Twelve Years A Game Designer

I started this blog over twelve years ago, in anticipation of my first (English) publication and the first paid-one.

It was Commander, released by Amora Game exactly twelve years ago (or at least I posted about that on 2nd of November).

And it was funny, in that my first publication was sort-of-happy accident...

Wait... How do you get published accidentally?!

Oh, boy...

I was—just for funsies—designing a Captain class, in a forum posts on Paizo message boards. It was an attempt to capture the spirit of the class of the same name from Lord Of The Rings Online for Pathfinder (1st edition). And then, unexpectedly, I was contacted by Greg LaRose from Amora Game, who told me that he wanted to publish a similar class when he saw my creation and he wanted to use my work as the basis for rework of what he had in mind.

After shaking off the initial dazed condition, I somehow negotiated a very neat deal with Greg, and the commander was born as a fusion of what I had in mind, and what Greg had in mind...

After some less than stellar initial release, we went through revision that ended receiving four out of five stars from Endzeitgeist.

I collaborated with Greg multiple times after that over years, as well as doing some things for Green Ronin, Jon Brazen Enterprise, Little Red Goblin Games, LPJ Designs, Wayward Rogue Publishing, and Zenith Games. I hope I haven't missed anyone.

I ended writing things for 1st edition of Pathfinder, 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Chronicle System (that's Green Ronin's Saga Of Ice And Fire mechanics), and Savage Worlds.

With that said, it has been years since my last publication—currently I am doing little when it comes to designing beyond writing weekly blog posts, though I am in no way shape or form rejecting the possibility of more things coming in the future (I have no intention of dabbling in self-publishing).

Blood Mist, Rust And Starvation: Review Of Forbidden Lands

Earlier this year, I had a pleasure of playing Forbidden Lands role-playing game, a recently-released gloomy, survival sandbox dark fantasy from Free League Publishing. The game focuses on exploration of a half-desolate region after generations of isolation enforced by a magical cataclysm.

Blood Mist And Rust
— or the history of the world as it was told to us

The setting itself is quite dour, though not devoid of hope for better future. The past history of Ravenland story involves waves of human settlers intruding on the lands of elves, dwarves, and halflings, intermingled with periods of peace and coexistence. An evil human sorcerer, Zygofer the Spellbinder led his followers in conquest against the others. Elves, dwarves, and many humans rose against him, defending their lands, the former two sending hordes of enslaved orcs to fight the invaders as their main force. Faced with the determined resistance to his vile rule, Zygofer called upon forces of darkness, unleashing throngs of demons upon his enemies. And then the Blood Mist came, blanketing the realms with a red, malignant fog that separated the land into small domains, as it ended the lives of those who dared to travel at night, with only the inhabited household and underground warrens being safe. Some of its victims were found in the morning dead without visible reason, as if they merely lost the will to live. Others were torn apart as if demons lingered within the mist itself. Only the bravest or the most foolish would venture further than half a day of travel from their homes, facing almost certain death. Except for Rust Brothers—an evil sect serving and following Zygofer, whose acolytes held a secret of traveling through the Blood Mist safely. They were the only force capable of maintaining a degree of contact between their outposts and thus some semblance of organization. The Blood Mist lasted for centuries, isolating settlements from each other for generations... Until it slowly faded recently. Mostly. A pockets of Blood Mist appear from time to time, but they no longer deny travel. Now, months since the trails became passable again, the bold, the greedy, the desperate, and the industrious start moving out of their old settlements to explore the land and the ruins of the old times.

The old threats are not gone, though, for Zygofer is said to be still alive, transformed into a demon himself. His Rust Brothers continue to haunt the land, hunting for elves, half-elves, and their dwarven allies, and attempt to subdue other people, now stronger than ever, for they can finally send mercenary forces with their mist-walking acolytes. Tribes of orcs who never forgave elves and dwarves their enslavement stay in the depths of the forests, ancient demons roam the land even now, and undead lurk in the ancient ruins.

The People Of The Ravenland

The game includes some staple fantasy options—humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves, halflings, goblins, and orcs, as well, as less classic wolfkin, though there are twists here and there. Humans, elves, dwarves, and half-elves are rather typical—with half-elves being lineages of descendants of elven and human intermingling generations ago as well, as recently. Halflings and goblins are single people divided by an ancient curse—whenever a child is born to a halfling or a goblin mother, it can be of either kin, so both live near each other and pass such children to live among their own people. They also tend to help each other—with halflings being better at things such as agriculture and crafts while goblins hunt and secretly protecting the halfling villages from threats. Orcs are playable race, though unsuitable for playing with humans (because they fought each other), elves or dwarves (because of the immense hatred held after generations of slavery followed by being thrown against Zygofer as a cannon fodder), and being at odds with other kins as well. Wolfkin are wolfish humanoid that are dedicated hunters and survivors seeing other kins as weak, unfit for the hardships of forests and mountains of the Ravenland.

The Explorers, Scroungers, and Scoundrels

The choice of kin (aka race) determines the favored attribute and an unique kin talent that allows spending Willpower points to do things such as use one skill in place of another if you can come with a good explanation (humans), recover from critical injuries after a period of meditation (elves), push a roll multiple times (dwarves), avoid being hit (halflings), avoid being seen (goblins), follow scents (wolfkin), or recover from serious wounds (orcs). Half-elves talent makes their first Willpower point spent on activation of a talent or spell count double (more about that later).

The second choice the players make about their character is their profession: druids, fighters, hunters, minstrels, peddlers, riders, rogues, and sorcerers. Each profession determines a favored attribute (again), offers a number of favored skills that can be higher at character creation, and provides a list of profession-specific talents that allow spending Willpower to gain certain benefits in line with the profession—better attack and defense for fighters, better marksmanship, bonding with animals, and dealing with matters of survival for hunters, minstrels inspire their fellows to withstand adversities, peddlers can produce unaccounted for goodies from their vast stashes, riders bond with steeds and fight mounted, rogues disguise themselves, backstab enemies, and procure various poisons, while druids and sorcerers invoke different kinds of magics.

The last major choice is the characters age: young, adult, or old. Younger characters get more attribute points, older get more skill points and more talent picks. Elves are immortal and all count as adult characters.

The game uses four attributes: strength, agility, wits, and empathy. Strength covers ability to exert force, withstand physical injury, and resist most physical afflictions. Agility is quickness and precision of movement. Wits is reasoning, memory, perception, and cunning. Empathy summarizes charisma and compassion. Attributes are supplemented with sixteen skills, four for each attribute: Strength is tied to Crafting, Endurance, Melee, and Might (exertion of pure force). Agility governs Marksmanship, Move, Sleight of Hand, and Stealth. Insight, Lore, Scouting, and Survival are Wits-based, and Empathy covers Animal Handling, Healing, Manipulation (social interaction), and Performance.

Attributes are rated between 2 and 6, with a pool of 13–15 split between four of them. Only favored attributes can be raised to 5, and 6 can only be assigned to an attribute that was favored by both kin and profession. Skills start at 0, non-profession skills can be raised to 1 at the start, and profession skills can be raised to 3 at the beginning, using a pool of 8–12 points.

The skills and attributes are supplemented with a number of general talents that anyone can learn. Like professional talents they have three levels each, granting various bonuses and unlocking new options. Unlike the former, they don't use Willpower in any way.

Finally, the character has a Dark Secret, and a Pride, a sentence that describes what he is good with—once per session when making a dice roll to which the pride could be reasonably applied, the character can claim an extra D12... But on a failure the Pride is erased and replaced after a session with a new one.

Roll The Dice, Suffer The Consequences

When you roll the dice, you create a pool of six-sided dice equal to your attribute plus your skill plus your bonus gear dice, with each source of dice using different colors (like white for attribute, red for skill, and green for gear). This is important distinction because the dice from different sources behave differently. Each six rolled is a success, and a single success is generally enough, though more successes means more damage when attacking, less damage when defending. If you failed to rolled the amount of successes you desired (which usually means rolling no sixes) you can decide to push the roll. Set aside all dice that rolled "6", and all attribute and gear dice that rolled "1". Roll the remaining dice again. Sixes are additional successes. Ones on attribute and gear dice are bad news now, though. All the ones rolled, both in the initial roll, and the re-roll either cause damage to attribute rolled or the gear used (this is why different pools use the different colors, and also why skills are so valuable—they increase your dice pools without negative effects of ones). Damages to attributes from pushing diminish the attribute like other injuries but also generate Willpower, a scarce resource that is used to power kin and profession talents and casting spells. Each roll can be pushed only once, unless you are a dwarf and spend a Willpower point to push remaining dice again. It is easy to push oneself into unconsciousness but the damage is easily healed during rest or basic medical attention. Repairing gear is harder.

Attributes can get damaged in other ways as well—mainly fighting (with combat damage dealt to Strength, unless fighting ghosts and weird demons that can target other attributes), fear (which diminishes Wits), but also various kinds of afflictions and deprivation: hunger causes damage to Strength, thirst damages both Strength and Agility, lack of sleep hinders Wits, and being cold saps your Strength and Wits. The various conditions may also block your ability to recover attributes without resorting to magic.

This can easily lead to a death spiral—failing to get enough sleep can diminish your Wits, hindering your attempts to gather food, damaging your Strength via hunger, making you unable to deal with the threats, which prevents you from sleeping...

When an attribute is reduced to 0, the character becomes broken, losing consciousness, being incapacitated with exhaustion, paralyzed with fear or confusion, or getting unresponsive until healed (or for D6 hours when you recover on your own with 1 point in the broken attribute). If Strength or Wits were broken by an attack (never by pushing and rarely by conditions, which have their own rules for fate of incapacitated character), a D66 roll is made for a critical hit using an appropriate table—blunt, slashing, or stabbing for physical injury to Strength, horror for mental injury to Wits. Some of the critical effects are temporary, some are permanent, and some are lethal, usually after a listed amount of time, though the worst (typically 65-66) are immediate...

Occasionally, when rolling the dice, the characters can get artifact dice (or more likely a single artifact die). Those are granted by Pride (once per session), high level talents (which can grant a D8 artifact dice when using specific type weapon, for example if you are a master of a bow) and magic items, and take the form of D8, D10, or even D12. Rolling 6–7 on such dice is a regular success, 8–9 counts as two successes, 10–11 three, and 12 as staggering four successes.

The Exploration And The Starvation

The game is very sandbox in the nature, with extensive rules governing traveling, exploring new hexes on the map, foraging and hunting for supplies, breaking camps, taking guard, and so on. In the exploration mode, each day is divided into four Quarters, morning from dawn to noon, afternoon from noon to dusk, evening from dusk to midnight, and night from midnight to dawn. Most exploratory activities take a Quarter and involve a dice roll—with rewards for success and a roll in one of many random mishap tables on a failure. You can easily run into a boar while scrounging for turnips, capture a sick mouse when hunting, fall into water when fishing, or make a camp on an anthill.

Counting Quarters is important, as the time is running without waiting for anyone—limited supplies need to be tracked risking starvation, thirst, and lack of sleep if you fail to manage you days well. Survival is an absolutely necessary skill in this game, as well as taking your time to carefully replenish food and water rations. Especially if you want to keep your gear in working conditions, which takes time as well.

In addition to specific food rations and gear, each character has one or more of resource dice—representing packed food and stored water (and potentially arrow and torch supply). Each time the player consumes some of the stored resources of that type, they roll the dice with 1–2 meaning the die diminishes by one step (D12–D10–D8–D6–No supply). Those can be improved by getting surplus food and water, or crafting arrows and torches. It helps and complicates things with keeping track of supplies at the same time, but generally works in players' favor, giving them chance to extend duration of their supplies for a longer time than simply tracking consumption would.

The Ruins And The Strongholds

Once the party explored a suitable location, they might claim an old outpost as their own stronghold. Or, if they have excessive resources at hand (usually when they control one or more strongholds already) built a suitable outpost from a scratch. This changes the gameplay a bit, giving a number of benefits and generating new issues. First of all, the party that has their own stronghold can gain point of Willpower once per session (two if they built a shrine for a deity they are aligned with). Additionally, they can expand the stronghold with a number of functions—facilities that that can be used to store supplies for extended period of time, procure new raw materials (e.g. quarry produces stone while garden produces fresh veggies), convert materials into supplies and gear (inn turns various fresh foods into longer-lasting food supplies while tannery allows making leather out of pelts and sewing leather armor, waterskins, and such), or grant other kinds of bonuses. A functioning stronghold has to be manned by servants, workers, and guards, though, creating constant expenses. The players have to find people suitable to work for them and secure a supply of coins to pay them (though they can man functions themselves... until the number of jobs in the stronghold exceeds their number straining their ability to go adventuring...), which can make them go exploring more, to finance their developing demesne.

The Challenges Of Fun

The game is demanding, and challenges the players on every step, forcing them to make choices that can bite them later—do I push the roll to hunt, risking my health and my gear to get food, or do I play it safe, while risking my supplies. Should we spend a few more days building a surplus so we can safely explore later? Do we press on or do we withdraw to regroup and recover? Do we try to learn what happened? Do we help the others? Are we the good guys, or the guys that survived?

All this choices are deeply entertaining, and Forbidden Lands often manages to make failures worthwhile too, adding more elements to the story of exploration and survival in the forsaken lands.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition Playtest: The First Gimpse

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The First Glimpse Of Pathfinder's Second Edition

A few days ago, Paizo released the playtest for incoming second edition of their widely popular Pathfinder RPG. The >full package< contains the rulebook, the bestiary, "Doomsday Dawn"—a set of seven test adventures, tracking sheet to makes notes for the incoming playtest survey, and four pages of flip maps, that someone with really good printer could print for the sessions... Printing them on a cheap, character sheet-grade printer (like the one I have) would be probably a waste of ink/toner, however.

The files present publishing-grade quality, with the rulebook and the adventure book containing illustrations typical for Paizo (and most if not all of them new). Regretfully, bestiary lacks those and is more concise than the typical Pathfinder monsters books. Monster entries are designed for the playtest and not an actual game, providing mechanics with only two to three sentence description for each monster.

Note that there is still almost year until the game is published, so everything is flux, and what I write here is what is presented now. It might be changed later because of feedback and testing.

Basic Rules

Second edition is not so much a rework, as the case of the system being disassembled into component parts and rebuild from scratch using a similar frame, keeping some of the core ideas, discarding others, and reinventing a lot. We still have races (renamed "ancestries"), classes, levels, ability scores, spells, skills, feats (a lot of feats in fact), checks, saving throws, attack rolls, AC, and check DCs. All of that seen changes and adjustments, sometimes quite significant.

For starters, the game drops base attack bonus, base saving throws, and skill ranks, instead introducing proficiency ranks. Basically anything that is related to a d20 roll involves a proficiency rank, ranging from untrained (–2), trained (+0), expert (+1), master (+2), and legendary (+3), with the numbers I listed in parentheses added to the character's level to get a proficiency modifier. Whenever you make a check (except flat checks), you make a d20 roll and add your ability score and the appropriate proficiency modifier, so a 10th level fighter with expert rank in Medicine skill and Wisdom score of 16 adds +14 to his Medicine check, plus any other bonuses and penalties that might affect him at the moment. This inflates numbers quite fast, but the Difficult Class of challenges raises at similar rate. The same method is used to determine AC and DC of spells and abilities, except they add 10 instead of roll, so the same 10th level fighter with master proficiency in Perception will offer DC of 25 to a pick pocket trying to steal his purse. Other modifiers tend to be lower than in the first edition, so while the numbers rolled escalate quickly, there is no such wild spread among them as in the first edition where DCs of challenges were reaching the point where characters competent in them were passing them easily while other characters of the same level had no practical chance of succeeding. On the other hand it leads to ridiculous situations where high level character that should be completely incompetent in some field still easily beats an expert of much lower level. For example, a 20th level crude barbarian with Charisma 8, has +17 total bonus to Deception checks, easily fooling fifth level noble diplomat with her DC of 19. Some of the activities and skill uses require having certain proficiency rank (for example you can lie while untrained in Deception, but you need trained rank to use Feint in combat).

Another novelty (for a Pathfinder that is), is introduction of grades of success. If the d20 check beats the DC by 10, or when the natural 20 was rolled and the check succeeded, the result if a critical success. If the roll failed by 10, or a natural 1 was rolled while result would be a failure, a critical failure occurs. Many activities offer additional effect when critical success or critical failure occurs, such as extra damage inflicted, worse condition suffered, etc.

Ancestries

Races ancestries still adjust ability scores, give starting languages, starting hit points, land speed, and in some cases either low-light vision or darkvision, but now, all the former racial abilities were relegated to the role of ancestry feats. I have mixed feeling about that... On one hand, it means you don't have to have racial traits you don't care for, but also means you might have to wait until high level to gather all the abilities you considered signature for the race. You get your first ancestry feat at 1st level, and then one every four levels thereafter (5th, 9th, 13th, 17th).

The core ancestries include humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, and goblins... Yes, the goblins are becoming a core PC race. Wait... Where are half-elves and half-orcs?! Well, now they are heritage feats for humans. You have to sacrifice your first ancestry feat (instead of using it to pick that juice extra class feat at 1st level) to become one. In return you get to select two out of four minor benefits and further access to feats of your other ancestry and some that are specific to your half-race.

A completely new element involved in the character creation (or not so new for those who played Starfinder), is "background", telling us where your character was raised or what he did before becoming an adventurer. Each background gives you ability score bonuses, a you a feat (often of rather limited use), and a lore skill linked to your job.

Classes

Then there are classes. To the old eleven, the alchemist was added as a core class. Each class now gets a lot of selective options in the form of class feats (old systems like barbarian's rage powers and rogue talents were turned into class feats), with one class feat gained on each even level (and some but not all classes also get a class feat at 1st level). Each class defines the character's starting proficiency ranks in things like perception, weapons, armor, and saving throws, as well as allowing the characters to select a number of skills in which they are trained. Additionally, each class has a list of "signature skills", skills which can be trained beyond expert rank at higher levels... This is one of the contentious areas, as, three days after the playtest was released, a lot of people are very negative toward that restriction—either in principle, or because of lack of possibility of customization forcing you to pick specific class if you want to play character that in the future is supposed to be master of certain skill. I expect it will be one of aspects of the game that will see changes.

Alchemist has an ability to create a limited number of short-duration alchemical items each day, especially bombs, such as alchemist acid, alchemist fire, and bottled lightning—thanks to abilities that significantly increase their effects.

Barbarians enter destructive rage, like they did in the past... Except now they can rage unlimited number of times each day, though each rage is limited to three rounds now, followed by short period of being exhausted when they can't rage. Each barbarian now picks a totem that gives certain additional effects to the rage and places certain restrictions on barbarians who follow them (for example barbarian with giant totem can't refuse challenges of strength).

Bards also had some significant redesign to their abilities. Now, they are primary occult caster, having access to nine levels of spells (with 10th level of spells unlocked via a 20th level class feat). Their bardic performance was reworked into a number of cantrips, renamed "compositions" and are now usable at will, though restricted to one active composition at a time, unless you pick feat that allows you to use two compositions at the same time. Despite that change, they still remain recognizable, with initial composition known to all bards being inspire courage. What they lost, though, is general bardic lore, which they now can acquire as a feat. Each bard picks a muse at 1st level, being something between inspiration and philosophy behind the bard's life and granting the initial class feat and the second 1st level known.

Clerics still cast divine spells with nine levels of spells (again, a class feat unlocks 10th level of spells at 20th level), have access to domains, though they get only one domain at 1st level now (they can select two more with class feats), and channel energy to heal or harm. Domains grant powers (spells cast with spell points instead of being cast with slots) but don't grant bonus spells, however, and channel energy absorbed the role of the old spontaneous cure/inflict casting, being the ability to cast scaling heal spell (or harm, in case of some but not all evil deities), that depending upon the number of actions spent casting can affect single touched target, single target at range, or everyone within 30 feet.

Druids are main casters for a new type of primal magic. They are divided into orders that grant them their initial special ability—animal companion for animal order, leshy familiar fo leaf order, lightning attack for storm order, and wild shape for claw order... Yes, wild shape is potentially available to druids from the first level, but it is seriously nerfed comparing to the first edition, as it now lasts for a single minute per use. *yuck* Polymorphy was redesigned again, anyway. Each druid can select abilities of other orders with class feats, so you can have wild shaping druid with animal companion and leshy familiar throwing lightning arcs around.

Fighters are still the masters of weapons, though mastery of armor is supposedly more of a paladin niche in this edition. They are the only class that starts with the ability to perform attacks of opportunity, and later can get ability to perform more than one reaction between their turns.

Monks are much less reliant on Wisdom in this edition, ki points derived from Wisdom bonus being purely optional (if you pick the right feat), they don't apply it to their AC either. They can get various stances and special attacks by picking the right class feats. If they decided to get that ki points, they have some quasi-magical options as well.

Playtest paladins are traditional lawful good guys, but the final game might have paladins for different alignments. Their two initial abilities of note, is old favorite lay on hands, and a new retributive strike that allows them to make a reactive attack when enemy strikes adjacent ally instead of them. At 3rd level they gain ability to summon spirit that will imbue their weapon, their shield, or take form of a mount. They don't cast spells in the traditional way, but can use their class feats to add various powers that are spells cast using a pool of spell points.

Rangers don't get spells either. They can select an enemy as their prey, gaining a number of advantages against that specific foe. They can select animal companion feat, and some extra combat and trapping abilities with more class feats.

Rogues still get sneak attack, though it doesn't do as many dice of damage at higher levels as in the first edition. They are definite masters of skills, getting more skill increases, more signature skills, and more skill feats than any other class. Their class feats grant them a lot of options for enhancing their sneak attacks, increase mobility, and defending oneself.

Sorcerers pick their bloodline, which in addition to powers and skills, determines what type of magic they wield: arcane, divine, occult, or primal. Angelic-blooded sorcerer casts divine spells now, and can be a decent healer, while dragon-blooded one cast arcane spells, and fey-blooded primal. They don't get as many spells per day as they did in the first edition, but they still are spontaneous casters.

Wizards feel quite familiar, with their arcane spells, selection of specialization school that even grant bonus spell slot for the specialization spell at each spell level.

Skills And Feats

Skills were cut down to sixteen specific skills (Acrobatics, Arcana, Athletics, Crafting, Deception, Diplomacy, Intimidation, Medicine, Nature, Occultism, Performance, Religion, Society, Stealth, Survival, Thievery) plus potentially infinite number of Lore skills, which cover most vocational skills and knowledge of anything not covered by main skills. Each skill has a number of skill feats associated, which are gained at every even level (except of rogue who gets one each level), that unlock extra options and benefits for that particular skill. For example a character trained in Medicine can select Battlefield Medic which allows the character to heal wounds to an ally once per day.

General feats were seriously cut down to a few, with a general feat gained at 3rd level and every four levels thereafter. Multiclassing is done by picking special multiclassing feats that grant you some abilities of class other than your own.

Magic

Spellcasting remains similar to the first edition one, retaining both prepared vancian casting (cleric, druid, wizard) and spontaneous casting using daily slots (bard, sorcerer) though many spells were redesigned and moved around. New type of spells was introduced called powers, which are spells bestowed by class features and feats, cast using spell points instead of being cast with daily slots. Cantrips are still cast at will, and now they scale somewhat with the level of the caster. Many spells can be scaled by using them with a higher level spell slot than minimum required to cast them (for example regular 3rd level fireball inflicts 6d6 points of fire damage, but when cast using higher level slot, it inflicts additional 2d6 for each level beyond 3rd).

Combat

Combat saw some big redesign when it comes to action system. Instead of having a standard action, a move action, and a quick action, or a full action with iterative attacks, the second edition gives each character three actions that can be used to move, attack, interact, or use their abilities as they please (well, mostly, many abilities have restrictions how often or when you can use them, though basic actions allow for a lot of versatility). Casting spells usually requires two actions—one verbal casting and one somatic casting, though this vary from spell to spell. Certain effects can give characters fourth action, often with strict restrictions on what kind of action can be taken, while slowed condition can take away third or even second action from affected character. Between your turns you can make single reaction, though a lot of characters probably won't get any abilities that would let them meaningfully utilize their reactions, attacks of opportunity are now ability restricted to fighters and (with selection of correct feat) paladins mostly. Free actions are still here.

Attacking itself is still the same, roll the die, add the total bonus, compare to AC, roll the damage if hit. Scoring critical hits against low AC enemies is easier, as you only need to beat their AC by 10 points, but critical multipliers are gone, with attacks dealing double damage. Some weapons have a deadly trait that lets them roll extra die of damage, while others have fatal trait, which alters their damage die on a critical hit, though.

Dying was redesigned into a series of Fortitude saving throws, with failures stacking dying condition, until the character is dead when it reaches dying 4. It's possible to die quickly if you are downed by a critical hit (you normally get dying 1 when you drop to 0 hit points, but a critical hit gives you dying 2 immediately) and then by rolling a critical failure on your recovery save, which gives you two more levels of dying.

Goodies, aka Magic Items and other treasures

The treasure section includes a number of alchemical items, particularly important for alchemists, as they can craft many of them for their use during adventures, runes that can be etched on weapons and armors to grant them various magical properties, and more classical items such as wands, staves, scrolls, and wondrous items.

The big change regarding magic items is introduction of a Resonance, a pool of points that refreshes daily, equal to the character's level plus their Charisma modifier that need to be spent to use magic items.

Extras

The game offers exploration mode rules regarding, well, exploration, as well as some minimalist downtime options allowing for a structured if abstracted activity between adventures, such as earning money through work, crafting items, gathering information, and retraining. Oh, and your super-miserly PCs can save money on living by scrounging for food in wilderness and towns, if they can make their Survival or Society rolls.

Summary

The playtest has just begun, there still might be some major changes made in the future and we'll surely see a lot of minor adjustments.