As I threatened in my big post on Ways and Means, I will be going through each of the four classes and talking about, line by line, what works for me and what doesn't. It's my hope to be fairly generous, but I don't make any claims towards objectivity. I'll be going through the list in order - first up is the Blightborn.
Intro
For the most part, I’m going to try to constrain my criticism to the mechanical aspects of the design, but I did want to note what seems to me to be a difference between the “flavorful” part of the design of Heart versus Ways and Means. In Heart, almost all of the classes placed you within a social context, even if your induction into that group was not by choice. Deadwalkers didn’t opt in to dying probably – but being a Deadwalker means that you are part of a kind of person in the Heart. Deadwalkers are a known entity; people in the Heart know about Deadwalkers and the things that Deadwalkers do, and there’s a specific metaphysical thing in the setting that kind of becomes yours to talk about / interface with. There’s a range of specificity – Deep Apiarists have a much more specific deal than do Cleavers – but one of the unifying themes that I got out of the core book is that Heart classes are embedded in the world of Destera and its history. I personally think that thread is stronger than the other one I often hear, which goes something like this: the fun and typifying thing about Heart classes is that they fit the mold of “D&D Class + Surprising Twist”. I think that lens is a pretty good starting point, but ultimately insufficient (and maybe a little too limiting). “Deep Apiarists are D&D Wizards plus alien bees!” is an awesome pitch! But “Cleavers are, uh, Ranger/Barbarians plus... body horror!” isn’t very accurate, nor is it the best way to approach or understand what’s going on with them, I would argue.
Sneaking in one other piece here – core Heart also sets up a small dichotomy between “Calling” and “Class” - your calling is why you persist in your activities in the Heart, a notably horrible place to be, and your class is how you (mostly) survive to keep doing that. Your class isn’t just your social position or job or magical power, but it’s sort of a mélange of all three. Also, every delver is doomed! Your calling will escalate to a narrative beat that justifies your death, but your class has within it the seeds of your own destruction, which bloom at the narratively appropriate time. A Deadwalker ultimately will die; a Cleaver will one day merge with or become an aspect of the Heart; all of these ends are, imo, an integral and constitutive part of the class’s identity.
OK SO all of that is important to what I want to do here, but I haven’t yet mentioned the class I’m trying to talk about so: The pitch in the text for the Blightborn is that they got infected with some kind of incurable fungal infection. It’s somehow connected to the Heart - “Now the Heart beats in your heart” we’re told – but there isn’t any big fiction here. There’s no specific strain or kind of mushroom (ala the witch blood curse), it just seems to be a thing that sometimes happens to folks. That’s fine, but it doesn’t really compel me! Of course, there’s room to come up with my own thing, but it’s missing the sense I usually get from Heart classes, that there will be something for me to hook into, that there’s something about the world that will be mine. But the fiction is only a small part of the design – the game mechanics and class abilities are another!
Core Abilities
There are two core abilities here, but they mostly function in tandem. Colonise says you can take 2 Blood stress and touch someone to infect them with your spores. You can make the effect permanent by succeeding at an Endure+Wild check. Notably, the Blightborn starts with both Endure and Wild, so it’s a 3d10 roll by default – pretty good odds. Being infected by your spores doesn’t do anything on its own, but other abilities will reference it, including the other core ability, Whisper Network, which establishes that you can communicate with your infecteds at any time (although the message is mediated by the fungus).
Heart’s design is so flexible and each class is doing its own thing, so I really and truly do not believe that you can make a universal statement about what a core ability is or should be. But there are core abilities I am more excited about, and those that I’m less excited about. I personally like the Witch’s Crucible a lot – it's just such a neat little tool to have in your back pocket, it’s a little subgame that the Witch can play, basically at any time, and it feeds delightfully right into the other thing the Witch has going on, which is turning into a big horrible blood-warped monster. Other cores are a little more dull – the Junk Mage eating resources to get protection is perfectly functional and probably really useful! It doesn’t feel as cool to me (and it’s not quite as available, since it requires a resource for input), but I think it helps push the Junk Mage into a fun play pattern, which is that they’ll want to be accruing as many esoteric resources as they can get their horrible little hands on. And of course, it’s ok for the Junk Mage to not have a big monster form or etc as their core, because they’ll be doing other fun stuff with all their spells.
The Blightborn’s core abilities do set up a neat little minigame to play, all about trying to infect as many people as possible. For my own design tastes, it’s both a little more antagonistic and leans a little “complex” - not because the ability by itself is in anyway difficult, but because it’s unbounded (you could, theoretically, do this to every single person you meet), and the information is both somewhat onerous to keep track of while being pretty relevant for both the GM and the Blightborn player to know. I also say “antagonistic” because it seems as though, in addition to being pointing towards hirelings, this ability is pointing at the other player characters. This particular expression of fungal infection is fairly benign (mutual conversation!), but not all of the abilities are, and the ability by its nature is fairly invasive. Not necessarily out of place in a horror game, but I think it crosses a line that I don’t think any other abilities do. I don’t believe in attempting to legislate good player behavior through specific character rules, but I do think that if I were designing an ability, and it was crucial to my design goal that the ability involved implanting spores in other people, including the characters played by my friends, I would probably give everyone a little text to help negotiate that.
To go a little deeper on this idea, these mode of interrupting other players' agency is fairly common in more socially focused games. The ones I think of right away are Monsterhearts and Masks, which both have rules for how you can seize a little control over another player character (in Monsterhearts, you can accumulate strings on others, and use strings to get the other characters to act as you desire; in Masks, you can wield influence over other characters, which can give you power over their self image). In both games, those are well understood states of play with game text about how to get out from under them – ie, you expect, as a player, to have some of your power over your character in negotiation between the other players, and know what can (or can’t) be done about it. Here, there isn’t any text, which means we don't have much to refer to when we attempt to negotiate a dispute, or mismatched expectations. Again, that’s not a problem in and of itself! I think that it's both flavorful and interesting for Heart, and fairly in line with the expectations set by the idea of fallout, and just because the game text doesn't specifically explain it doesn't mean it's impossible - it sounds cool to attempt to track down a healer who can cure a nasty fungal infection! But even just a small piece of sidebar text with some provocations or suggestions about whether it's possible to cure the infection in others, or coding the infection as a fallout would, I think, be a kindness.
One final thought about the ability - I think it's rather bizarre that the only cost is stress (you can even start the game with 1 Blood protection as part of your gear)! I would probably have made it cost a resource. Having a greater cost means that the decision is more interesting - instead of trying to get everyone, now the game is trying to get the right people, or else get so many resources that you can get everyone. It also means that the payoff can be a little more immediate. Telepathic communication is useful, but it's also kind of decision-less - I think it would be neat if your core gave you just a little something else to do after you've infected the people you wanted to infect.
That note about gear made me check back in the starting gear section to see what else was there. Mostly I interpret these as cute little signposts or fun flavor-building choices, but there is some design work happening here. The +1 Blood protection "item" is eyecatching. Alternatively, you can start with a D8 mend item for mind and blood stress, which seems pretty strong! And for some reason, the Blightborn can pick a D6 piercing weapon. Piercing is one of those tags that is fairly tightly controlled, as, rules as written, it obviates protection, one of the most important adversary tools. Only the Hound gets a piercing weapon, and it comes with a drawback (the expensive tag). It's an interesting choice to give it again here!
Minor Abilities
I'll be going ability by ability, in alphabetical order! I think these will go much more quickly (here's hoping).
Biofluorescence: grants the delve skill, mastery to "any test made when
attempting to establish a connection during a delve," and the ability to emit light in a color of your choice (but only one, chosen when you take the ability). Mastery is quite strong, but the limit is quite relevant. I think the ability is actually good enough just by giving you the light-up ability. Me being me, I probably would have made it so that you can give light up mushrooms to folks, or even grow them out of folks you've infected. To keep the connection piece, I probably would have made it about granting the Trusty tag for delving when making connections (roll twice for stress against the delve and use best).
Cloud Colony: grants the sneak skill, and the ability to once per situation fill a room-sized area with spores. The spores count as a smoke-tag item and let you target anyone in the room with your Colonise core ability. I think this is pretty elegant! Once per situation is fairly frequent, is maybe the one thing I'd say. This seems like a good candidate for a small stress cost.
Fruitful Body: the "generic" skill granting ability. The Blightborn can pick from compel, delve, discern, endure, kill, mend, and sneak. The way I like to think about these is "what skill can't the character get this way?" - there are two missing skills here, evade and hunt, which is a little unusual but not unprecedented. Stats head time - of the core classes, hunt is in all nine generic lists, and evade is in only five, making it one of the two least common (sneak is also only in 5).
Hard Coded: grants +2 mind protection. Oddly computer-y name, which will come up again. The typical pattern for classes gives each access to two +2 protection advances, usually without any abilities or other text -
Heart Extrusion: grants +2 echo protection and the ability to sense (in vague detail) what is on the other side of a surface. Pretty neat ability, especially on a protection-granting advance! I would probably have made that the little bonus to the discern-granting ability.
Inherited Understanding: the generic domain granting ability. No access to the technology domain.
Invasive Procedures: grants the mend skill and gives everyone infected by your spores an internal healing mechanism, which counts as a D6 mend blood item, activated by rolling endure+wild. This is presumably meant only for other player characters, as NPCs, even hirelings, don't have access to skills or domains. The other thing I'm presuming is that 1. the mend item is for internal use only and 2. that, for that reason, it bypasses the usual ruling that healing yourself is Risky. Maybe that's an overly generous interpretation on my part, because it seems like that would be pretty strong. The other reason for my assumption about NPCs is that they get called out specifically as getting extra points in protection from this ability, one point per major ability that the Blightborn has. It also says that the protection is in a resistance of the Blightborn's choice - that makes sense for hirelings, but not really for adversaries. In my opinion, this ability is a little too messy - I would probably redo this from scratch.
Mouthpiece: grants Compel and the ability to, once per session, make one of your infecteds speak a single sentence of your choice. Pretty nifty, and the opportunity for hijinks is extremely high. The kind of simple ability that makes me jump at chances to use it creatively.
Robust Morphology: the generic protection ability - +1 protection in anything except for fortune. Only the Hound missed fortune protection in the core book (and Hounds have a core ability all about taking fortune stress & fallout).
Saprophyte: grants the desolate domain and the ability to heal stress from any resistance by consuming organic matter, once per session. I'm a little surprised at the presence of two stress healing moves - granted, Invasive Procedure is only for blood stress, but having a repeatable healing option at minor seems great, and having two seems pretty serious.
Second-Hand Revelation: grants the compel skill (again!). In addition, when one of the Blightborn's infecteds dies, you learn a secret of theirs. Kind of fun to infect your fodder pieces, but probably mostly for infecting your adversaries and learning their secrets. No class from the core text ever got access to the same skill or domain twice! It's a little less impactful the second time around - each additional stack of a skill or domain gives you a "knack" which is a subcase of the skill/domain in which you also get mastery. Eg, you could have the compel knack "picking fights" - when you compel someone to fight you, you'd get +1D for having compel, and another +1D for mastery, since the knack is relevant. Compel does feel appropriate for the character goals, which are very social, but I probably wouldn't have done it this way. The ability, too, I think is a little underwhelming. Actually, the secrets-on-death could probably be part of the core ability, which would make that just a little more exciting, and then we could start entirely over for this one.
Sense Organ: grants the discern skill and the ability to activate a little spell-like-ability with Discern+Wild to sense through any of your infecteds. Pretty cool. I think it could be a little more interesting, since you already can talk to the infecteds and they can talk back. This could be another way to learn secrets from the people you've infected.
Stack Overflow: grants the cursed domain, and a stress sharing ability. If you take mind or echo stress and are in arms reach of an infected, you can shunt half of the stress to them (before applying protection). Pretty crazy if you manage to infect an adversary, and also potentially a quite aggravating tool to give to a bad faith player. I'm also worried it's kind of a trap - yes, the Blightborn takes less stress, but now two people have to check for fallout. Stress splitting does seem pretty resonant for the fiction here - if I wanted to do an ability like that, I'd probably make it a once per session thing where you can assign the stress to any number of your infecteds, regardless of distance / maybe they have to opt in? and specify that only the Blightborn rolls for fallout. Also, a second computer-y ability name! I don't know why that is here.
Those are the minor abilities! I'm unfortunately a little low on them, on the whole - I'm not very excited about the self-healing / stress mitigation subtheme going on, and I'm a little dubious about several abilities' mechanics. The more mushroom-y ones do appeal to me - I like glowing in the dark and shooting a cloud of spores and extruding fungal growths to sense things. But I still have yet to see anything that makes me excited about the core ability.
Major Abilities
Cede Control: grants the ability to replace a blood, mind, or supplies fallout with a special fallout, once per situation. The fallout scales up to level 5, increasing for each fallout it replaces - 1 level for minor fallout, and 2 levels for major fallout. While suffering from the fallout, whenever you take echo stress, you add the fallout's level to the total. Each level has to be removed individually (presumably at the cost of a D6 resource, since it doesn't really make sense to pay D8 to downgrade it...?). The minor upgrades let you add the fallout levels to the stress you inflict with unarmed attacks, let you use this ability to heal a fallout from an infected once per session, and grant you a resource reward of size commensurate to your level.
Mechanically, I do think this is pretty fun tech - it's the first deployment of a fallout with levels in this way. The cost is pretty steep but the payoff seems huge. And the cost can be mitigated a little - Heart Extrusion, the +2 echo protection minor, also comes with a great ability. It has a nice interaction with Stack Overflow, too, if you can contrive a way to pass your extra echo stress on to an adversary. The minor ability twists are all pretty good - at 5 stacks, a D4 unarmed attack has a higher average than a D12 weapon, and with the resource granting one, the healing mostly pays for itself. It's a pretty potent ability, although it feels kind of nakedly mechanical for my tastes, and I do think the Blightborn might be problematic in how readily and often it can tinker with the stress and fallout aspect of the game.
Decay: a spell(-like ability) - roll endure+cursed to eat a you-sized hole through an object or surface, and get a mastery die against organic materials. The minor twists turn it into a D6 piercing weapon, activate the ability through one of your infecteds, and let you use the ability to reduce incoming stress from adversaries.
Tricky one. I think it's a pretty cool spell, but you kind of get something fairly similar (though limited to organic objects, and once per session) at minor, in Saprophyte. So the theme/verb overlap makes this one feel less impressive to me. Which is too bad, because I think making a tunnel through stuff is actually a great and very useful ability. It's not clear but it seems like the spell isn't intended to inflict stress? Adversaries have surfaces, but probably would get called out specifically. The minor abilities here are all over the place - a D6 piercing weapon is mechanically identical to something you could pick up at character creation for free. The ability to activate this at a distance seems useful but not extraordinarily so. But the really problematic one is the one that downgrades incoming stress. One, it's yet another way for the Blightborn to take less stress. Two, I really do not like dice rolls cascading into each other, especially because of three, what the heck happens on a failure to the roll for a downgrade? Do you take more stress? It's just annoying all around. The effect is cool, but I think we simply must get there another way than with a "reaction" roll triggered by your own action. I'm also not convinced that this many ways to mitigate stress is a good idea. I'd probably recommend scrapping this one and starting over. It is a pretty cool mushroom behavior to pierce solid rock, but I don't know that the jump to tunnelling hits the same feeling for me, anyway.
Heartsblood Shift: Roll Endure+Wild to turn into one of three animal forms (still infested with fungus). The animal forms replace your access to skills (but not domains) and grant you a small ability. The forms are broad categories, and come with some fun specifics, both classic Heart creatures and new entries to the bestiary. The minor twists; let you combine two forms to get both effects and gives you a sneak attack because the amalgamation is horrible to perceive; grant you reprieve from ongoing blood and echo fallout; and unlock a powerful monster form with access to the Kill skill and blood protection.
I have been skeptical of shapeshifting moves in Heart before, mostly because the Witch already gets an awesome one which I think is hard to compete with. But I really like this one! It's simple and effective and I love the example creatures. It is a little funny to consider through the lens of the common Heart class analysis, that a Heart class is D&D archetype + funny twist. The D&D archetype being pointed to here is pretty clearly the Druid, which, true, doesn't have an easy or direct analogue in the core book. Losing access to all skills but two seems like a fairly serious disadvantage, but it is also a nice way to get some skill coverage - I think it's reasonable and is an interesting choice to have to make. I do note that the text doesn't say you can end the ability early - you might be locked into the shape for the entire situation.
The amalgamate ability to combine forms is fun but does seem like it more than doubles the effectiveness of the ability - it's a little bit in the "feat tax" realm of game design for my taste. The ability to ignore ongoing fallouts while transformed is, I note, yet another way to mediate stress and fallout. In particular, the scaling fallout from Cede Control is an echo fallout, meaning that transforming can be pretty safe. Also, are you just immune to those ongoing fallouts while transformed? Like, if you get a broken leg as a spider, does that just transfer to the original self, and the spider can continue on scuttling? Or do you key each fallout to transformed vs original? Or each individual form? A little troublesome. The final ability, unlocking a "troglodyte" form is very cool, but being restricted to a single skill is pretty narrow - it's an interesting decision to have to make. I'm amused at the possible combination of the "insidious vermin" form, which specifies that you become small enough to squeeze through small openings. Anyway, certainly my favorite major ability so far.
Psychotropic Rush: touch someone infected with your spores, roll Compel+Wild, and on a success, send them on a psychedelic mushroom hallucination trip. You get to choose if it's a good trip (reduce their difficulty and gain mastery to sway them with diplomacy) or bad trip (gain the brutal and loud tags against them, and gain mastery to intimidate them). The minor abilities let you cast the spell affecting everyone in a room-sized space, let you cast the spell as a weapon that's D10 and piercing, but you take half, and grant the ability for any "player character infected with spores" to remove all mind stress or one mind fallout.
I think the core idea is pretty funny, although it isn't really to my taste. The mechanical effect/s are both pretty good. It is a little funny to me that it's way more valuable to send tough adversaries on a good trip, as reducing difficulty is hugely important. Getting this to hit a difficult adversary, reducing their difficulty, and then getting mastery to the "let's just talk it out" solution is amusing. I'm not sure what the negative tag loud (take fortune stress on max stress roll) is doing here - it's a pretty meaningful drawback, especially with the brutal tag (roll stress twice take best). I suppose it's because the unfortunate person you've inflicted will be very loud as you attack them? Getting the damage buff from brutal is definitely valuable, but probably you're mostly picking this option to intimidate, like, hirelings. It's not super relevant, but I probably would have specified how long the trip lasts (probably until the end of the situation...?).
I'm a little leery of the situation of sending a player character on a psychedelic trip against their player's wishes, but I think the flipside, of sending a player character on a psychedelic trip because they've asked for it, strikes me as pretty interesting social play! The upgrade that hits a whole room all at once has me a little split - on the one hand, it's a very functional addition to the Blightborn's repertoire, and I don't hate the comedy potential. On the other hand, it hits me as kind of in that cursed tradgamer laugh button way, ala "I cast fireball in the room."
I note that there is once again another way to mitigate stress and fallout. That ability is actually a little unclear in intention to me - it doesn't necessarily rule out the Blightborn themselves, as they are certainly "a player character infected with spores." Technically, that wording doesn't even require the spores to be the Blightborn's, which I think is pretty funny. It's also not actively worded - it sounds like the player character can choose for themselves. I think it's probably "once per session, you may remove all mind stress or one mind fallout from a player character infected with your spores," but it's also parseable as working once per session per infected player character. Weird way to word this ability, but unless it really is "once per session each infected player character can wipeout their mind stress or fallout," which seems quite unlikely to me, I think it's a perfectly fine little ability. Boy does the Blightborn have a lot of ways to mediate stress and fallout though!
The final upgrade turns the spell into a weapon. It's piercing again, which does make some sense, but the plethora of piercing options is also a little worrisome to me. The possibility of casting the spell on an entire room to deal D10 piercing damage to everyone is, well, pretty in line with my fireball comment from earlier. The stress you'd take back is almost certainly mind stress, which means it "combos" with stack overflow.
Revenant: cast this spell by taking D6 blood stress - over the course of an hour, you reanimate a corpse! Or actually, you "possess" it, and get to act as the corpse! Your usual body "operates as normal" which I assume means that you get to still make choices for it. The spell lasts until the end of the situation, and when the situation ends the corpse is fully consumed by the mushrooms. The minor upgrades grant +2 blood protection to the corpse, turn the corpse into a bomb (D6 spread, piercing, distressing), and let you cast the spell in only a minute.
Pretty cool! I like a good mushroom zombie. I'm a little torn on the "until the end of the situation" time limit - it probably becomes just a little too annoying, once you can cast the spell in one minute, to have a roving horde of zombies that are all played by you and that last until they hit 0 resistance. But on the other hand, spending an hour (of in-game time) only to have the zombie last for, like, one scene, is a little bit of a bummer. My first thought is to treat a possible zombie horde as a hireling, with the cost "take D6 blood stress to cast the ritual to reanimate more corpses." The exploding upgrade, which is quite fun, would probably not survive the reframing to "horde" though... It might still work as individual hirelings. Anyway, enough design spitballing. Here's a fourth instance of the piercing tag. I'm not sure what to think of this preponderance of piercing. I think at the very least I'd remove it here; I wouldn't normally expect an exploding corpse to pierce resistances.
There isn't any text for suggesting how to handle the dice rolls of the zombie, but I think it's implied that, since it's the Blightborn occupying the corpse, you'll probably just use the Blightborn's skills and domains. I think that's quite reasonable, but it does mean that the primary utility of the ability is, once again, mitigating stress and fallout! Access to the corpse doesn't really unlock any new options for the Blightborn (all their rolls will be with their usual dice pool), so the thing that acting through the corpse buys you is a little stress buffer. It is a little bit of a gamble, since you invest D6 stress at the outset, so hopefully you get at least that same amount back out.
That's all five major abilities! The overriding theme so far of the class is finding ways to take less stress or heal it once you've taken it. I think that's thematic to mushrooms, but isn't present in much of the theming around the Blightborn in fiction or in its core. A "mushroom tank" class sounds pretty interesting! Even there I think having five major abilities that all find a way to reduce stress and fallout is too many. The majors are definitely more interesting to me than the minor abilities were, but I would say I'm still not very excited by any of them. The standout to me is Heartsblood Shift, and I like the mechanism at the heart of Cede Control, but the other three don't do very much for me. From a mechanics design standpoint, a number of things here require my intervention or interpretation to begin working. That's work I don't mind doing, particularly if the ability is fun and I'm excited to see it in the game, but it's a spot for frustration if I and the Blightborn player walked away from the text with different interpretations. Anyway, let's take a quick look at the zeniths, and then I'll write a little more about the class as a whole.
Zenith Abilities
Awaken: Die and be reborn in the body of anyone who has been infected by your spores. You keep your mind and personality, which I think probably means you keep all your abilities - although the text also suggests that something is lost each time. It could be cool to gradually lose little pieces of your character, culminating in the eventual retirement of your character. This does make the Blightborn quite long-lived compared to other Heart characters, which I think is pretty interesting. Once again the first place my brain goes is "what if you use this on another player character?" - yikes. Definitely could be cool if everyone is on board, but gosh is there a lot of refereeing you have to do for this class.
Diffuse: Instead of dying, escape by infusing your mind into the Heart-spanning network of fungus. You can continue to communicate, in brief sensory details, with anyone infected by your spores. The zeniths that turn your character into a potentially recurring bit or presence in the Heart are endearing to me - I like the idea of encountering some mushroom rando way down the line and, as the GM, asking the once-Blightborn player what their old character would try to communicate to the new characters.
Ruin: extrude all your mushroom matter into a location, which becomes a fungal hell - buildings and structures destroyed, living creatures infected and taken over, the works. At the end of it, you become normal - all your fungal infection is now externalized! There are a few core classes which zeniths in this mode, the rejection or negation of the class's core premise - the Deep Apiarist can switch polarities and go from perfect order to instantaneous chaos (and explode), and the Incarnadine can pay off their debt. The Deep Apiarist's zenith, though, is still an end, and strikes me as a little tragic, or hubristic in a very resonant way for me. The Incarnadine's is closer, an end to the character that culminates in them becoming a normal person, but the tone is triumphant, it's about having overcome your debt. Here, the impression I get is kind of anticlimactic. The Blightborn just kind of acquired the infection one day and then much later, the infection departs. There's maybe a reading where it's something the Blightborn has figured out how to do; they've discovered the only cure for their incurable infection, that kind of thing.
That's it for the Blightborn! I think my final thoughts are mostly in line with my impression at the outset - there are a few cool mechanisms that I think would be fun to deploy in play, but I'm not jumping for the chance to utilize them. There isn't anything here so compelling in uniqueness or interest to drive me here. If anything, I would be coming for the mushroom flavor, but there's kind of a dearth of that, too (or at least, of the variations of mushroom flavor that I most prefer). You've got mushroom zombies, mushroom drugs, and a lot of spreading mushroom infection, but that's kind of it, unfortunately. Even the zeniths feel impersonal and kind of ancillary!
So the thematic identity is underwhelming, but the deep dive has also suggested to me that the mechanical identity has some worrisome spots for me. In particular, the Blightborn just has so so many ways to interrupt the usual gameplay loop around stress and fallout. I think that's a tough trick to pull too often; if the Blightborn gets to waltz through the game with hardly any consequences, they'll quickly start to overshadow other characters who are dealing with their myriad fallouts. Also, they'll be dealing piercing damage all the while, it seems like. The other part that's a little frustrating is that there are a number of abilities which are murky or otherwise a little frustrating to interpret - I don't mind abilities with ambiguous effects or that rely on GM/player negotiation, but I think there are a handful of abilities here that could have benefitted from just a slight adjustment towards clarity.
At the very very end, I'm choosing to indulge myself. How do the Blightborn and the Myco-Alchemist, the mushroom class I wrote for New Blood, compare? For skills, The Blightborn gets endure at core, and delve, sneak, mend, discern, and compel (twice) via minor abilities. The Myco-Alc gets mend at core, and delve, endure, kill, and sneak via minor abilities. That's a pretty high degree of overlap! The Blightborn starts with the wild domain and only has two minor abilities that grant domains, cursed and desolate. The Myco-Alc also starts with wild, and gets cursed, desolate, religion, and haven. They both get +2 protection in mind and echo, although the Myco-Alc can't get supplies protection and the Blightborn can't get fortune protection. They both have sneak skills that involve a cloud of spores, they both can do mushroom-mediated telepathy, and both have puffball weapons. It's interesting to me that they can have so much overlap in the game's dice-mechanic system and yet feel (to me) so different! Alright, I think six thousand words is enough. Next time, I'll go long on the Crawler!
Comments
Post a Comment