Hi there! Last class overview devlog, because after these two we’re out of core classes! Introducing the final two, Tactician and Windmagus. Just in time for the full release on January 23rd!

The Tactician

From the start, I wanted one full-support class - not just for mechanical reasons, but thematically, I wanted someone whose almost exclusive role was to support and boost allies. As mentioned in the Commander overview, I’ve had the idea of Tactician via 36th Way Weigh the Odds Commander via 13th Age Commander via 4E warlord in my head for awhile, and I knew I wanted something like it here - so tying it to full-support made sense. I styled it as kind of the “brains of the operation” or the “puppetmaster” - a lot of its abilities focus on planning, logic, tactics, strategy, or unexpected preparedness.

The Tactician’s roles are Supporter (Command, Ward) and Defender (Shield). In my initial prototype/alpha game for Total//Effect (which was a lot more 36th Wayish than what you see here) I had a class called Noble which did this kind of thing, I figured it was worth revisiting Command-as-primary-skill, and a few of the Tactician’s bits were repurposed from that prototype.

One of the key things you have to keep in mind when making any ability that doesn’t have offense attached to it is that it has to be “worth it”. Its main Standard isn’t some kind of offensive or semi-offensive ability, unlike every other (core) class in the game, so I mitigated that by making it trigger other players’ Standards - something that lets it “extend” other players’ capabilities in that sense is helpful and valuable, and pairs well with various offensive buffs to “extend” them.

I approached the Shield role from a “this class is extremely fragile but has sneaky tricks to mitigate that” perspective - its powers allow it to hide behind allies and lure enemies in to counter their attacks. (Because of that, its powerset can pair really well with classes that try to make themselves a target like Champion and Knight, and vice versa.)

The Windmagus

To round out the 4 magi (and the classes in general!), we have the Windmagus. Like the other 3, a large emphasis in their definition was thinking about how they hook into the world as a whole. When I think about wind and people who would be associated with it, I think about someone who goes far and is defined by travel - explorers, nomads, etc. Combine that with my love of extra/forced movement in tactics games and you’ve got a great combo going.

The Windmagus’s roles are Defender (Disable, Provoke) and Attacker (Break). Like Earthmagus, the goal behind this one was to create a mostly defense-oriented class that’s not “tanky” at all - it debuffs enemies and knocks them out of position in addition to setting them up to be attacked further. Its trait is an extremely basic “makes everything you focus on suck” ability too. Provoke in this case is something that I used to justify forced-movement: either by putting a debuff to anyone on a zone (forcing them to spend an action moving out of position) or by threatening harm to enemies who don’t accept being moved, you’re still encouraging certain kinds of actions, which is in the spirit. Its base standard, Buffet, doesn’t really fit the mold of Disable anymore? But it’s fun so it stays. (All of this stuff was only ever a suggestion anyway. Break your own rules if it’s cool.)

And that’s all of them! I hope you enjoyed this series of class overviews. The polished version of Valiant Horizon will be out January 23rd!

Until next time.