Well, that’s done!
Initially, I planned on revisiting all of the grammatical and spelling errors first and then, over the next few weeks, hash out some of the balance issues with the automata being constructs (even if they don’t have all of the normal construct immunities). Then, I was going to add a few customizations and call it a day. But, I wanted some additional opinions (outside of my initial test group and mechanics folks), and sent it over to Will Cooper. He spent a few days with it and fired back an absolutely beautiful list of changes, modifications, and suggestions (including 6 customizations, 4 spells, and 2 items). I got the list this morning and immediately knew I was looking at gold (or, in Rhune: Dawn of Twilight, a proper Jötunstone). Sure, we needed to tweak a few things to make everything work, but overall, I was supremely pleased! If you’re interested in the exact nature of the changes (and errata), have a look at the list below.
Fixed some spelling and grammatical errors
Added height/weight chart
Updated and clarified the racial trait ‘Armored’, changing ‘base armor’ to ‘armor bonus’ (to reduce confusion about stacking bonuses)
Updated and clarified the racial trait ‘Construct Immunities’ to highlight where automata deviate from normal constructs.
Updated the racial trait ‘Favored Class’ to include an option to increase CPs by level in place of bonus hit or skill points
Updated and clarified the racial trait ‘Essential Senses’
Updated and clarified the racial trait ‘Frail Core’
Updated and clarified the racial trait ‘Repair Dependent’ to include mundane repair options
Updated and clarified the racial trait ‘Skill Restrictions’
Updated and clarified how clockwork points are spent, scaling them by level instead of granting a large pool of points up front. Slight changes were made to all four models, reducing the starting points, but granting more points overall.
Removed and replaced some of the customizations (some which were redundant or unbalanced).
Simplified how customizations are classified and balanced their overall cost by tier (minor, major, greater).
Included 6 new customizations!
Included 4 new spells to repair your automata with!
Of course, a lot of these changes might not have come into being had we not gotten a pretty hard review over at Paizo (our reviewer knows who he/she is), but one that wasn’t without warrant. In fact, some of the changes that were incorporated into this were the direct result of that review (and one of those, ‘oh dammit’ moments)! So, while we couldn’t change everything (sorry, it’s still a full-color pdf that’s going to eat your printer’s ink), we’ve made a concentrated effort to build a much better product!
All of these changes require us to back into layout, though, so it’s going to be a few days before your version of the guide is brought up to date. If you bought it off of either Paizo or Drivethru RPG, you should get an e-mail when I update the products there. So, don’t fret. You’ll have the new version soon enough!
In other news, Children of the Hammer is in layout, as is Storm Bunny Presents: The Ghost of Ashenwood! So, come October (which really is just around the corner), you should have two more products to snap up from Storm Bunny Studios!
Cheers, Jaye