Rulebook, Scenarios, and General Updates
over 2 years ago
– Thu, Jun 09, 2022 at 07:42:52 AM
By the power of Grayskull!
Hello Eternians! Today, we have a Development diary update to share, regarding quality-of-life improvements to the gameplay and general updates. So without further ado, let's hear it from Michael Shinall, one of Clash for Eternia's game designers.
Greetings Warriors, both Heroic and Evil alike!
Michael Shinall here. As part of today's update, we're here with a couple of Design/Development items!
The final files for all content (Core, expansions, KS items, etc) have been finalized, checked over, and sent off to the factory, initiating the factory's proofing process. With this milestone reached, we figured we could now take some time and go over some technical modifications that have happened since the beginning - nothing here is major and/or drastic, just falls under some basic clean-up and final tweaks.
Let's jump right in with some of the more notable stuff since I really can't call anything "major" (sorry if things come off a touch boring unless you're really into the technicals of the game)!
HP Increases
In general, the HP values were expanded across the game, with Characters typically upping their HP an average of 1, in some cases 2 (e.g. He-Man increased in Core Box from 8 to 10). This was done mainly as Characters were going down just a touch too fast. With the slight increase in HP, you're typically seeing a difference of about 1 extra Attack to take them down. It's by intent not a big change, but likewise, it's also meaningful to show some differences in the overall spread (for example, Man-At-Arms with only 6 HP but 1 Armor creates a more substantial difference when compared to He-Man, with 10 HP but 0 Armor). Again, this was something that could have even gone without mentioning and would have largely gone unnoticed, but it was an active decision made during testing.
Order Track Power
Another modification to the numbers here is slight but impactful. Essentially, the old Order Track would see both sides, Controller and Player, gaining Power on Activation ranging from 1-3 on both sides. The Track has been slightly modified now, where the first Controller Activation (eg, the slot that is always the first Activation has been reduced from 1 Power to 0, meaning you're sacrificing just a touch of Power for always activating first in the round.) Feel I'm repeating myself with "overall minor change" but that's what most of these are! Of course, this change in numbers was applied to not only the Order Track itself but also in the Battleground Playmat (where the track is conveniently placed too).
Grayskull Results
In most cases, when a Skill interacted with Grayskull Results, it would replace the effect with another. This was the one rule that kept tripping people up most of all (eg, you would not get +1 Hit and +1 Power, but instead you'd do X, typically something like 2 Hits but no Power). This happened often enough that we reworked most every Skill that interacted with this to simply grant an additional bonus when a Grayskull result was rolled, with numbers tweaked and balanced accordingly. An example using the previous...Example... A similar effect would now read "For each [Grayskull Result] generate +1 additional Hit", meaning you'd still get the base effect of +1 Hit and +1 Power, but additionally, you'd get whatever else was listed.
Boost to Surge
So Skills could previously have "Attack Boost", "Defense Boost", "[Action] Boost" (Typically Move), and then simply "Boost". The latter was explained in the rules as always being tied to another boost, acting as, well, an additional boost to pay and utilize (e.g. Attack Boost of +1 Die could have a Boost of an additional +1 Die for +1 Power Cost). These terms could get a bit confusing to differentiate (even if the game seldom cared) so rather than keep it, we simply renamed those "Boosts that Boost Boosts" to "Surges". This would be classified as a wording cleanup, but now you'd have a Skill with something along the lines of "(1 Cost) Attack Boost: Roll +1 die. Surge (1 Cost): Roll +1 additional die)." Zero mechanical change here, just wording clarity.
Dazed Tokens
As per the rules at the time of the campaign, when a model was Dazed, it was placed on its side. During the campaign, many of you said you would rather have tokens to represent this state. Enter the Dazed Tokens! They exist now. While you can place your model on the side if you prefer, the game also has tokens to represent this as well. Here's an rulebook excerpt of the Dazed rules:
Scenarios
This is perhaps the biggest "change", or "shift" more than anything else. Previously, while the She-Ra and Evil Horde expansions didn't have Scenarios on them, we mentioned that we would look into including a number of additional scenarios to them, typically to utilize the NPCs contained within the box. Once we began reviewing all these, we really took note that, in the case of NPCs, almost every scenario that included one (typically a specific one) could instead be reworked slightly to simply allow a randomly determined one to be utilized instead. For example, The Escort mission was originally around Queen Marlena. But with very little modification the scenario rules worked when any NPC was utilized instead, which increases replayability considerably.
This entirely removed the need to limit such scenarios to the expansion boxes. The next factor to consider whether to include narrative Scenarios (on in game terms Set Side Scenarios). Upon further playing, we saw that, for these too, with little modification (in most cases) these could simply be moved from being a specific "sub-faction" to instead being "Hero" or "Villain" team. Once this was factored in, it became very hard to justify limiting these scenarios to expansion content versus instead just modifying them to fit with the core box. Having come to that conclusion, that is exactly what we did. The final result was, that instead of the Core Box containing our original goal of Twelve Scenarios that number has now been increased to a full Twenty Scenarios instead.
The exception to this is of course Assault on Castle Grayskull and the Scenarios that were contained within the Wrath of Snake Mountain expansion, as each one of them specifically deals and interacts with the Tyrantisaurus Rex from that box - those still remain in the Wrath of Snake Mountain expansion.
Speaking of scenarios, let's go ahead and showcase two of them just to show how they look:
***In case it is not apparent (this is outlined in the Scenario Book), the "M" icons designate where Minions begin on the Battleground and the "N" icon designates where the NPC (now freely chosen) begins at the start of the game.
BURIED SECRETS
This is an Open Sides Scenario, meaning players are free to choose what faction is the Controller and/or Players at their leisure.
THE ESCORT
This scenario meanwhile is a Set Sides Scenarios and so has restrictions that make it so the Heroic Warriors must be the Controller.
And that does it for this update, Warriors! When the Clash commences, which side will come out victorious?
Until then, you have the Power!
