Jan 25th: Characters

Brief update: finished the layout for all character sheets. I'll upload previews in a few days after I have some time to review them for typos.

The final layout required more time than I expected. Since players pick 2 special ability categories, I wanted to make sure there was balance between the different categories. When I reviewed them all for balance, I found a lot of abilities that needed to be tweaked, moved to other categories, or replaced.

I noticed that the magic and cyber categories all included special abilities that introduced new ways to play the game (e.g. illusion magic, possessing machines like a Shadowrun rigger, etc.) while the mortal souls did not. I spent a lot of time trying to develop a special ability that introduces new gameplay in every category. Similarly, I made sure almost every category includes only one ability that gives +1d or increases effect.

At this point I am pretty satisfied with the balance between abilities. The majority of them are unique to this game rather than imported from Blades in the Dark. It will take play testing to improve ability balance beyond this point.

Up next: layout of all team sheets.