This has been a slow month

While this month has been slow.  Play testing has been a lot of fun.  The new magic rules are very interesting tactically.  Balance wise, no one is quite certain where it should go.  It could easily become a sort of Harry Potter style melee where everyone uses magic, because it is so much more powerful then melee weapons alone.  However none of the play testers nor designers really want that to happen.

One obvious difference is that melee which was already more hazardous then D20 variants, really requires tactical thinking.  If you just stand toe to toe, and your opponent takes advantage of movement rules your not going to do well.  In short there is a lot more moving around in melee then anyone really expected.

Recently in play testing a low power party encountered a giant crocodile.   The monster ambushed the party at a broken down bridge, where the party had little freedom of movement.  The crocodile attacked, nearly killed a horse and was trying to drag it away.  The party went after the crocodile, but the crocodile retreated, then ambushed again and nearly killed a party member.  The party hacked away at the beast but to little effect.  Finally the character who was ambushed and being crushed by the crocodile, successfully put the beast  to sleep with a spell.  However the spell was an area of effect spell.  They were all of them clustered together, and half the rest of the party went down too.   It was tremendous fun!  Read some detail about it here.

Otherwise, rules review is proceeding more slowly then anyone would like.  Hopefully DRAFT2 by the end of the month.