Auto-correct really, really, really wants this comic to be titled “Thieves Can’t Be Misanthropes” and I fucking PROMISE that they can.
Hey, Zach is open for commissions, which he’s doing in the style of our upcoming paper mini series. Check them out, and keep your eyes out for the minis. The first run will have every single monster mentioned in the D&D Starter Kit and will be on our Patreon, our shop, and the DM Guild. You’ll also be able to get us to cut and mail them to you on a nice glossy card stock, if you don’t want to do print-and-play. More on this soon (hopefully AFTER Masterwork, but that turned out to be more of a book and less of a hand-out…)
Zach has time to do this because he is freed up because his part of the Kickstarter stretch goals, and ya’ll are waiting on me to lay it all out and send it to a printer.
Masterwork is with Lynn for editing, and with some testers for sanity checks. I’m pumped.
Let me tell you a bit about the system, which is the first part of my own RPG that is being sort of… grown out of 5e.
The 5e works right now, players pick their weapon from a list of somewhat limited options, and then usually stick with that weapon until such time as they find a magic version of it.
In Masterwork, there are three tiers of weapons, with each tier capable of dealing more damage and having various collected effects. The tiers should sound a bit familiar: simple, martial, and specialized. These represent how many properties (which we call Mechanics Tags) each weapon can have and the size of the damage die, with specialized weapons getting the best of both worlds.
Separate from Mechanics Tags are the weapon’s intrinsic Style Tag, which determines damage type and the stat used to attack and damage enemies. These most drastically affect gish classes, with kensai monks and hexblade warlocks getting the shorter end of the stick, so Masterwork is shipping with some special rules adjustments to help them out.
This tag system lets players and DMs build custom weapons that don’t exist in the PHB and that aren’t necessarily well-represented by the items that exist. It also allows players to create objectives for their equipment as a form of character progression, and gives them a way of quickly expressing their desires to crafter NPCs should they decide to commission a weapon.
This is necessarily a bit crunchier of a system for managing equipment than D&D 5e players are perhaps used to, so it’ll also come with some printable tools for helping players keep track of their equipment and what it does.
