v0.6.0 - A faster way to upgrade

The Bad News

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get to everything I wanted to in this release. There aren't any new monsters, a planned Drone Jockey overhaul was left to the wayside, and some spell changes didn't make it in. The reason is that I've spent the majority of my time working on a major overhaul of the back-end of the site.

Prior to this release there were some major hurdles I was battling with. For one, the Player's Handbook (PHB) and the information pages (index, about, news), were split between 2 systems (Vue and Jekyll). I'd also been 'hacking' my development setup which often caused errors which led to hours debugging. Additionally, the setup had a fatal flaw in that permalinked urls to the player's handbook would render blank pages, which meant site crawlers weren't able to parse any information in the PHB pages. I'm not too concerned about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but felt that crawlers should at least be able to scan the bulk of the content.

Finally, I wanted a bit more pizazz and clarification on the homepage to explain what this system was and how to get started. My analytics were showing a pretty high bounce rate (lower is better) on the homepage, but a high acquisition rate for users that managed to make it to the Player's Handbook. I.e., users would land on the site, see only news and the logo and think, "We'll this looks pretty lame, bye!"

What was initially a piecemeal approach to fixing these issues turned into a complete overhaul, which took much longer than I originally anticipated.

The Good News

1. Fancy new site pages

I probably enjoy this more than most. But the homepage, about section, and news section all have new styles.

2. Increased interest in the system

Over the past 2 weeks, I've received a swarm of feedback. At least 7 people have mentioned they're getting ready to start a campaign. This has me floored. Before, I knew of only a few groups who were actively using the system. Not it seems like we're up to about a dozen. The more users we have the more feedback and play testing we'll get, which will really help the system evolve.

On this note, I need to give some shoutouts to Ben McPherson, Noel Moriarty, Adam (TheMarmotKing), and Alex Needleman who've been working really hard on pointing out site bugs, over/underpowered mechanics, and creating new content. Keep up the good work everyone!

3. Still get some new changes

Even though my time was limited, I was still able to push a host of new changes, but this is mainly thanks to the aforementioned people.

The major addition is that Weapon Mods were added. These will give players a new way to get bonuses on weapons which helps alleviate the lack of +N magical items that 5th edition has. Another big change was the increase opportunities for classes to learn Tech and Biotic powers, which should help make the classes feel less stale between levels.

General

• Removed "Backgrounds" page. Information was incomplete and not applicable. Will be re-introduced when backgrounds are complete.
• Added basic information about resupply costs for items (Medi-gel, Heavy weapon charges, thermal clips, and grenades).
• The opportunity to quickly reload a weapon has been labeled "Rapid Reload," and is performed as a reaction to taking the Reload action. However, the Rapid Reload reaction cannot be taken by a player wielding 2 weapons.
• Added Infrared Vision as a ersatz replacement for Truesight.

Classes

Starting weapon choices adjusted:

• M-8 Avenger replaces M-96 Mattock
• M-4 Shuriken replaces M-25 Hornet
• M-92 Mantis replaces M-13 Raptor
• Fighting Style: amended to allow classes that learn this ability twice (soldiers, sentinels, & vanguards) to learn 2 initial perks from two different fighting styles or one initial and one advanced perk from a single fighting style.
• Brawler Fighting style updated. Proficiency bonus added to melee attack damage rolls. Advantage on melee attacks moved to advanced perk.

Adepts

• Adepts learn 2 cantrips and 2 1st level spells at level 1. This makes up for the fact that Adepts do not gain any basic ability at level 1. I.e., Engineers = Drone; Infiltrators = Tactical Cloak, Sentinel = Tech Armor, etc.
• Additional opportunities to learn biotic spells. Total opportunities = 16.

Engineers

• Engineer's Efficiency added at level 3, providing the engineer with a cantrip-like tech power.
• Additional opportunities to learn a tech powers. Total opportunities = 14

Infiltrators

• Tech power acquisition redistributed, allowing 9 opportunities to learn or advance tech powers (used to be 6).
• Tech point maximum increased to end at max 8, instead of max 6.

Sentinels

Overall, Sentinels were reworked to provide more opportunities to learn biotic spells and tech powers, but they can never cast those spells with the potency of Engineers or Adepts. This change also balances potential multi-classing. I.e., a multi-classed Adept/Engineer could have 8 Tech Powers (max TP = 6) and 10 Biotic spells (max spell slot 3rd level). Whereas a max level Sentinel could have 7 Tech Powers (max TP = 6) and 8 Biotic Spells (max spell slot 3rd level).

Vanguards

• Removed the automatic acquisition of Barrier at level 1. Instead, Vanguards can choose one of the following cantrips: Charge, Biotic Punch, Barrier, or Throw

• Removed Sentinel Mastery class feature, replaced with additional opportunity to learn a biotic spell and tech power.

• Increased the level at which Sentinels can learn biotic spells: 5th level = 1st level spells, 9th level = 2nd level spells, 15th level = 3rd level spells.

• Additional opportunities to learn a tech powers and biotic spells. Total opportunities = 15

Races

• Krogans can be Engineers, this is in line with the Andromeda lore, and there is nothing relevant in the codex that would justify them not being able to be Engineers.
• Salarians: added High Metabolism trait indicating they need a limited amount of sleep.
• Removed confusing syntax about taking a feat. Before, site stated that Ability Score Improvements could be substituted for a feat "available to your race". Feat acquisition is only limited during character creation for level 1 characters. Otherwise, all feats are available to all races.

Weapons

• Added normal and long range distance to ranged weapons. Essentially, this added a limit to which weapons cannot be fired beyond.
• Melee weapon attack damage bypasses shields.
• Krogan Warhammer no longer stuns or pushes enemy back. Instead, has the possibility to knock the target prone.
• M-8 Avenger: RoF reduced to 3
• M-96 Mattock: Damage increased to d10
• M-4 Shuriken: Damage reduced to d1
• M-25 Hornet: Range increased to 8m
• M-13 Raptor: Damage increased to d8
• All Heavy Weapons are unique (cannot be modded)
• Double Tap allows Dex mod to be used when making the attack roll (not damage roll). Used to prevent dex mod from being applied to attack and damage roll. This bring the skill in line with 5th Edition's Two-Weapon Fighting rules.

Armor

• Increase potency cost of +1 to melee, ranged, biotic, tech, or combat attack and damage rolls from 8000/level to 12000/level. Bring this in line with weapon mods cost.
• Potency should never be < 3

Spells

• New cantrips: Biotic Push & Biotic Punch

Site improvements

• Updated homepage, about page, news page, changelog
• Spell sorting/filtering added
• Fixed bug where Race page footer navigation had "Next class" as the button label
• Fixes bug where Biotic Walls advancement, Shifting Wall, did not display complete description.