A Game Designer's Reflections on Scarlet Blade

No doubt, if you spend time on the internet, you have seen ads for games that openly use sex to sell games. You've seen the banner ads that have scantily-clad ladies and sexually-charged captions to get you to click on the ad, which takes you to a game that only rarely has anything to do with sex.

Well, I'm going to be discussing something a bit different here. I'm going to be discussing one of the games that does that, and actually delivers, and all of the things that are wrong with it.

The following material is flagged Red Level. It deals with the blogger's original ideas, personal beliefs, and delusions; and might not be believed by any expert in any field anywhere.

Now, let me start with a bit of a disclaimer. I have nothing against sex in general, nor against sex in games specifically. It is my belief that a game containing sex, or even about sex, can be good; in the same way as non-game entertainment containing sex, or even outright porn, can be funny or dramatic or sweet or otherwise well-written (no I am not going to put any links here; what I get off to is one of those things that I do not wish to share with the Internet, and I am sure that you do not wish to know either)

What I do object to is trying to replace good writing with sex appeal.

Now, on to a discussion of the game in question.

Scarlet Blade is one of the games that uses the advertising gimmicks I mentioned in the introduction. The banner ads it puts up are a woman, or more accurately a 3D model of a porcelain doll resembling a woman (either nude or in what appears to be bondage gear) with a sexualized caption. The game itself is a fairly bog-standard MMORPG with several bugs (largely related to pathfinding) and some severe balance issues (most adversaries are trivially easy to defeat; the only way to really lose outside of a boss fight is to run a streak without resting; and doing this does not grant any benefits). It is obvious from this that SB does not intend to sell itself on unique or challenging gameplay.

No, SB runs mostly on sex appeal. The login page depicts a character similar to the ones in the ads who appears to be making use of some kind of mecha in a rather unconventional way. About 85% of the dialogue (a rough guess) is either explicitly sexual or an obvious double entendre. Your avatar's dialogue with you (see later in this post for an explanation of this part) is, for the most part, intended to get you to think of your avatar as a sexual being, and is based on the assumption that you find your avatar sexually attractive; the continuous propositions from other characters do not work against this. Your avatar is portrayed wearing very little; in the beginning the avatar is wearing little more than what appears to be a metal bikini; and even in full armor your avatar is wearing much less than even is usual for heroines in most graphic media. For those players who did not find this level of sexualization overwhelming, there is an option, advertised in loading screens, to remove even what little your avatar was wearing.

Which is a real shame, because there's a few bits of good story that could have been developed into games (with some rather unusual gameplay!) of their own. Occasionally, a bit of dialogue or flavor text will show up involving transhumanist philosophy (your avatar has been biologically modified to the point of being no longer human; and every now and then there's discussion about whether or not a creation has a duty to its creators or the reverse or at what point a modified human stops being human); the framing narrative is interestingly metafictional (essentially, you are, well, you: the person sitting in the chair playing the game. Your avatar is a separate person to whom you give orders, which seems to deliberately parallel the idea of a video game character); the narrative at least in theory focuses on a war, and occasional mentions are made of the cost of war to the people fighting it, the civilian population, the idea of morals, and the land itself; and part of the plot centers around the (at least) three different relationships between you and your avatar.

In other words, the actual story reads as though the developers were trying to create a mature game, but did not know the difference between "mature" and "adult"; and so, they ruined several mature games by making a game that was mature only in rating.

Designing Sharazad

Some of you may have played my Sharazad storygame (and if you haven't, please do give it a look!) and been wondering what it's final version is going to look like (or at least, where I got the idea).

I wanted to show how cultures evolve. I wanted to demonstrate how a culture accumulates baggage, and releases it when it is no longer necessary.

So, I thought, "What is the most basic unit of culture?". And then it hit me. Stories.

Stories tell you a lot about the culture that created them, as long as you understand the basic context. As an example, look at the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The LORD sends two angels to visit Lot (a pattern you will see in many cultures with a hospitality tradition. There are myths about Zeus, Odin, and a number of other deities doing this. The odd thing here is that the LORD is working through agents). Lot invites them in, as a Good Host is supposed to do. Then the Sodomites demand that Lot allow them to take sexual advantage of his guests (the epitome of Being A Bad Host is to attack guests in one's home/city), to which he responds by offering them his daughters (who are, by the rules of that day, his most valuable property), showing that he is willing to place the well-being of his guests above that of his family, which a Good Host is supposed to do. The LORD visits him, and gives him warning that He will destroy the city (Lot's reward for being a Good Host is to avoid the punishment of the Bad Hosts). Lot thus flees the city as it burns behind him.

From this we learn a few thing about the ancient Hebrews:

1. The Hebrews had a strong hospitality tradition. Anyone with a home was supposed to welcome travelers, and there were clearly-defined rules for how both host and guest were to interact, including that the host was to protect the guest from attackers.
2. The Hebrews had an almost Manichean view of Good and Evil. The Good Host is almost completely Good, offering his daughters to the mob without hesitation. The Bad Hosts are completely Bad for very little reason, attacking guests in their city for almost no reason at all. In the end, Good is rewarded and Evil is punished. (Granted, most of the stories in the Bible operate on almost fairytale-like logic, with conflicts and motivations simplified to an absurd degree, but the point still stands.)
3. The Hebrews had a very different view of women than we do today. Modern society frowns on the idea that Lot's adult daughters were his to offer, especially in that way. By the standards of the Hebrews, any woman in Lot's household was his property unless she was brought by a guest, and he could do anything he liked with her.

With that example out of the way, how can we go about turning "stories-are-culture" into a game?

We put the player in the role of a storyteller. "Tell Story" is the most basic verb of the game, with a broad variety of possible variations: Tell Cautionary Tale, Tell History Of The Tribe, Tell Subversive Story, Tell Account Of The Tribe's Enemies, Tell Fable Of Morality, Tell Speculation Of The Future, and so on. Those variations are complex enough that they call for their own minigame, which is what currently exists of Sharazad.

So, next (once all aspects of the minigame are complete), Sharazad will begin touching on culture. Some storylets in the minigame grant qualities, such as Prepared, Ritualistic, or Compassionate. At the end of the story, you can turn these in for cultural traits like Survivalism, Shibboleths, or Cohesion. To keep you from getting obscene amounts of all traits, there's two restrictions in place.

First, each trait costs Head Space. There's only so much indoctrination you can do, and only so many things you can remember. Advances in nutrition or education might increase this, but you have to work for them.

Second, there's sets of opposing traits. You can't be both Authoritarian and Egalitarian, nor can you be both Insular and Open, nor Survivalist and Curious. You can't gain a trait while possessing an opposing trait.

And that requires that if you want to change your culture, you have to dump some of your traits. You can make your story Subversive using certain actions in the tale, challenging cultural assumptions, and losing some of your audience. In one telling of the story, the angels were some of Lot's friends, and he fought the mob to protect them. In another, he threw them onto the street when they asked for lodging, or demanded payment. Since these challenge the standing rules of the society, they are Subversive actions. When you reach the end of the story, you can choose to oppose a standing cultural trait if you are Subversive enough; this removes one level of the trait and returns the Head Space it cost.

And then the next step in the development of Sharazad. The traits interact with the culture's environment. A Fast-Breeding culture develops Population quickly enough to replace what it loses to predation or warfare. A Survivalist culture is prepared to deal with creatures in the woods. An Open culture is able to learn new technologies and ways of thinking from its neighbors. A culture with Shibboleths is better able to resist being influenced by outsiders.

The player gains Turns, which are used to make cultural adjustments or develop Population, Technological Advantage, and the like; and then spend them on specific developments. Then, once the player has no Turns left, it's the world's turn. The player draws Opportunity cards, which allow xim to burn through the World's Turns. These cards represent threats to the culture (such as outsiders, wild animals, diseases, and so on) and challenge certain cultural traits, although some of them can simply be "bought off" with developments.

Sharazad beta: Conflicts and horror.

So, I'm not sure how many of you are interested in my Sharazad storygame.

Anyway, since I know someone out there probably is, I am now officially announcing the following:

Multiple conflicts are now in open beta. There are five basic conflicts used in the game: vs Villain, vs Nature, vs Society, vs Fate, and vs Self.

Horror is now in closed beta. Those of you who have played Sharazad's story engine on the Heroic mode will see something very different. Instead of slowly building tension to a climax, you start at a climax and reduce tension within a fixed time limit.

Next releases: Epic stories and Mysteries!

Also, some pay content will be added soon. Not much, just a way to stay in a story if you fail it.

Sharazad Launched!

So, some of you might have been wondering if I'm ever going to actually make a game. Well, I have made a few, but the question is actually "Can we see them?" (grumble, grumble, blah blah comments blah blah I don't bite blah I know you're out there blah blah blah go right ahead etcetera etcetera). Well, I now have a very lightweight Storynexus game: Sharazad!

In Sharazad, you play, more or less, as a culture. You tell stories, and those stories affect how people in the culture behave. People's behavior influences how well the culture survives: how well it avoids being exterminated by the people over the next hill, being eaten by bears, being absorbed into another culture, being torn apart by revolution, stagnating and collapsing...

Well, that's the finished version. Right now, I have the "you tell stories" part.

Sharazad can be found here.

The feedback thread can be found here.

I 'm Not Dead Yet

...I can dance and I can sing! I am not dead yet; I can do the Highland Fling (well, not really)! No need to go to bed! No need to call the doctor 'cause I'm not yet dead!

...Sorry. Now then, on to blog business.
You may not know what I did this summer, but soon you will.

• Spend most of the summer in Boston.
• Went to TEDx Boston. A few videos from there you might like:
• Harry Meade: Medicines from Milk.
• Kent Larson: Responsive Cities
• George Fifield: Urban Screens
• Noah Wilson-Rich: Urban Beekeeping
• Judy Willett: It Takes Villages
• Jennifer Pahlka: Coding a Better Government
• Don MacDonald: Learning to Love Machiavelli and his comic is here
• Sam Liberty and Kevin Spak: Tales from the Cardboard Fun Lab
• Worked on cleaning up the house.
• Built a set of software tools that should be useful in my classes. I'll post a few later.
•  Finished up part of D20 3.6i. Core mechanics are revised, races and classes are finished. Currently working on spells, katas, monsters, and the DM's side of the game. These will be posted later.
• Looked into StoryNexus. The games I play on it now are Iced Oolong, Fallen London, and Cabinet Noir. My own creation, Sharazad, will be posted when it's good and ready. Not before.

GMing: Mystery and Fantasy

"360. I must remind the GM that my Blessed can Raise Dead before he runs another murder mystery again."
- The (as of this posting) 2050 Things Mr. Welch is No Longer Allowed to do in an RPG

 I recently got into an argument over whether it is possible to have a murder mystery in a fantasy RPG (or a transhumanist RPG, for that matter). The difficulty presented in a murder mystery is that the prime witness to the crime is, well, dead, so if being dead doesn't mean anything, where's the mystery?

You can still have murder mystery in a fantasy setting, though, as long as your culprit acts smart. What would be a perfect murder in an Agatha Christie novel is just stupid if the detective can brainscan the victim or cast Speak With Dead, so a clever murderer is going to take precautions against these.

For purposes of this post, we're going to be working off of D&D, since it's sort of a standard. Change out the spells listed and so forth for the equivalents in your own game. For instance, if you're playing Eclipse Phase, you can trade out everything in the spell limitations section for "pop their stack and run bedlams on it until they don't remember their own name, and establish an alibi". Also, these are going to be written as advice to a murderer in a fantasy setting; as a GM, hopefully you will be thinking about what your own culprit is doing.

1. Spell Limitations. A lot of the spells that detectives use in fantasy just don't work under some conditions. Speak with dead and raise dead need a reasonably intact corpse, so at low levels, chopping up the body and hiding the pieces will do the trick. Resurrection calls for a part of the corpse, so at the level that becomes available, you need to do something harder, like burning the body or sinking it in the swamp. True resurrection doesn't even call for a corpse, so you need to either use trap the soul, find another way of keeping them from coming back, or trick the investigators into using the wrong spell.
   Getting the investigators to use the wrong spell is deceptively easy. Just make them think that the body is fresher than it is (since these spells have a time limit) or in better shape than it is. Making a body look in better shape than it is is easy; after all, morticians do it all the time. Corpses are objects, so yanking out a vital organ and using a simple mending cantrip will do wonders (especially if you replace the organ with cloth or a slab of meat), or you can use the Craft (taxidermy) skill. If you're up against someone with resurrection, things get a bit trickier. For that, you need a statue of your victim and a stone to flesh spell.
   Making the corpse look fresher than it is is easy too. Mending or taxidermy can reverse damage caused by rotting, and a flesh to stone/stone to flesh pair can keep it ready to pull out when you need a corpse. You don't even need magic either; just carve some ice out of the local pond in the winter and leave a fresh corpse in a room with it for a couple months. It won't look rotted, and unless the detective finds the ice room, they probably won't think it's been kept from rotting.
   Of course, if you're making the murder look recent, you need to come up with an excuse for why it could be that fresh. This sort of thing's easy if you're a doppelganger or a master of disguise; just replace them and stage the murder mystery when you need to make your exit. It's a bit trickier, though, if that option's not open to you because you need to be elsewhere or can't disguise yourself worth ****. We'll assume for the moment that you haven't got a friend who can pull off the replacement. The easiest way to avoid raising suspicion is to have a confederate in the victim's household, either loyal to you, bought off/blackmailed, or dominated/modify memory-ed silly. The confederate can arrange excuses for why the victim isn't taking visitors: highly contagious and magic resistant disease, engaged in secretive and delicate magical experimentation for the rest of the week, out walking someplace, the excuses are limited only by your imagination. This works even better if you can cast modify memory on actual visitors every now and then; nothing like false memories to make people think the victim's still alive. And in either case, the alibi spell from Exemplars of Evil is useful for making people think you were someplace else when you were actually busy pulling this stunt.
   Other spells have their own limitations. Detect evil can be foiled by undetectable alignment, or by not actually being evil (maybe you're just that nuts, or maybe the sonova***** actually had it coming, or maybe you're good enough that this won't push you to evil), or by everyone else nearby registering as evil. Glibness can fool zone of truth, as can carefully worded evasions. Clairvoyance can be beaten with  false vision, or precise knowledge of when you can act. Even when your chambers (or those of your next target) are turned into a closed room with alarm, prying eyes, or blade barrier, you can still have your plots carried out using whispering wind, telepathic bond, hypnotism, or carefully arranged instructions; or you can break in or out of the sealed room with word of recall, passwall, greater teleport, a carefully timed still mislead or greater image, fog form, ethereal jaunt, or transport via plants, to say nothing of breaking Knox's third rule along with his second.
2. Victim Limitations. Let's say that you have decided to ignore the above section, or that against all reason Our Heroes have figured out your trick. All is not lost! The trick here is to keep your victim from knowing whodunnit. There's some simple, nonmagical ways to do this, ranging from slashing your victim's throat in their sleep to using your death attack assassin class feature from behind to using poison or disease to rigging a complicated trap in their privy, but there's magical ways to do this too. You can kill them while disguised (either the mundane way or with transmutation or illusion spells), you can use the Deceptive Spell metamagic feat from Cityscape to keep anyone from realizing you cast whatever killed the victim, you can manifest death urge on them from where they can't see (or you can mask the display somehow), and if all else fails, there's always contingent modify memory set to hit them if someone brings them back to life. Or you could just, you know, hire an assassin so that the victim never has to see you.
3. Victim Agenda. So the heroes have raised the victim, and you couldn't resist one last gloat. Either that, or there's now a ghost floating around. Or the victim was one step ahead the entire time, and named the killer in his will. Well, you may look ****ed, but this could turn out well. See, the victim could have their own plans. The victim might take advantage of this opportunity to advance a plot of their own, and implicate someone as their killer. And the suckers will probably buy it too. And nothing looks quite as bad as being named a murderer, or a kinslayer, or a regicide, by the victim himself. The only way you can count on this happening, though, is if you are the victim. That's right, I just said that the culprit and the victim might be the same person. A victim might make a suicide look like a murder in any number of ways, ranging from locking himself in a room with one other person and a crossbow, to having a guard slap him on the back and later jumping from a balcony with the intended "culprit" next to him, or any number of other tricks.

D20 3.root(-36): Classes: Bard

One of the standards in fantasy is someone who casts spells through song. A poet who can persuade reality that truth is beauty and beauty truth, and therefore that it adheres to the poet's description of beauty. A musician who inspires others, or who uses music to bind their wills.
In its 3.6i incarnation, the bard is essentially a social-specialized character with magical abilities. The bard can function as a con artist, or as a weaver of stories, equally well.

Bard

Level	Fort	Ref	Will	Pow	Ins	Ana	Special
1	0	0	0	0	0	0	Proficiencies, spellcasting
2	0	0	0	0	0	0	Trustworthy
3	0	0	0	0	0	0	Bardic music
4	0	0	1	0	1	1	Trustworthy, confidence artist
5	1	1	1	1	1	1	When all else fails 5 ft.
6	1	1	1	1	1	1	Trustworthy, bardic music
7	1	1	2	1	2	2	Bardic knowledge
8	1	1	2	1	2	2	Trustworthy, confidence artist
9	2	2	2	2	2	2	Bardic music, bardic knowledge
10	2	2	3	2	3	3	Trustworthy, when all else fails 10 ft.
11	2	2	3	2	3	3	Bardic knowledge
12	2	2	3	2	3	3	Trustworthy, confidence artist, bardic music
13	3	3	4	3	4	4	Bardic knowledge
14	3	3	4	3	4	4	Trustworthy
15	3	3	4	3	4	4	Bardic knowledge, when all else fails 15 ft., bardic music
16	3	3	5	3	5	5	Trustworthy, confidence artist
17	4	4	5	4	5	5	Bardic knowledge
18	4	4	5	4	5	5	Trustworthy, bardic music
19	4	4	6	4	6	6	Bardic knowledge
20	4	4	6	4	6	6	Trustworthy, confidence artist, when all else fails 20 ft.

Class Skills: Attack(light), Credibility, Gather Information, Knowledge (history, local), Perform, Persuasion, Read Person, StubbornnessSkill Points per Level: 4+Int modifierInvestment Points per Level: 2+Wis modifierHit Die: d4

Class Features

Proficiencies: You are proficient with one light weapon and one type of armor.Spellcasting: You are able to cast spells. You select two of the spell lists associated with your bard class skills, and your saving throws are Charisma-based. You know two spells at first level, and thereafter learn one spell each level.Trustworthy (Ex): You add half your class level to all Credibility and Gather Information checks as a competence bonus.
Bardic Music: Every three levels, you choose one of the following abilities. You gain one use of that ability per day.

Fascination (Ex): As long as you spend three ticks per round performing, you may target one creature per margin of success on a Perform check (DC 20) each consecutive round you spend performing. Targeted creatures must make a Will save (DC 20) or become fascinated for that round.

Inspiration (Ex): As long as you spend three ticks per round performing, you may make a Perform check (DC 20 + 2 x creatures capable of hearing you) each consecutive round you spend performing. Any ally capable of hearing you may spend one margin of success on this check to gain a +1 bonus to a single check or save that round.

Confidence Artist: Every four levels, you choose one of the following abilities. You now have that ability. Unless stated otherwise, all of these abilities are free actions.

Born and Raised in the Briar Patch (Ex): Once per day for each time you choose this ability, you may make a Persuasion check (DC 20) against another creature, opposed by that creature's Read Person check (DC 20) as an action taking one tick. If this check succeeds, the creature is unable to pursue or take hostile action against you for one minute.

Curse the Locust (Ex): Once per day for each time you choose this ability, you may make a Credibility check (DC 20) when using any other skill against a creature, opposed by that creature's Read Person check (DC 20). If this check succeeds, the creature is convinced that another creature of your choice within shared line of sight used the skill against it.

Feign Strength (Ex): Once per day for each time you choose this ability, you may make an Intimidate check (DC 20) against a creature on which another creature is using a skill, opposed by the target's Read Person check (DC 15). If this check succeeds, the target is convinced that you used the skill on it.

Keep Your Balance (Ex): Once per day for each time you choose this ability, you may make a Perform check (DC 20), opposed by another creature's Read Person check (DC 25). If this check succeeds, the creature cannot take actions targeting only you and actions targeting only other creatures in the same round until it can no longer see you.

When All Else Fails (Ex): You add a number of feet to all of your speeds equal to your class level.

Bardic Knowledge (Ex): At seventh level, and every odd-numbered level thereafter, you gain a cumulative +1 competence bonus to Knowledge checks. In addition, choose a Knowledge skill. You may add your ranks in Gather Information to any check made with that skill, and are never considered untrained in it.

D20 3.root(-36): Races: Dwarf

If elves are tough to bring into a fantasy setting because there are simply too many kinds and too many people trying to do their own thing with them, dwarves are tough because no one does anything different with them. Dwarves are hardy and humorless. Dwarves are stoic and live underground. Dwarves mine gold. Dwarves are strongly traditional. Dwarves are master smiths. Dwarves don't like magic, and are resistant to it. Dwarves have no magic of their own, or what magic they have is linked to earth, stone, and metal. Dwarves wield axes, picks, and hammers. Dwarves all have beards, sometimes including the women. Dwarves always speak in a (bad) Scottish accent. Dwarves are all alcoholics. Dwarves don't like elves. 

Enough dwarves that are all the same. If dwarves live in mountains, maybe they offer the use of their caves to others as trade routes. Maybe dwarves are traders themselves. Maybe dwarven traditional music and dwarven traditional art are classics, and in high demand in the cities. Maybe dwarves are starting to move into the cities, because their art is in such high demand there.

For that matter, maybe gnomes and hobbits halflings are related to dwarves. Maybe they are just different types of dwarf. Maybe the gnomes are the dwarves who are master smiths, as well as master magicians. Maybe halflings, as described in The Hobbit the source material, are jolly folk who prefer a song and good food to adventure, even if there are occasionally Tooks unusual folk who are better at burglary than enjoying life, and this shows in the halfling attitude to adventure: keep spirits up and enemies distracted.

Dwarf (Default Variant: Mountain)

• +2 Charisma, -2 Wisdom
• Medium size.
• Darkvision 3: You are only dazzled or blinded in darkness three levels deeper than normal.
• Dwarf subtype
• Natural Compass feat
• Favored class: Face
• Speed: 10 ft.
  

Gnome-variant

• +2 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom
• Small size
• Dwarf subtype
• Occult Initiation feat
• Favored class: Artificer
• Speed: 10 ft.
  

Halfling-variant

• Small size
• Dwarf subtype
• Proficiency: Sling and Dagger
• Favored class: Bard
• Speed: 10 ft.
  

Dwarf subtype

• Indicates that the creature is a dwarf.
• Stability: Dwarves have a +2 racial bonus on Power saves.
• Locational Sense: At character creation, select a terrain type. While in that terrain type, a dwarf automatically detects any unusual terrain features.
  

D20 3.root(-36): Classes: Barbarian

One of the standard fantasy archetypes is the sword-swinging hero who cares not for more "civilized" folk. Whether it's Conan or Grignr, this one is a classic.
It has, fortunately or unfortunately, evolved beyond the standards set out by the first of the kind. Currently, the standard for a barbarian hero is that they can give in to an uncontrolled battle fury. Other standards involve the ability to climb walls, impressive endurance, and a hatred of casters.
What I wanted to do with this class, though, was open it to other archetypes. Why should a battle fury be limited to just rage? Why not a more intellectual "barbarian", who slides into cold analysis? (In the original stories, Conan was actually a pretty smart guy.) Why not a religiously-motivated "barbarian", who smites the wicked with the fury of the righteous? What about a stoic "barbarian", who ignores wounds? Combining this with the idea of katas, I decided that I would represent this by allowing barbarian heroes (and barbarian villains) to learn trance katas.
Of course, there's more to a barbarian than just rage. The original Conan was in the habit of, as one Escapist commenter put it, "going around the landscape slaying gods like a sword-wielding Richard Dawkins", so it would make sense for a barbarian to have some sort of resistance to magic.

Barbarian

Level	Fort	Ref	Will	Pow	Ins	Ana	Special
1	0	0	0	0	0	0	Proficiencies, trance
2	0	0	0	0	0	0	All-out attack 1
3	0	0	0	0	0	0	Hardiness +1
4	1	1	0	1	1	0	All-out attack 2, magic denial 1
5	1	1	1	1	1	1	Trance
6	1	1	1	1	1	1	All-out attack 3, hardiness +2
7	2	2	1	2	2	1	Second wind 1/day
8	2	2	1	2	2	1	All-out attack 4, magic denial 2
9	2	2	2	2	2	2	Trance, hardiness +3
10	3	3	2	3	3	2	All-out attack 5
11	3	3	2	3	3	2	Second wind 2/day
12	3	3	2	3	3	2	All-out attack 6, hardiness +4, magic denial 3
13	4	4	3	4	4	3	Trance
14	4	4	3	4	4	3	All-out attack 7
15	4	4	3	4	4	3	Hardiness +5, second wind 3/day
16	5	5	3	5	5	3	All-out attack 8, magic denial 4
17	5	5	4	5	5	4	Trance
18	5	5	4	5	5	4	All-out attack 9, hardiness +6
19	6	6	4	6	6	4	Second wind 4/day
20	6	6	4	6	6	4	All-out attack 10, magic denial 5

Class Skills: Attack (heavy), Balance, Climb, Craft (any one), Defend (all), Handle Animal, Heal, Jump, Perception, Stubbornness, Survival, Swim.
Skill Points per Level: 4+Int modifier
Investment Points per Level: 4+Wis modifier
Hit Die: d12

• Class Features

Proficiencies: You are proficient with three heavy weapons and one armor.
Trance: You are able to enter trances. At first level, and every four levels thereafter, you learn a new non-Mystical Trance kata.
All-Out Attack (Ex): At second level,you may give an attack your all. You may reduce your AC by up to 1 to give yourself a bonus to Attack checks of twice that. Every even-numbered level, the cap on your AC reduction is increased by 1.
Hardiness (Ex): At third level, and every three levels thereafter, you gain a cumulative +1 competence bonus on Defend checks.
Magic Denial (Ex): At fourth level, you may reduce a spell's margins of success by one, as long as you are a target or in the spell's affected area. If the spell is reduced while not having any margins of success, the spell fails. Nothing happens if a failed spell's margins of success are reduced. Every four levels thereafter, an additional margin of success is removed.
Second Wind (Ex): Once per day at seventh level, and an additional time per day for every four levels thereafter, you may reduce your fatigue by five factors.

D20 3.root(-36): Classes: Artificer

One of the standard stock characters in fantasy is the master smith. The Forger of the Sword of the Ages, and such. One less-common possibility is that the master smith, for whatever reason, joins the adventure and takes up a role other than the Creator of Plot Devices. But what can a Master Smith do while on the adventure?
One answer is that the Master Smith might be able to make lesser devices on the fly. Another is that the Master Smith might be able to use technical knowledge to interfere with devices used by the Forces of Evil.

Artificer

Level	Fort	Ref	Will	Pow	Ins	Ana	Special
1	0	0	0	0	0	0	Proficiencies, spellcasting
2	0	0	0	0	0	0	Comprehend items
3	0	0	0	0	0	0	Extra spell list
4	0	0	1	0	1	1	Master crafter +1
5	1	1	1	1	1	1	Runeless enchantment 1
6	1	1	1	1	1	1	Extra spell list
7	1	1	2	1	2	2	Rapid enchantment 1/day
8	1	1	2	1	2	2	Master crafter +2
9	2	2	2	2	2	2	Extra spell list
10	2	2	3	2	3	3	Runeless enchantment 2
11	2	2	3	2	3	3	Rapid enchantment 2/day
12	2	2	3	2	3	3	Extra spell list, master crafter +3
13	3	3	4	3	4	4	Item suppression (touch)
14	3	3	4	3	4	4	Item suppression (ranged)
15	3	3	4	3	4	4	Extra spell list, runeless enchantment 3, rapid enchantment 3/day
16	3	3	5	3	5	5	Master crafter +4
17	3	3	5	3	5	5	Item suppression (area)
18	3	3	5	3	5	5	Extra spell list
19	3	3	6	3	6	6	Rapid enchantment 4/day
20	3	3	6	3	6	6	Master crafter +5, runeless enchantment 4

Class Skills: Attack (heavy), Craft (all), Defend (resist), Device, Knowledge (arcana, science)
Skill Points per Level: 3+Int modifier
Investment Points per Level: 3+Wis modifier
Hit Die: d4

Class Features

Proficiencies: You are proficient with one type of weapon and one type of armor.
Spellcasting: You are able to cast spells. You select two of the spell lists associated with your artificer class skills, and your saving throws are Intelligence-based. You learn two spells each level.
Master Crafter (Ex): You add one-fourth your level to all Craft checks.

Extra Spell List: Every three levels, choose a spell list. If you already had that spell list, you gain a cumulative +1 competence bonus when casting spells from it. If you did not, you now have that spell list.

Comprehend Items (Su): At second level, you may spend six continuous ticks scrutinizing a magic item. If you do, you may make a Perception check (DC 15+2 x total rune anchors) to learn the property tied to one of its rune anchors.

Runeless Enchantment (Su): You may enchant items without using rune anchors. When you enchant an item, you treat it as though it had an extra number of rune anchors equal to one-fifth your level.

Rapid Enchantment (Su): At seventh level, you may place temporary enchantments on magic items. You may grant a weapon a quality by casting every spell involved in granting that quality. This lasts until one of the needed spells lapses. You may do this once per day at seventh level, and an additional time per day for every four levels thereafter.

Item Suppression (Su): At thirteenth level, you may suppress magic items. If you touch a magic item, you may make a Device check (DC 20 + 3 x total rune anchors). The item loses all magical properties. To maintain this effect, you spend three ticks each round.

At fourteenth level, you may use ranged attacks to do this.

At seventeenth level, you may do this to all magic items within a number of feet equal to your level.