Changelog

02/06/09-29/06/09 (3.0.2.4) [in progress]

Magic

• Buffed the Effect Strength that can be cleansed by Purge and Purify from 2 x Power to 3 x Power.
• Continued the review of Power Cost, concentrating on Essence spells.
• Increased the Max Phys Affected by Sleep and Lullaby from 3 x Power to 4 x Power, to help compensate for the reduction of their Maximum Power Cost.
• Increased the Healing Effect of Healing Song from 3 x Power to 4 x Power, to help compensate for its reduced Maximum Power Cost.
• Reduced the Willpower Recovered by Jolt from 2 to 1.
• Changed the Activation Power of Talisman of Healing from 1-5 to 1-4, Overcharge.
• Changed the Activation Power of Talisman of Greater Healing from 1-6 to 2-6, Overcharge.
• Halved the Shock Resistance provided by Life Binding.
• Changed the Shock Resistance provided by Cloak of Shadows from Power /2 (round up) to Power /2 (round down) but increased Maximum Power Cost from 3 to 4 to compensate.
• Changed the Shock Resistance provided by Dark Mask from Power /2 (round up) to Power /2 (round down).
• Buffed Astral Armour's effectiveness against Psychic Damage but slightly nerfed it against Shock, as above. Also changed its Power Cost from 1-5 to 2-4.
• Buffed Spirit Shield and Astral Barrier's effectiveness against Psychic Damage.
• Added Psyshield to Basic Mentalics. Psyshield is a weaker version of Spirit Shield.
• Added Talisman of Contact to Limited Telepathy, a talisman that can transmit a brief voice message to everyone nearby – or to talismans it is linked to over longer range.
• Buffed the range of Mentalic Message and Telepathic Contact considerably, although also reduced the Maximum Power Cost of Telepathic Contact from 6 to 4.
• Added Remote Activation, a passive ability that lets you feed Power into a Talisman of Contact network so that other users can activate their talismans for free.
• Added the Standby ability to Advanced Casting.
• Clarified that you still count as a non-manifest spirit for spellcasting purposes when using the Astral Projection spell Partial Manifestation. Further clarified that you retain the ability to fly, but that you can no longer completely ignore physical obstructions – instead slowly phasing through them.
• Eliminated the Physical/Energy damage resistance granted to partially manifest spirits, instead allowing them to take full normal Wound Penalties – although they still ignore Shock.
• Added the Ghost Casting ability, which requires Advanced Casting and Astral Projection and allows you to cast your full range of non-spiritual magic when using Partial Manifestation.

12/05/09-01/06/09 (3.0.2.3)

Magic

• Added the Telekinetics Spell Group, which costs 15.
• Clarified that all Enchanted Item spells require direct contact with the item when casting, unless they separately list Enchanting Range.
• Added the Runecasting ability for 10 points, which allows you to substitute your Crafting skill in place of Spellcasting, but which provides only a very limited ability to actually cast spells.
• Added the Concentration stat, which dictates the number of Spell, Form, Item and Rune Slots that a character has access to. By default all character have Concentration of 1 and Enhanced Concentration, etc. now simply increase this stat, rather than directly affecting your number of Spell Slots.
• Moved Enhanced Concentration, etc. from Spellcasting to Meditation in order to encourage spellcasters to take Meditation as a key support skill and to allow non-spellcasters to increase their Concentration without having to learn magic.
• Slightly rewrote how focus and power runes work to fit them in with the new Rune Slots made available by Concentration. Focus runes now require 1 Rune Slot, while power or advanced focus runes require 2 and advanced power runes require 3.
• Slightly buffed the Maximum Power Cost of Thunder Shot to help compensate for the fact that it is less Power-efficient than Guiding Wind.
• Reduced the Maximum Power Cost of many spells, but gave some the new Overcharge attribute to partially compensate. Also tweaked the Minimum Power Cost in some cases.
• Dropped the number of strikes inflicted by Chain Lightning from 5 to 4, although since the fifth hit was always pretty unlikely to hit this is a pretty minor nerf in effect. Also reduced the Minimum Power Cost from 5 to 4.
• Slightly buffed the maximum Weight of objects created by Frost Forge to compensate for its reduced Maximum Power Cost.
• Slightly buffed Bubble across the board, partially to compensate for its reduced Maximum Power Cost and partially just to encourage its use.
• Buffed the Bonus Armour gained when guarding with Wings of Light.
• Made Hollow Word slightly easier to cast (19 instead of 20) to compensate for Power nerf.

12/04/09-11/05/09 (3.0.2.2)

Focus Abilities

• Clarified that Hyper Alertness must be activated in your own turn.
• Added Panic and Fury to Basic Moves & Abilities.
• Slightly buffed Adrenal Focus and Intense Adrenal Focus duration and reduced the cost from 6 to 4.
• Added Berserk Fury to Melee Combat.

Social Skills and Acting

• Removed the Acting skill entirely and replaced it with an Acting ability (cost 2) based on Social Skills.
• Removed Acting prerequisite from Beguiling Manner and Expert Mimicry and replaced Acting skill requirements with Acting ability requirement for Mimicry and Doe Eyed.
• Increased Difficulty Modifier of Social Skills from x1 to x2.
• Reduced cost of Expert Mimicry from 8 to 5 and Mimicry from 4 to 3.

Farming & Herding

• Added the Basic Agriculture (2), Crop Management (3) and Fungal Cultivation (4) abilities.
• Reduced cost of Irrigation from 6 to 4 and added Basic Agriculture as prerequisite.

Alchemy

• Reduced cost of Poison Refining and Narcotics Refining from 5 to 4 each.

First Aid

• Reduced cost of Essence Insight and Herb Lore from 4 to 3 each.

General Knowledge

• Scrapped the old Familiarity system and moved Area Knowledge here from Survival.
• Reduced cost of Area Knowledge and expanded it to cover both wilderness and cities.
• Dropped Basic Literacy entirely.

Linguistics

• Changed Advanced Literacy to just Literacy (with Linguistics 1 as only prerequisite) and clarified that how well you can read depends on your Linguistics skill.

Seafaring

• Dropped the bonuses from Basic Ropes & Knots in favour of making it a prerequisite for Seafaring: Sailing. Dropped its optional Crafting requirement from 3 to 1 and reduced its cost from 3 to 1.
• Reduced the cost of Advanced Ropes & Knots from 3 to 2, reduced its optional Crafting requirement from 4 to 3 and reduced its bonuses from +2 to +1 to keep it in line with Basic Ropes & Knots. Made this a prerequisite for Expert Sailing.
• Added the Sailing (2) and Expert Sailing (3) abilities.

Survival

• Reduced Crafting requirement for Basic Traps & Snares from 2 to 1.
• Reduced cost of Advanced Pit-Traps and Advanced Snares from 4 to 3 each.

Tactics

• Reduced cost of Battle Gesture from 3 to 2 and reduced Tactics requirement from 3 to 2 but increased Linguistics requirement from 1 to 2.

Intimidation

• Reduced the optional Intimidation-only requirement for Battle-Cry from 5 to 4 and from 3 to 2 when coupled with Melee Combat of 4.
• Reduced the Intimidation requirement for Chilling Battle-Cry from 6 to 5.

Resistance

• Reduced cost of Blessed Stoicism from 4 to 3.

Melee Combat

• Reduced the cost of Arrow Cutting from 10 to 8 and reduced the penalty for parrying ranged attacks using it from -5 to -3.
• Buffed one-handed single-weapon wielders a little more by reducing the AM penalty for Vicious Lunge to just -1 when in Duelling Stance.
• Allowed the option of basing Whip Crack on Farming & Herding instead (requiring the Animal Handling ability) and gave it a base difficulty of 16.
• Added a base difficulty of 15 to Spin Flail.
• Increased the AM penalty for using Knee attacks outside of a Grapple or Hold from -1 to -2.

Stealth

• Reworked Stealth penalties for movement, proximity and lack of cover with the assumption that walking, with partial cover and being within 20m is the norm (I.e. Unmodified) with slower movement, more cover or greater distance now providing bonuses and penalties for less cover or distance or faster movement reduced to remain in line.
• Dropped the idea of moving stealthily being a full action, so that it is now possible to Sprint stealthily – although this applies a -5 penalty.

Athletics

• Quick Recovery now makes you immune to Staggering.
• Reduced cost of Longjump from 2 to 1 because it's basically worthless.

Riding

• Reduced the cost of Bareback Riding and Bareback Specialisation from 8 and 10 to 6 each.

Magic

• Slightly reworked Guiding Wind so that it has a Wind Strength based on it's Variable Power of 1-5 rather than having fixed Power requirement based on your weapon. Wind Strength must then be great enough to accommodate the Strength requirement of the weapon used.
• Removed the Astral Arts prerequisite for Enhanced Concentration, thus effectively moving the whole concentration and willpower channelling trees from Astral Arts into general magic.
• Added Astral Arts prerequisite for Spell Compression and Astral Channelling.
• Slightly rewrote the Healing Power sub-ability of Life Channelling for improved clarity, in some ways this is a slight nerf, in others a slight buff – all in all not worth fussing over.
• Dropped the Shock Inflicted stat from Gift of Life completely, FFS did this spell really need any nerf beyond the fact that it drains its caster's life to heal someone else?
• Slightly reworded Sleep to take into account that you don't necessarily know who the spell will end up being cast on.
• Changed Shock caused by Spark of Life from target's Wound Penalty +1 to half target's Wound Penalty +3.
• Gave Analyse Magic a +5 bonus to Mage Lore vs the targeted spell and clarified that it is a Beam-type spell that requires Line of Sight to its target.
• Made Disruption Bolt Faint, to clarify how detectable it is.
• Added Astral Flame, Homing Projectiles and Seeker Shot, all Optional Spell Enhancements.
• Added the Charm attribute – a special type of Evoked Object that allows ownership of the spell to be passed if both the current owner and the new owner touch the Charm and agree.
• Added the Talisman attribute – a special type of Charm that can trigger temporary additional effects if provided with more Power.
• Renamed Binding Charm as Suppression Band, Observing Charm as Scrying Eye.
• Tracking Charm is now a Charm spell.
• Reduced the Power cost of Mending Charm from target's Phys/2 to target's Phys/4, and made it a Charm spell.
• Likewise halved the Power cost for Regenerative Charm and made it a Charm spell.
• Made Warning Charm, Comprehension, Heart's Path and Memory Charm into Charm spells – effectively buffing Comprehension and Heart's Path quite a bit. Also changed Memory Charm so that it can record whatever elements of the relived memory that the user wishes, in order for others to then replay those memories themselves. Also made them all Enduring and Vulnerable.
• Temperate Charm is now a Charm spell.
• Dropped Last Gasp and combined its effect into Life Binding. Life Binding is now a Charm, and has Variable Power Cost of 1-4 – but it only affects those with Willpower less than or equal to its current Power x3. Increased its Difficulty from 19 to 20.
• Slightly rewrote Red Mist to turn it into a Charm spell.
• Harmless Appearance is now a Charm spell.
• Slightly rewrote Energise to turn it into Energising Charm.
• Added Talisman of Recovery to Healing Arts, the first Talisman spell.
• Buffed direct healing effects by 50% (Life Magic, True Healing, Advanced Healing, Resurrection Magic).
• Gave Restless Night the Variable attribute.
• Changed the continuing damage of Mentalic Barbs to be Internal Damage instead of Blunt, which is technically quite a decent buff but probably makes little difference in most situations, and makes a lot more sense.
• Buffed detection ranges of Sense Direction quite a bit.

05/03/09-11/04/09 (3.0.2.1)

Spellcasting

• Formally added Dark Channelling, with Power based on Stealth.
• Bonus Power gained from Burning Willpower now applies equally to all Channelling.
• Clarified that you can't use Magesmithing to bind Conditionally Maintainable spells.
• Clarified that Conditionally Maintainable spells made Enduring with Bind Magic still finish when their ending conditions are met (I.e. They become Conditionally Enduring).
• Clarified that Magesmithing can only bind Minimal-cost spells, and that Expert Magesmithing can bind spells of any Power-level – including Variable spells. Also clarified that a Spellcasting check is not required to bind spells in this way.
• Reduced cost of Songcasting and Advanced Songcasting from 15 to 10 each.
• Reduced penalty for Songcasting while performing another action to -2 to both, from -3.
• Increased bonus for Songcasting Vocal spells from +3 to +4.
• Increased cost of Wordcasting from 15 to 18, but dropped cost of Advanced Wordcasting from 15 to 12.
• Moved Dismissal from Manifestation to Basic Spirit Binding.
• Added True Metamorphosis.
• Added Advanced Manifestation.
• Slightly nerfed Crude Manifestation and clarified that it broadly duplicates the caster's normal race.
• Added Semi-Spiritual attribute for spells that can be cast by non-manifest spirits but aren't limited to them.
• Nerfed the secondary explosion damage on Blast Lance to compensate for the buff to Delayed Effect Damage with an area-effect.
• Gave Nymph's Blessing and Hidden Depths the Reflex attribute, cos – y'know, why not?
• Advanced Astral Channelling now allows you to channel up to your Willpower +50%.
• Increased the cost of Astral Channelling from 15 to 20, and Advanced Astral Channelling from 12 to 15.
• Added the ability Blood Memory, costing 4 points and requiring knowledge of Blood Magic and True Metamorphosis. Optionally enhances Taste for Blood to learn a creature's Form simply by sampling its blood – although this increases the difficulty of the spell by 4.
• Reduced cost of Basic Divination from 10 to 6.
• Reduced cost of Basic Necromancy from 18 to 10.

Potions and Powders

• Reduced cost of all potion/powder-making Alchemy abilities from 8 to 5.
• Reduced cost of Persistent Magic from 10 to 5 and made it an ability group covering the Optional Spell Enhancements Persistent and Lingering, both +2 difficulty.
• Clarified that Spell Powders can hit multiple times when containing a spell with Rate of Fire greater than 1, with normal autofire rules applicable.

Basic Spirit Binding

• Extended Spirit Sight to also detect undead, manifested or animated beings.
• Buffed range of Spirit Speech from 20m x Power to 30m x Power.
• Greatly buffed the area of Banishment and made it more Power efficient.
• Buffed the range, area and strength of Binding Ward.
• Extended Dismissal to also affect undead or animated beings.
• Made Spirit Bond Semi-Spiritual so that it can be cast by non-manifest spirits.

Meditation

• Increased cost of Restful Trance from 6 to 8.

Melee Combat

• Slightly buffed Bucklers when worn as opposed to held.
• Increased cost of Disarm from 4 to 5 but reduced cost of Improved Disarm from 6 to 5.
• Extended Flail Training into Flexible Weapon Training to cover whips as well.
• Reduced Melee Combat prerequisite for Flexible Weapon Training from 4 to 3.
• Added the Whip Specialisation ability.
• Added the Whip Crack ability to intimidate people or drive cattle.
• Clarified that special multiple attacks (such as Dual-Wielding) can be combined with non-special extra attacks, with the special attacks applying their reduced penalty to all attacks and the additional attacks applying the full -3 to all.
• Increased cost of Brace for Impact from 4 to 6 and reduced the failure range under which it operates from -5 or less to -3 or less.
• Increased cost of Roll with the Punches from 6 to 8 and reduced the failure range under which it operates from -3 or less to -2 or less.
• Clarified that Brace for Impact and Roll with the Punches only apply vs Physical Damage.
• Clarified that reducing falling damage with Break Fall requires an Athletics check of 15.
• Reduced cost of Steady Grip from 4 to 3.
• Reduced cost of Dual-Wielding from 8 to 6 but increased the cost of All-Out Attack and All-Out Defence from 2 to 3.
• Increased cost of Shield Defence and Offhand Defence from 2 to 3 and made Defensive Melee a prerequisite for both.
• Added Duelling Stance as a buff for characters using a single one-handed weapon.
• Slightly nerfed Knuckle Claws and Claw Gloves damage.
• Slightly buffed natural Claws parry AM.
• Reduced armour-penetration on thrusting attacks with Claws and Grand Claws.
• Clarified that Grand Claws are non-retractable and gave them a small Manual Dex penalty.
• Clarified that Leaping Tiger Style's +1 DC modifier does not apply to claws.
• Reduced cost of Shield Counter from 4 to 2 because it overlaps so heavily with Rebuff and Shield Combo and is not especially compatible with Shield Defence.
• Reduced cost of Improved Guard from 6 to 5.
• Dropped Melee Combat 4 requirement from Martial Parry.
• Reduced Cost of Draw & Strike from 8 to 5.
• Clarified that you can use Nerve Strike with Holds, but not Throws.
• Reduced AM penalty for Nerve Strikes from -3 to -2.

Ranged Combat

• Decreased cost of Speed Load Crossbow from 8 to 6, to discourage shooting & dropping.
• Altered cost of Snapshooting from 6 to 4 and Expert Snapshooting from 6 to 8, keeping the overall cost of buying both the same, but helping to keep costs down for characters who want to be some use with a crossbow.

Thrown Weapons

• Added the Bolas Specialisation ability.
• Reduced the cost of Rapid Throw from 8 to 6 to help keep it competitive with Multi-Throw.
• Reduced penalty for throwing simple projectiles without training from -3 to -2.

Survival/Stealth

• Reduced the penalty for Stealth/Survival in an unfamiliar environment from -3 to -2.

Riding

• Clarified that Mounted Shooting Expertise also covers thrown weapons and spells.
• Replaced Ranged Combat 4 requirement of Mounted Shooting Expertise with Snapshooting, Thrown Weapon Training or Spellcasting 4.
• Eased prerequisites of Lance Charge and Ride-By Strike – dropping Lance Specialisation and Mounted Melee Specialisation respectively.

Equipment

• Slightly increased costs of some daggers (folding, throwing, stiletto).
• Added Bullwhips and Snake Whips.
• Added the Reduced Offhand Penalty attribute to all daggers and knives except for Dirks and Stilettos, in order to encourage their use as offhand weapons.
• Added Bolas and Heavy Bolas and wrote up the Spinup and Entangling attributes for them.
• Nerfed secondary stats of Stilettos somewhat in order to avoid them just being better than Dirks.
• Split Parrying Dagger into Parrying Dagger, Sai and Swordbreaker.
• Added Armoured Waistcoat, Reinforced Shirt and Reinforced Trousers for the fashion concious gentleman who doesn't want to be stabittied to death too easily.

Racial Abilities/Shapeshifting

• Added the race Taiyeen.
• Added Accelerated Healing, Limited Regeneration and True Regeneration as Spiritual Features.
• Added the race Ixahran Explorer.
• Added the Hive Link ability to Engineered Features.
• Added rules for tentacles and quadrupedal or centauroid forms.
• Added Monstrous Appearance, which is applied to races that are highly unusual in appearance and likely to be considered frightening and beastly.
• Moved Water Breathing from Spiritual Features to Natural Features, making it easier to duplicate with shape-shifting magic and clarifying that it is not a magical ability itself.
• Added Psy Speech, Psy Pulse, Psy Arrow and Psy Shield to Spiritual Features.
• Added rules for Sculpted Appearance increasing Attractiveness.
• Reduced Encumbrance of Armoured Scales from 2 to 1.
• Added the race Animated Statue.
• Added Heavy attribute, and gave it to Karithkine.
• Added Stone Skin, similar to Armoured Plates but Engineered and providing less armour but also less Encumbrance.
• Added Animated, which combines Life Support, Unsleeping and various lesser modifiers.
• Gave Karithkine the disadvantage No Channelling Ability and increased their cost by 20.
• Increased cost of Gethlyrin servitors from 100 to 140.
• Added the Hive Minion ability to Engineered Features, as well as a ton of associated stuff.
• Reduced armour of Armoured Plates from 12 to 11.
• Increased Encumbrance of Phasing Plate from 4 to 5.
• Added Defence Curl, Rolling Defence, Swift Roll and Attack Roll to Natural Features.

Damage Types

• Clarified that Delayed Effect Damage that also has an area-effect loses its area when going off inside its victim's armour – but gains +1 DC instead.
• Further clarified that DE Stun Damage with an area-effect loses the Stun property when going off inside armour – this being mainly applicable to Shockwave Damage.

Trivial Non-Combat Abilities

• Reduced the cost of Beekeeping from 6 to 4.
• Reduced the cost of Irrigation from 8 to 6.
• Reduced cost of Basic Literacy and Advanced Literacy from 8 to 6 each.
• Dropped Spirit Binding prerequisite from Expert Spirit Lore.