Stormsunder: Heirs of Ruin

The Fall of Tarpitt Origin Quests
6 months ago – Fri, Aug 30, 2024 at 07:55:19 PM

Hello, folks!

In this update we’re going to look at one of the encounters from the Stretch Goal campaign book, specifically one from one of the origin quests that was unlocked during the Kickstarter campaign.  But first, let’s see how testing is going:

State of the Testing
A short SotT this month as it’s all good news. Last update we said we planned to finish the stretch goal campaign book testing by the end of this month and that is indeed what happened. We’ll have more news on Act V testing in our next update, but it’s nice to have another (big) box check off our list.

Origin Quests
Light spoilers in this section, but they don’t take place during the main campaign, so you shouldn’t stress about them. You unlocked two Origin Quests during the Kickstarter campaign and we decided to make them two sides of the same coin, or, in reality, two sides of the same siege. Tarpitt was sacked by the vampires years before the start of Heirs of Ruin and the two origin quest will allow you to see that important event through the eyes of both Vanessa and the vampire twins, Aleksander and Aleksandra. 

The quests are one-off adventures consisting of several interconnected encounters that can be played with a full, non-canon, party or solo (for Vanessa’s PoV) or duo (for the twins’ PoV). Vanessa and the twins all begin at level 1 but have slightly modified decks. Vanessa, for example, ditches her unneeded cooperative abilities such as Teamwork and Support Fire while gaining an extra First Aid and Volley. These two cards give her much needed healing and AoE as she navigates the chaotic streets of a Tarpitt overrun with vampires.

Below is the map for the second encounter of Vanessa’s origin quest. We find the daughter of the last lord of the Nyere on the streets of Tarpitt, eager to get past a vampire patrol (and their many friends, no doubt lurking close by).

Vanessa can try to take out the guards quietly, risking discovery with every Stealth test and utilizing barricades for extra damage. Should she make too much noise, however, the inquisitors searching nearby houses will join the fight. Overcoming the guards will be no easy feat, but the council enforcer at the end of the street will be a challenge all by himself.

That’s all for now! We’ll be back next month with more news on testing and anything else that’s going on in the world of Stormsunder. Until then, we’ll see you in the Storm (you might want to bring a friend).

- LSG

Adversary Variety and the State of Testing
6 months ago – Fri, Aug 02, 2024 at 05:13:14 PM

Hello, folks!

In this update we're going to have a look at how Stormsunder gets extra mileage out of the same adversary miniatures. But first, let's look at the state of the testing.

State of the Testing
July and August are when pretty much everyone involved in Stormsunder takes their vacations, so there are certainly challenges during this time of the year. That said, we're almost finished with testing for the Stretch Goal campaign book, with all the wayward hero encounters accounted for as well as most of the stretch goal missions (origin quests, etc). They will definitely be done by the end of August, which will put our only testing task remaining to be what's left of what needs to be done for Act V.

Encounter-Specific Adversaries
Stormsunder has a lot of adversaries, but due to geographical limitations you certainly won't run into all of them in the same area (you're unlikely to run into Minotaur Nomads in Tarpitt, for example... or are you?). Running into too many vampires, even though there is a good variety of them, can lead to encounters feeling repetitive, something we wanted to avoid. 

We've talked about our solution to this before, but today we're actually going to show some of them. For those of you who don't remember, we created encounter-specific adversaries, enemies who only appear in unique encounters and (for the most part) are not seen again. Their cards are printed in the book along with the setup for the encounter for easy reference. Stormsunder already has an obscene number of cards, so we didn't want to add more of those and this has proven to work quite well. 

Each encounter-specific adversary uses an existing miniature, and some are just variations of the adversary that miniature represents, such as the Elite Guard Captain (a stronger version of a Tarpitt Guard Captain):

The Elite Guard Captain has mechanics unique to his encounter, allowing him to capture a hero and savagely damage them each time he activates. It will be important to free any heroes who he has nabbed for interrogation lest they perish under his watch.

We also have a variation of the Tarpitt Inquisitor, the Bribed Inquisitor:

The Bribed Inquisitor inflicts more conditions than the heavy damage their standard counterparts inflict. There's a bit of a story reason for that (which we won't be getting into), but suffice to say that combating this variation feels quite different and, when combined with the mechanics of the encounter itself, is a lot of fun.

We also have a unique Myrmidite Skirmisher, the Myrmidite Prisoner:

The Myrmidite Prisoner has the same defensive feel to the Myrmidite Skirmisher, with a different sort of retaliate ability with Shackles, but his main attack makes him ignore the Wrath deck target which gives a thematic desperation to his assaults on the heroes. 

The final "card" we'll show today has a completely different illustration, as the adversary is long dead by the time the events of Heirs of Ruin begin. The Tarpitt Royal Guard, a human defender of Tarpitt from before the city fell to the vampires, appears in one of the origin quests in the Stretch Goal campaign book. He uses the Tarpitt Guardsman mini:

Aside from sharing the same role on the battlefield as the Tarpitt Guardsman (a defensive one), the Tarpitt Royal Guard has his own unique abilities, with a crowd-controlling attack (versus the Guardsman's AOE Elegant Strike) and a one-use resurrection should he fall.

That's all for now! We'll back next month with more news on testing and whatever else is going on in the world of Stormsunder. Until then, we'll see you in the Storm (where ghosts from the past always make for a unique encounter).

 - LSG

Ability Card Patch Notes
8 months ago – Fri, Jun 28, 2024 at 08:25:11 PM

Hello, folks!

In this update we’re going to take a look at a bunch of balance changes we’ve made to hero ability cards during the course of testing. But first, a quick update on that testing:

State of the Testing
A lot of progress was made this month towards our new goal of finishing testing of the Stretch Goal Campaign Book in July. There’s nothing particularly interesting to talk about on that front, but I *will* say we are excited about how the Origin Quests are shaping up. If you don’t recall, the Origin Quests were special stretch goals you unlocked during the campaign. These are especially exciting as they are standalone, meaning you can pull out Stormsunder and not actually commit to a lengthy (but awesome) campaign. 

Ability Card Patch Notes
We’ve shown balance changes to ability cards before, but never quite this many. There’s a variety of heroes affected by these changes, including Jaden, Adina, Quell, the twins, and more. The old versions are one the left, with the updated cards on the right:

Flight is a potent ability in Wild Assent, but its use has proven a little less important in Stormsunder. We’ve added +1 Speed to allow Jaden (and Liora) to cover a little more distance with Angelic Flight.

Arcane Plunder was already a useful ability, allowing Quell and Liora to steal status effects from adversaries. The updated version allows them to steal status effects from allies as well, creating a lot of interesting team play. It’s rare you’d want to steal a negative status effect from an enemy, but there are cases to be made for grabbing both positive and negative effects from allies, depending on the situation.

 Burrow gets a slight buff for Fil'lik, making it a better Dodge with its new +1 self-healing.

“Nearby” affects the zone the caster is in. Depending on the map, it can feel very easy to reach who you need to or feel like no one is ever where you want them to be. Buffing Adina’s Burst Healing from nearby to within 1 zone makes sure she can AOE heal heroes when she needs to.

Capac doesn’t have a lot of Speed to his name, so we’ve heavily buffed Charge so he can get into the fight more easily. We lowered the AP cost, dropped the straight line requirement (making the ability a little less situational) and gave it Knockback so it has a little more kick to it. It’s never been a better time to be an Altekhan Sentry built like a cargo container.

Fury gets a slight nerf because Aleksandra is (and seems will always be) just a little too good at killing. The 4 Health to 5 Health is iterative, but impactful.

Glory of Tarpitt was a little too good, so we’ve given it a range (within 1 zone). It’ll still work in a lot of situations but not absolutely *every* situation like it did before.

There have been two camps on how Holy Blast should work. Camp 1 insisted you didn’t have to pay the AP cost on the second cast (which was incredibly broken). Camp 2 insisted you did have to pay AP, which the card now reflects (sorry Camp 1).

I don’t know if we mentioned it in an update or not, but in the demo Armor didn’t have a limit (if you started a fight with 5 armor, you could use Iron Hide and have 8). It worked well enough until it didn’t; there were certain longer fights where tanky characters could accumulate a stupid amount of armor, so we changed the rule to make Armor like Health (where you couldn’t exceed your maximum). Iron Hide is now an exception to that rule, making it fun to use again.

 Aleksander also sees a nerf with his Opportunistic Strike ability. A single green die might not seem like much, but you’ll miss it when it’s gone (and it’s definitely now gone).

Rebuff receives a nerf here, but I feel like it makes it a much more interesting ability. You are now given a choice of sacrificing armor to avoid a status effect (instead of simply dropping a Get Out of Jail Free card when a status effect appears).

Sacrifice seemed to always been on the shortlist to get pitched for Power rather than using it as an ability. Now it’s useful for an ally *and* Aleksandra herself, though we did nerf its unlimited range.

Staggering Strike was proving to be a little too good for Vacrem and the Ursus so we dropped its green dice by 1. It’s still a solid enhance for both heroes.

Vanessa isn’t immune to nerfs either, when one of her abilities warrants it. Support Fire wasn’t really designed to help with AoE abilities, but its text didn’t exclude them either. Now it does.

A little give and take with Adina as we increased the range of Burst Healing but nerfed the infinite range of Sympathetic. Crazy DPS heroes with absurd Speed will need to learn they can’t zip around the entire map and expect to get healed.

That's all for now! We'll back next month with more news on testing and whatever else is going on in the world of Stormsunder. Until then, we'll see you in the Storm (where armor is the best place to store all that sand being thrown at you).

- LSG

Wayward Hero Traits and Attack/Defense Detail Work
9 months ago – Fri, May 31, 2024 at 08:53:58 PM

Hello, folks!

In this update we’re going to look at wayward hero traits as those heroes are what we’ve been immersed in recently. We’ll also look at something simple that affects the entire game from start to finish. But first, let’s see how testing is progressing…

State of the Testing
There’s no way getting around it, May was a slow month for testing. There wasn’t any single reason for the pace, just a lot of little items piling up that required backtracking we weren’t planning to do. The Stretch Goal Campaign Book testing continues, however, and we’re hoping to wrap it up by the end of July. The Wayward heroes are feeling more fleshed out and “real” (in terms of character development) than they ever have and we’re hoping the extra time and effort will be apparent to anyone who picks up and reads the book.

Wayward Heroes Traits
We want Wayward heroes to be able to grow (or spiral) from where the players first meet them, but the only way that can happen on a personal level is through their stories in the Stretch Goal Campaign Book. The decisions you make there (as well as your failures and victories in combat) will determine the emotional growth of the Wayward heroes, sometimes in ways you may not expect. 

Traits are a fun part of Stormsunder, especially when it feels like you’ve pulled a negative trait at the wrong moment dozens of times and then you realize, “Wait, that card isn’t negative anymore.” Let’s have a look at the starting trait cards and their positive counterparts for two wayward heroes, Drustan and Vacrem:

As Drustan gains levels, he starts accumulating a respectable number of enhance ability cards. While he is Distracted, they are a bit of a liability, but if you can aid Drustan regarding what he’s truly after, he will gain Focused instead, which is kind of a mini signature skill (Wynter’s No Quarter, specifically).

Vacrem’s Callous was a little weak (it wasn’t bad enough), so we’ve changed it so that he is more likely to injure allies when he attacks with that trait card in his hand. Vacrem is slow to trust the members of the party but aiding him on his personal quest may make the frosty Faceless warm up to you, if only a little. The base damage bonus of Uneasy Rapport is a huge step away from catching strays from the warlord’s hammer.

Attacking & Defending Clarifications
We’ve tightened how attacking and defending works in Stormsunder, specifically how On Defense effects interact and when. A lot of it is common sense, but we believe having it spelled out will aid players who aren’t sure when a particular effect should take place (bold text is for the attacker, normal for the defender; we'll have a fancy chart for the rulebook, of course):

1 – Declare Target
2 – Establish range and line of sight (if needed)
3 – Use any target-changing skills/abilities (go back to 1 if target changes)
4 – May add an enhance
5 – Roll dice
6 – May use any dice-changing abilities (attacker)
7 – May use any dice-changing abilities (defender)
8 – May resolve relevant On Defense ability
9 – Determine and apply damage, factoring in defense & armor
10 – Discard armor, if needed
11 – If damage exceeds remaining health, slay/down the defender

If the defender wasn't slain/downed...
12 – If the defender wasn't slain/downed, apply any applicable status effects
13 – May resolve On Defense or other abilities that say “after the attack resolves”

 It may seem like a bit much, but it flows pretty well in practice. Let’s look at an example:

 A minotaur nomad is attacking Aleksander. It rolls 2 Swords and a Critical. The minotaur has On Critical: Apply Stun. Aleksander is ready for the attack, with three different On Defense ability cards in his hand. Both Flourish and Dodge will activate before Stun is applied, while Riposte states it is used after the attack is resolved, meaning Aleksander would be stunned (and therefore unable to Riposte). Since Flourish needs a new target for the attack, and there is no other enemy adjacent, Aleksander's best choice is Dodge, which negates both the damage and the Stun status effect.

That’s all for now! We’ll be back next month with more news on testing and whatever else is going on with Stormsunder's testing/development. Until then, we’ll see you in the Storm (where an Uneasy Rapport is top tier friendship for most people).

- LSG

Wayward Hero Quest Chains
10 months ago – Tue, Apr 30, 2024 at 07:56:15 PM

Hello, folks!

In this update we take a closer look at how the wayward hero quests of the Stretch Goal Campaign book are designed, separating them from the main campaign but still feeling like part of the greater whole. Let’s check in on testing in general, first…

State of the Testing
This past month has been much like the recent months before it. We’ve been testing (and when needed, tweaking) the encounters and other components of the Stretch Goal box and the Stretch Goal Campaign book. A lot of the early quests/encounters are now complete as we check them off our list, using a variety of hero combinations to make sure one random hero (especially the waywards) doesn’t throw the encounter out of balance by either making it too hard or, perhaps worse, too easy. In January’s update we predicted 3 months of testing (with 4 being the safter bet), which has proven true. May will be incredibly important as we push to finish as much as we possibly can.

Wayward Hero Quests
Each quest chain for most wayward heroes consists of several encounters played over the course of multiple acts, depending on when they are available during the main campaign. The first encounter introduces the hero and establishes how they join the story. Each quest chain is tied to the wayward hero’s personal goals or desires, be it vengeance, redemption or just wanting to return home.

When the players reach a new haven, they will have the opportunity to follow the story of specific wayward heroes and progress through the next step in their personal journeys. Like in the main campaign, the players’ decisions matter and some heroes may choose to leave the party if they feel their goals do not align with the main campaign heroes. Let’s take a slightly spoiler-ish look at Drustan’s quest chain:

Drustan, a Ranger from Adrasil, is the first wayward hero that may join your roster. Drustan's story is divided into three encounters, the first being available in Act 1. Drustan is searching for something and is quite far from home. The players can choose to aid him in his endeavors, gaining a powerful ally. Let’s look at the general path of Drustan’s story (general story spoilers beyond this point; you’ve been warned)…

Drustan’s tale begins with him being transported from his home of Adrasil into the Storm-swept Inali desert. Unarmed and in a haze, he narrowly escapes an ambush by myrmidites, seeking refuge in a nearby cave. The myrmidites do not give chase, for they fear the horrors within. Meanwhile, the heroes, witnessing Drustan’s escape, seek him out in the cave, only to discover he is at the mercy of a massive Steelweb Spider. It’s a race against time as the heroes must use torches to burn through the webs blocking their path and rescue Drustan before he is consumed.

The torches are key to this encounter, they are not only used to progress through the map, but also to remove the Immobilize status effect from heroes inflicted by the Steelweb Spider. You might have noticed there are quite a lot of holes on this map. Holes are normally bad enough (considering entering one, voluntarily or otherwise, burns an activation), but the holes in this encounter are filled with little spiders, assigning heroes 2 damage and applying Poison if they take the plunge. There’s also an optional objective on this map, which affects the next encounter in Drustan’s quest chain (we’ll leave that as a surprise).

The next part of Drustan’s tale has the party investigating a rumor of a portal in a nearby canyon. Could it lead back to Adrasil? Not while it is spawning demons and other creatures, that is certain. The heroes must fight through waves of monsters to get to the portal and then decide what they will do with it. What’s worse, the myrmidites are back, sniping at the heroes from the top of the canyon. The more myrmidites still alive, the more damage the heroes will take. Utilizing full and half cover will be vital to keeping the heroes in good health and Drustan is set to shine in this encounter, well adept at taking down enemies attacking from above. Just like the previous encounter, there’s more going on that we’ll leave for you to experience yourselves.

 Later still in the main campaign, word of another portal reaches the party’s ears. Drustan is eager to see it for himself, but the area is infested with raised soldiers making any investigation a risky prospect. As this is Drustan’s last encounter in Heirs of Ruin, we’ll keep the description of the mechanics for this one brief. Let’s just say that Drustan is going to suddenly have a lot to do as the heroes get closer to the portal, including some tomb raiding style heroics and dealing with an ever-expanding threat of the undead.

That’s probably about as much as we should discuss. Keep in mind that you can add Drustan to your party whether you want to embark on his side quests or not (the same is true of any wayward hero), but his quest chain will make him feel like a more active participant in the story as you progress through Heirs of Ruin.

 That’s all for now! We’ll be back next month with more news on testing and whatever else is going on in the world of Stormsunder. Until then, we’ll see you in the Storm (where tomb raiding is passively encouraged).

- LSG