When I sat down to take Aetrimonde from a hodgepodge of houserules to a game system that would stand on its own, the list of what I liked and disliked about 4e wasn’t quite the same as what I’ve discussed in my last two posts. For one thing, that was about 10 years ago, and my feelings have shifted a little. I’ve gotten to play 5e and some other game systems since then, and those experiences gave me some new context to work from.
The design goals that came from the list haven’t changed much, though. From the start, Aetrimonde has been written with a fairly consistent philosophy behind it.
The first two parts of this philosophy are simple, because 4e did a decent job of them. I’m largely going to hew closely to the general spirit of 4e’s mechanics, unless I have an overriding reason not to.
Unified Mechanics
Every class should use the same core mechanics, and you shouldn’t have to learn entirely new systems to play a character of a new class.
Minimize Fiddly Numbers
As much as possible, bonuses should be something that you factor into your character sheet, not on the fly.
The remaining parts are more complicated, because these are things 4e didn’t do to my satisfaction. So, I’m going to briefly discuss what it will take to fulfill these goals:
Flexible Character Building
Character classes should be a starting point giving a character tools to fill some intended role. It should then be possible to embrace or branch out of that role, as desired. Thematically similar classes should share options, but their class features should interact differently with them.
What I intend to do here is give all martial classes a common pool of character options they can pick from, in addition to some specific to their class. The same goes for arcane, divine, and any other kinds of magicians. Different classes within each group may find certain of those options easier to make use of, but none of them should be completely useless to any class. For example, it should be possible to make an effective rogue using heavy, two handed weapons (a sort of thug or pit fighter), even if their class features do not make it a perfect fit.
Solid Level Scaling
The math behind level scaling should be consistent and predictable, making it easier to design challenges for a given level of characters.
This looks simpler than it really is. There are a variety of factors affecting level progression for PCs: level, feats, magic items, etc. For simplicity, a GM shouldn’t have to calculate all these things when designing monsters: monsters’ level scaling should just naturally match up to the sum of all the scaling factors for PCs. To ensure that they match up at all levels, there should be relatively few of these scaling factors. In fact, it would be best if most level scaling came from a single factor, and all other factors were just minor boosts that could be gained anywhere in the level range. (This helps to minimize “bumpy” scaling such as the level 8, 14, and 28 bumps in 4e, where many characters would get both a +1 increase in their half-level bonus and a +1 increase in their ability modifiers, marking a significant increase in power in a single level gain.)
Flat Power Curve
Things that are a challenge at low levels should not be irrelevant at high levels, but they should be easier to overcome.
The factors that go into level scaling should all cover a relatively tight range, small enough that the difference between a minimum-level and maximum-level character is still small enough that they can affect each other meaningfully. However, that means that characters will need to gain something other than numeric increases to make level gains feel meaningful, like additional powers. High-level characters will be more powerful in large part because they have a bigger bag of tricks, rather than because they get to play with larger numbers when using those tricks.
Narrative-First Character Options
In designing options for characters, start from the story that you want them to tell, then design mechanics that support them.
This is honestly the hardest part: Aetrimonde will need a lot of character options. For context, a character class in 4e would have about 80 powers to choose from in its initial release. As a sneak preview, I’m planning to write 16 classes in four groups, which would be 1280 powers if I stick to the 4e numbers. I’m not planning to write quite that many, because I’m giving each group of classes a shared pool of powers and doing away with the redundancies of both leveled powers and siloed classes, but even halving the total that still comes out to 640 powers that will all ideally be interestingly diverse, both mechanically and narratively. It would be really easy if I could come up with interesting mechanics first and justify them with a narrative after the fact, but I’m going to try not to do that.
Combat as Puzzle
Aetrimonde is going to go a little further than just having tactical combat as 4e implemented it. 4e did that well, but I want Aetrimonde to support combat encounters that function as a kind of puzzle. While it’s possible to win these encounters through brute force, there is a trick or gimmick that the players can use to their benefit to make the fight much easier. To give one example, a combat as puzzle might involve two enemies who are vulnerable to each others’ attacks, and can be tricked or forced to harm each other if the players figure out how.
Not every encounter needs to be like this, but the Game Master’s Handbook will need to include suggestions and examples of how to achieve this, and the Bestiary will need to include monsters that can be used this way.
Up Next
This concludes the discussion of Aetrimonde’s underlying design philosophy. If I have your interest and Aetrimonde sounds like a game you want to play, read on: next up, I’ll start talking about Aetrimonde’s core mechanics and how they tie into the first two of these goals.
Aetrimonde 
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