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So in our initial announcement we talked about some of the frustrations we ran into with regards to how classes were structured in the first edition, and how it was close to being a classless system but not quite there.
Our new classless design of course required a rethink of how characters should grow and progress during play, and the solution that we came up with was the Perk Web, inspired by RPG mechanics such as the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X, or Pillars of Eternity or Path of Exile's advancement systems, utilizing the purchasing of Perks from a graphic interface (The Perk Web).
Actors will gain experience points (more on the how later) and advance through discrete levels, 1-100, where they'll receive Skill Points and Advancement Points each level. Skill points can be allocated to improve the actor's skill ranks at a 1-for-1 ratio, while advancement points may be spent on the Perk Web to acquire Perks, which will functionally replace concepts like Feats and Edges from 1st edition, with each Perk having a cost weighting based on it's relative power.
Pokemon Actors follow the same progression however they will gain less Advancement Points to buy perks with than Human characters; this is to offset the fact that Pokemon innately already get Moves, Abilities and once evolved; higher base stats!
Not everyone might be familiar with a Perk Web, but you'll likely recognize Skill Trees from many modern games, but in case you don't:
A Skill Tree is often used in gaming to allow a sense of progression but with choices involved, you have to linearly traverse the tree from one direction to the other, if you want perk [3] you will have to pick up perk [1] and then [2] first.
The Perk Web is a variant on this principle; instead of being a Tree with Branches that you have to linearly traverse, a web is more fluid, as it branches in every direction, meaning you will be able to build the character you want; exactly how you want it.
The web will consist out of 2 major sections, the Inner Web and the Outer Web.
The Outer Web is a static web the same for every character, this means that outside of system updates; the perks on here don't move around, get changed or added. What you see is what is available and what you can get.
The Inner Web meanwhile changes based on the current situation of your character; and is therefore unique for everyone! It will also be able to change throughout your adventures.
On the Inner Web you'll be able to find things like:
That means when you evolve and gain a type, or if you pick up a Type Changing Perk, you may for example gain access to the "Mini-Web" of that type!
The Perk Web will be visually present in Foundry and can be opened from every character's Actor Sheet, and we're planning to add lots of quality of life features for Players & GMs alike!
The first one useful for both Players & GMs will be 'Planning Mode', which allows you to select perks you don't quite have the Advancement Points for yet; but you can mark them (in order) for later! So when you level-up and gain more Advancement Points you can easily see what you previously decided you wanted to pick up. You can think something akin to a Civilization Game's Tech Tree Queue.
The next two are primarily aimed at your GMs tho!
The first of which is 'Editing Mode', you didn't think we wouldn't support homebrew now did you? In the Perk Web's Editing Mode you can freely move around any Perk Node, draw any Edges (lines between Nodes) you want and of course add new Perks!
The second is a much requested feature for 1e... Trainer Character Generation!
Yup, you heard that right! The idea here is that we will create some "Archetypes", this is an Item in Foundry in which you can setup some Perk Goals.
For example, you are some kind of Fire Elementalist, you can set a few Fire related Perks (that are deep in the web) as your Goal.
Then you can add one or more "Personalities" to the generator which will influence how the Generator will move towards your Perk Goals.
For example, you could set the personality "Focused" which will try to gather the selected Perk Goal Perks as soon as possible and will take the shortest route through the web to grab them all, or perhaps you set it to "Relaxed" as it will slowly work towards the Goal Perks but wandering a bit around first along the way.
Many personalities and options will be available, a full list will be present on release but some others examples include:
You will be able to setup multiple Personalities per Archetype and then during generation you can either tell the Generator to pick one personality, multiple or randomly pick one / a few!
While we'd love to give you some more concrete examples and visuals of the Perk Tree and some Perks we're currently still hard at work on these, but we'll be sure to post some teasers when they are ready!