the caster and we found that many folks were playing it more like Adrenaline or Scavenge anyway so we’ve split Anti-Paladin’s sustain engine into two parts - Dark Pact (below) which gives immediate benefit in exchange for your soul - and Steal Life Essence, which now only severs the target and removes sever from the caster. This will hopefully make the mid-combat interaction much cleaner while also providing Anti-Paladin’s with a very unique devil-deal style of self-sustain.

• Added Dark Pact to the game.

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🔴 Elusive (Removed)

The Archer rework has made this ability obsolete.

• Removed Elusive from game.

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🔴🌶️ Feel No Pain (New)

Feedback has indicated that people would like for Barbarian to have more unique abilities, and for something to fulfill the fantasy of the raging berserker who is simply too angry to die. This ability allows a Barbarian to push past the point where they would normally die and survive - but only if they either keep up the chant or get enough kills to heal their wounds. This is a bit of an unusual ability, so please let us know whether its effect is clear and easy to play with.

• Added Feel No Pain to the game.

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🔴 Gift of "X" Enchantments

Doubled uses of granted abilities to make the enchantments more attractive options.

• Increase the frequency of abilities granted:
  • 1/Refresh ♻10 → 2/Refresh ♻10
  • Affects Gift of Air, Gift of Earth, Gift of Fire, Gift of Water

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🟢 Imbue Shield (Renamed)

With the introduction of Ancestral Weapon, we have renamed this ability to line up with the rest of the 'set'.

• Rename to “Ancestral Shield.
  • No functional change to effects.

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🔴🌶️ Incinerate Armor

We would like Incinerate Armor to be viable as a way for verbal casters to consistently damage armored targets, but previous iterations have not cut the mustard. This iteration does not require locational targeting and should be easier to say, though it’s more complicated for the recipient to take. We’d really like to hear whether this ability feels like it will work intuitively on the field, or whether the effect is too complex in chaotic games. Let us know!

• Change effect:
  • “Target is affected as per Armor Destroying in the chosen location.” → “🌶️Target suffers 1 point of damage to armor in each hit location.”

• Change incantation:
  • "Flames destroy thy armor" x3 → “Flame and fire damage thy armor” x3

• Add Reminder/V8 Transition Note:
  • Immunities and resistances extend to carried equipment. This means immunity/resistance to verbals will protect against this effect.

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🟢 Inner Fire

Quality of life change, removing the use of emoji where it isn’t currently necessary

• QOL Tweak to effect line:
  • “...restores one use of a Monk ability with the ⚔️ tag.” → “...restores one use of a Power Strike ability.”
  • Remove the ⚔️ tags from Monk as appropriate.

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🔴 Mana Harvest (New)

A new spell meant to provide an option for active sustain for spellcasters in a vein similar to what the martial classes already have. (It is a way to get spells back by playing the game rather than just Resting!)

• Added Mana Harvest to the game.

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🔴 Meditate (New)

A way to make Resting more efficient in a pinch, for those who prefer the rest method for recovering spells.

• Added Meditate to the game.

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🔴🌶️ Mulch

We decoupled this from Innate so that people wouldn’t necessarily need to interact with a lot of uses of Innate to play Greenwarden, though they do have some synergy. Also upped the “witness” range and allowed for personal kills to count, for the Bow Druid enthusiasts.

• Buffed the Prerequisite:
  • “Can only be used within 30s of witnessing an ally bearing one of your enchantments kill an enemy within 20ft” → “Can only be used within 30s of killing an enemy or witnessing an ally bearing one of your enchantments kill an enemy within 50ft.”

• Allow restoration without needing innates:
  • Restores an innate → Declare and restore one use of a ♻10 ability.
    • Add Reminder: Innate is a ♻10 ability.

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🔴 Rescue / Safeguard

Most classes with access to Rescue could already Heal and/or Release allies. Further, an effect that sent the target back to base made this ability impractical and rarely desired by the intended targets. As such, Rescue has been reworked! You can now make an ally Insubstantial to protect them temporarily, hopefully making it a better representation of the ‘bodyguard’ concept we were aiming for.

• Reworked Rescue into Safeguard.
  • Safeguard has replaced Rescue anywhere it was previously located.

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🟡 Shake It Off

Shake It Off has been reworked to be much easier to summarize and explain while still providing the same essential effect.

• Reworked text to be more similar to the V8 version, with less loopholes. See Shake It Off.

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🔴 Sphere of Annihilation

Sphere of Annihilation was coming in a little too hot so we’re cooling it down a bit to see if it falls into a more reasonable use rate after the caster buffs kick in.

• Remove Sever effect:
  • Secondary Effect (Status): Players killed by Sphere of Annihilation are Severed until they respawn.

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🔴 Steal Life Essence

Steal Life Essence was an effect like Adrenaline but it had to be used immediately, rather than within 30s, because it also Severed the victim. This placed a lot of immediate mental load on the caster and we found that many folks were playing it more like Adrenaline or Scavenge anyway so we’ve split Anti-Paladin’s sustain engine into two parts - Dark Pact which gives immediate benefit in exchange for your soul - and Steal Life Essence (below), which now only severs the target and removes sever from the caster. This will hopefully make the mid-combat interaction much cleaner while also providing Anti-Paladin’s with a very unique devil-deal style of self-sustain.

• Streamlined Steal Life Essence.
  • Removed all the caster-side options except for removing your own Severed status.

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🔴 Sunder Arrow (Removed)

Removed for now while we assess the need for it in the new Picks-system Archer.

• Removed Sunder Arrow from game.

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🔴🌶️ Swift

We have removed the restriction on using Swift on self-cast spells. We’d like to find out if this is actually too strong or not in the V9 metagame, so let us know!

• Allow casters to Swift abilities targeting themselves:
  • Cannot be used to modify verbals and enchantments that target the caster.

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🟡 Teleport

Teleport has long since been an oddity among verbals by having a x5 incantation without being a restoration ability like Heal, Mend, Release, etc. With Flight being a similar effect on a x3 incant, we are bringing down Teleport to match.

• Change amount of repetitions required:
  • "Travel through the aether" x5 → “Travel through the aether” x3

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🔴 Undead Minion

The goal for this ability is to make it as simple as possible to execute for the enchantee. We were running into some issues with how complex it was to explain where and when someone could be revived. Now these minions can just run back to the caster each time they die, and all they have to watch out for is being severed. There’s also some nice quality-of-life bits that come with using the Raise Dead spell for the revive instead of a declaration.

• Reworked Undead Minion.

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Class-Specific Changes

🔴 Anti-Paladin

Steal Life Essence has been reworked! - see it and Dark Pact above for details. Beyond that, we’ve rearranged their ability choices somewhat. Fireball is better balanced against Wounding and Curse Strike than Raise Dead and Dying Breath as a major offensive ability, and the frequency of Incinerate Armor has been modified to match its new effect. Curse Strike’s Rest timer has been brought in line with all of the other sources of Power Strikes across melee classes, to 20 seconds. Finally, Dragoon’s upside has been tweaked a bit to feel like a more meaningful increase in ability frequency.

• Armor
  • Implemented Low Armor Compensation style
  • Removed natural armor option.
  • Reward for low armor is now +1 use of Fear.
    
    

• Curse Strike
  • 2/Life ♻10 → 2/Life ♻20
    
    

• Dark Pact
  • New ability added at Row B - Unlimited.
  • Archetypes adjusted to refer to Dark Pact instead of Steal Life Essence.
    
    

• Dying Breath
  • Added 😱 back.
  • Duration: “Until they die” → 30s
    
    

• Dragoon
  • Changed bonus to:
    • “Gain double uses from all abilities with 🔥 (Fireball and Incinerate). Flame Blade, if chosen, becomes ♻60. Cannot wield Short or Long weapons.”
      
      

• Fear
  • Moved to level 1
    
    

• Fireball
  • Added 🔥
    
    

• Incinerate Armor
  • Ability reworked.
  • 2/Life ♻10 → 1/Life ♻10
    
    

• Rearrange Customization:
  • Swapped Fireball and Incinerate Armor so that Fireball is competing against Wounding and Curse Strike.
  • Fear is now the level 1 ability.
  • Steal Life and Dark Pact are now row B.
    
    

• Steal Life Essence
  • Ability reworked
  • 2/Life ♻20 → 2/Life ♻10
    
    

• Undead Minion
  • Ability reworked
    
    

• Wounding
  • 2/Life ♻20 → 1/Life ♻20
    
    

• Other Related Changes:
  • New incants for Cowardice and Flame Blade.

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🔴 Assassin

We’ve rearranged some Ninja abilities, and done some work to make sure that none of the abilities were totally locked behind using a bow. As such, there is a choice to be made between Poison Arrows and Poison Bolts. Decoy, as thematic as it was for Ninja, has been moved to the Shadowcloak column where it found greater synergy, and in its place the Ninja has gained Pass Without Trace as a stand-in for smoke bombs. Shadowcloak and Saboteur also received some love to make their downsides a bit less impactful.

• Armor
  • Implemented Low Armor Compensation style
    
    

• Restructure Customization
  • Merged Poison Bolt and Poison Arrow choice into D1.
  • D1 = Poison Arrow & Poison Bolt: Any combination of 2 Arrows/Balls
  • D2 now grants Blink 👻 1/Life ♻20
  • Swapped the position of Decoy and Pass Without Trace
    
    

• Ninja
  • Updated the archetype to account for the inclusion of poison arrows into the mix.
    
    

• Shadow Cloak
  • Lessened the downside:
    • "Cannot wear armor. → “Cannot wear more than 1pt in each location.”
      
      

• Saboteur
  • Added the following:
    • May wield a buckler.
      
      

• Related Changes
  • New incant for Dimensional Rift and Teleport

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Change Log Index
Click here to view the master list of all change log entries for the Amtgard V9 Ruleset.