10.6.4: Alchemical item and poison buffs

General changes

• The "Diminuitive" misspelling has been fixed to "Diminutive"
• Halving negative numbers is now more clear

Adventuring

• The rules for throwing poisons have been clarified

Combat

• Weak strikes only halve damage bonuses, not penalties
• You can now ignore allies when calculating whether enemies have cover
• Cover now explicitly protects against "half damage on miss" effects that target Armor/Reflex defense

Equipment

• The timing and mechanics for object interactions are now more clear
• The repetitive extra rules text shared by all bows has been moved into a new "Bow" weapon tag
• Most consumable alchemical items have been buffed
  • Lower rank: Moonrod, firebomb, avalanchestone, tanglefoot bag
  • Higher rank: Sunrod, Snowball, iceball
  • Different damage scaling: Alchemist's fire, acid flask, thunderstone
  • New items: Bottled hellfire, mindbomb, shockstone, stunning sphere
• Plant-based poisons have been redesigned and generally buffed
  • Animal-based poisons will be adjusted in a future patch
• New magic weapon properties: Psionic, Toxic, and Prismatic
• The Consussive magic weapon property has been renamed to Vibrating

Classes

• Cleric: Air Domain now also adds Jump to your list of class skills
• Tactician: Battle Tactics now have Sustain (free) instead of Sustain (minor)

Combat Styles

• Headshot has been renamed "Concussive Strike"

Mystic Spheres

• Fabrication: Personal Weapon now has a slightly more intuitive interaction with slow-loading crossbows
• Photomancy
  • Prismatic Spray now clarifies that its critical hit effect improves both conditions it inflicts
  • Radiant Field now scales accuracy with rank
• Verdamancy: Poison spells have been adjusted to match the changes to plant-based poisons, generally making them stronger and shorter range

Feats

• Agile Reaction: Evasive Reaction+ is now acquired at level 18 instead of level 21
• Combat Style Versatility has been redesigned to be more interesting

Optional Rules

• Incarnations are now in the Roll20 sheet

10.6.3: Redesigned flight and ranged weapons

General changes

Characters

• Falling damage now has a higher limit

Adventuring

• Rules for crafting poisons have been clarified

Combat

• Flying and gliding have been redesigned, and is now generally simpler to track but more difficult to use in combat
• The "floating" trait has been added, and prevents creatures from falling if they didn't actively move
• The Sprint ability now affects all movement modes, not just land speed

Skills

• Disguise modifiers have been slightly simplified

Equipment

• Medium armor now provides a +1 vital roll bonus, and heavy armor now provides a +2 vital roll bonus
  • Special armor-like abilities, such as bracers of armor, also provide equivalent bonuses
• It is now easier to swap weapons around between your hands, making it easier to take other actions while dual wielding or using heavy weapons
• Arbalest and heavy crossbow now have the Heavy tag
  • Arbalest now only provides +1 accuracy instead of +2
• Hand crossbows have been renamed to pistol crossbows for Historical Accuracy, and are easier to dual-wield
• Repeating crossbows now do not have a reload to repeatedlly fire, allowing them to be used with shields
• Light crossbows, pellet crossbows, and recurve bows have been added
• Titanbow now deals 1d8 damage instead of 1d6
• Bows now take a non-action to reload
• Crossbows now generally take a minor action to reload instead of a free action
• Damaging items now generally deal slightly more damage

Classes

• Fighter: Equipment Training now provides slightly different medium and heavy armor bonuses

Mystic Spheres

• Aquamancy: Detect Water has been redesigned as Sense Water
• Pyromancy: Detect Flame has been redesigned as Sense Flame
• Telekinesis: Rapid Reload has been nerfed and is now Mental Reload
• Toxicology
  • Detect Poison has been added
  • Intensify Poison has been redesigned as a rank 1 spell
  • Several new rituals have been added
• Verdamancy
  • Fertile Patch has been redesigned as a ritual
  • A new Bramblepatch cantrip has been added

Feats

• Arbalist has been added
• Trickshot has been added

Optional Rules

• Uncommon species are now split into a separate chapter for easier reference
• A new Incarnation uncommon species has been added

10.6.2: Backgrounds and ship combat

General changes

• The first three key rules chapters have been reorganized as Characters, Adventuring, and Combat
• Many rules sections in those chapters have been reworded to be clearer and avoid repetition

Roll20 Sheet

• Power is now automatically added to damage with weapons
• Weight limits are now visible in the Ref tab

Monsters

• Leaders now have lower hit points
• Snipers now have lower hit points, but higher defenses

Characters

• Half-orcs now have either -1 Int or -1 Per, rather than always -1 Int
• Half-orcs now know an additional common language
• Orcs are now considered a common species, and have been redesigned
• Falling damage now scales with weight category
• Attribute point buy has been redesigned to avoid awkward extra points that are difficult to spend
  • Instead of having costs of 1/3/5/8 with 15 points to spend, attributes now cost 1/2/3/5 with 8 points to spend
  • This also generally makes starting attributes slightly lower, which is intentional
• Explicit backgrounds have been added
  • Backgrounds are a mixture of benefits and flaws, both of which can have a significant narrative impact
  • Backgrounds do not significantly affect a character's statistics or combat power

Adventuring

• The rules for helping allies make checks have been simplified
  • You can give an ally a non-stacking +2 bonus if you beat a DV 5 lower than the real DV

Classes

• Barbarian
  • Resilient Strike now grants a +4 defense bonus instead of making you impervious, and deals more damage at rank 4
  • Feral Strike can also be used with thrown weapons
• Druid: Plant Channeling now has standard range extension wording

Combat Styles

Mystic Spheres

• Aeromancy
  • Air Bubble has been renamed to Air Supply, and is now rank 3 instead of rank 4
  • A new Limited Air Supply ritual has been added
• Revelation: Field of Visions is now Sustain (attuneable, standard) instead of only an immediate effect

Feats

• Entropist: The 18th level ability now only requires one fatigue instead of two

Optional Rules

• New critical failure and exploding check variants have been added
• A new Ship Combat chapter has been added

10.6.1: Body, Life, Mind, and Soul Redesign

Body, Life, Mind and Soul

Problem

Rise has historically attached great importance to souls, but has not had a clear definition for what a soul actually is. It also has had a somewhat confusing and inconsistent definition of a "mind", treating some creatures capable of complex cognition as being mindless.

Solution

The four elements that define existence in Rise are body, life, mind, and soul.
A body is a creature's physical existence.
Life is the ability of a body to change and adapt over time.
A mind is a creature's ability to understand and react to its environment.
Soul is the ability of a mind to change and adapt over time.

With these new definitions, some creatures that were previously called "mindless" are now called "simple-minded".
Simple-minded creatures have a mind, and are vulnerable to Compulsion effects, but they are incapable of feeling emotions, having complex thoughts, or taking psychic damage.
This was applied to skeletons, zombies, golems, elementals, and similar animated creatures.

The word "sentient" is now used less frequently, and no longer has a technical definition.
It is unclear whether "sentient" refers to experiencing emotions, which simple-minded creatures cannot do, or perceiving and reacting to one's surroundings, which simple-minded creatures can do.

Fully mindless creatures are now more rare, and they no longer have Intelligence or Willpower attributes at all.
They use their Fortitude defense in place of their Mental defense, and they use their Strength to determine their magical power.
They are immune to psychic damage and Compulsion and Emotion abilities.
This is typically reserved for oozes, plants, and extremely basic animals like ants.

For details on the narrative implications of this change, see "The Universe" in the book, especially "The Four Elements of Existence" and "Power Ultimately Derives From Life and Soul".

General changes

Monsters

• Monsters now gain +1 accuracy at levels 7 and 19 instead of levels 5 and 17
• Monsters now gain +1 to all defenses at levels 5/11/17 instead of only level 11
  • At higher levels, monster power was falling behind player power, and at high levels characters have many tools for mitigating high defenses
• Undead no longer heal from energy damage, and can no longer be damaged by mundane healing abilities
• Monsters can now explicitly use abilities that fatigue them, but only if those abilities are listed in their description blocks

Combat mechanics

• Creatures that are impervious to an attack no longer take half damage from that attack on a miss
• Miss chances are now rolled before attack rolls, rather than after
  • This makes it safe to use the desperate exertion ability on attacks that have a miss chance, assuming you already got past the miss chance
• Weak strikes now halve flat damage modifiers instead of removing all flat damage modifiers
  • They previously had extemely weak scaling, making them overpowered exactly when first acquired and falling off very quickly in subsequent levels. This should make them more well-rounded overall.
• All non-Swift healing abilities now explicitly heal at the end of the round, rather than during the resolution of the action
  • This should make triggered healing behave more intuitively with respect to incoming damage from monsters
• The Recover ability now removes conditions before applying its healing

Classes

• The Evasion+ abilities for monk and rogue now affect all defenses, instead of applying a global half damage modifier to area attacks
• Barbarian: The Versatile Savagery ability can now grant the Mounted and Thrown (30/60) tags instead of the Forceful tag
• Cleric
  • Denounce the Heathens now has different scaling at ranks 5 and 7
  • Each ability granted by Domain Influence is now individually tagged as being magical or mundane
  • Protection Domain has been slightly buffed
  • Turn Undead now deals half maximum hit points in damage instead of instantly killing on a critical hit
  • Bless the Worthy now has the Emotion tag
• Dragon: The tail slam now has the Impact weapon tag instead of the Forceful weapon tag
• Druid
  • The Nature Magic archetype now correctly grants additional spells known at ranks 2, 4, and 7
  • Plant Channeling now requires a Small or larger plant, rather than Tiny

Combat Styles

• Blunt Force
  • Resonating Strike has been removed
  • Blasting Strike and Forceful Strike have been added
• Ebb and Flow
  • Certain Strike now grants a +2 accuracy bonus instead of +3
  • Certain Strike+ now grants a +6 accuracy bonus intead of +5
  • Guardbreaker now lasts briefly instead of only during the current round
• Flurry of Blows: Rapid Quaff is no longer a weak strike

Mystic Spheres

In general, the number of spells that can be cast on allies has been increased, and damage scaling values should now be more consistent.

• Aeromancy
  • Propulsion can now be Swift if you spend one fatigue
  • Mass Wind Screen and Mass Windblade have been added
  • Mighty Windslash now uses a power-based damage value instead of a flat damage value
  • Windsnipe now scales damage with rank instead of accuracy
• Aquamancy
  • Mass Waterward has been added
  • Geyser now uses a power-based damage value and has shorter range
  • Aqueous Tentacle is now Attune (target) instead of Attune
  • Mighty Aqueous Tentacle is now Attune instead of Attune (deep)
• Astromancy
  • Mass Astral Instability, Mass Phasing Blade, and Mass Phasestep have been added
  • Translocation and Dimension Door can now be Swift if you spend one fatigue
  • Planar Jaunt - Astral Plane is now rank 2
  • Planar Jaunt - Plane of Fire is now rank 1 and short range instead of medium range
  • Planar Jaunt - Myriad now uses a power-based damage value
• Chronomancy: Unstable Aging and Mighty Unstable Aging now scale damage with rank instead of accuracy
• Cryomancy
  • Cone of Cold now uses a power-based damage value
  • Chillwind Dash can now be Swift if you spend one fatigue
• Electromancy
  • Mass Magnetic Blade has been added
  • Thunderdash can now be Swift if you spend one fatigue
• Enchantment: Tell the Truth is now Sustain (attuneable, standard) instead of Attune
• Fabrication: Mystic Forge is now rank 4 instead of rank 5
• Photomancy
  • Mass Blurred Motion has been added
  • Reflective Lightbeam now has a fixed damage value
  • Reflective Lightbeam, Solar Ray and Solar Flare now scale damage with rank instead of accuracy
  • Efficient Chromatic Orb now has a power-based damage value
  • Lightbeam Dash can now be Swift if you spend one fatigue
  • Malleable Disguise can now be changed as a minor action instead of a standard action
• Polymorph
  • Mass Scent and Mass Draconic Senses have been added
  • Alter Self is now Sustain (attuneable, minor) instead of Attune
  • Flesh-Rending Claw now correctly uses the higher of magical and mundane power
  • Power Claw now has a -3 accuracy penalty instead of -4
  • Mighty Power Claw now has a -2 accuracy penalty instead of -3
  • Regeneration is now Sustain (attuneable, standard) instead of Attune
• Pyromancy
  • Massive Fireball has been added
  • Pyroclasm has been redesigned
  • Fireball is now short range instead of medium range
  • Delayed Fireball is now rank 4 instead of rank 5, but is weaker
  • Burning Hands, Immolating Fireball, Flame Breath, and Flame Serpent deal less damage
  • Massive Burning Hands is now Mighty Burning Hands, and affects a smaller area
  • Mighty Wall of Fire is rank 5 instead of rank 6, but has shorter range
  • Kindled Fireburst is now longer range but affects a smaller area
  • Flame Dash can now be Swift if you spend one fatigue
• Revelation
  • Mass Weapon Proficiency, Mass Armor Proficiency, and Mass Foresight have been added
  • Greater Proficiency is now Sustain (attuneable, minor) instead of Attune
  • Precognitive Offense no longer scales
  • Foresight is now rank 5 instead of rank 7
• Summoning: Summoned creatures now have a power-based damage value
• Terramancy
  • Mass Personal Gravitation has been added
  • Crushing Gravity now has a power-based damage value
  • Earthcraft is now a ritual instead of a spell
  • Earthbind also makes it more difficult to stand up while prone
  • Earthen Fortification is now Sustain (attuneable, minor) instead of Attune
  • Stonefist is now Attune (target) instead of Attune
  • Mighty Stonefist is now Attune instead of Attune (deep)
• Thaumaturgy
  • Enhance Magic - Precision has been added
  • Magic Missile now has a power-based damage value, and ignores all miss chances
  • Enhance Magic - Might now has stronger scaling
  • Enhance Magic - Distance has been removed
• Toxicology: Mass Poison Immunity has been added
• Umbramancy
  • Darklantern is now Sustain (attuneable, minor) instead of Attune
  • Deep Darkness and Absolute Darkness have been added
  • Deep Darklantern has been removed
  • Dark Miasma now has a fixed damage value, and scales its damage with rank instead of its accuracy
  • Shadowstep can now be Swift if you spend one fatigue
• Universal: Mighty Mystic Bolt and Mighty Mystic discharge now have power-based damage values
• Verdamancy
  • Undergrowth created by the sphere is now explicitly alive
  • Mass Flourishing Grass and Fire Seed Swarm has been added
  • Vine Tentacle is now Attune (target) instead of Attune
  • Mighty Embedded Growth, Mighty Fire Seeds, Massive Wall of Thorns, and Blight now have power-based damage values
  • Shillelagh can now be cast as a minor action, and is Sustain (attuneable, free) instead of Attune
  • Massive Flourishing Grass is now rank 5 instead of rank 4
  • Intense Flourishing Grass is now rank 7 instead of rank 6
  • Multiple Fire Seeds can no longer be thrown or detonated simultaneously
  • Mighty Fire Seeds now deals more damage
• Vivimancy
  • Mass Wellspring ...

10.6.0: Higher baseline hit rate

Defense recalculations

Problem

Originally, Rise was designed around a baseline accuracy of about 50-60%. However, this accuracy is a little too low to feel good, and it's possible to spend several rounds in a row having no effect on the fight if you get reasonably unlucky. In addition, having a relatively low expected accuracy makes the system dangerously sensitive to high defenses. It doesn't take extraordinary investment to reduce a 50% hit chance to 10-20%, resulting in characters taking only a tiny fraction of their expected damage each round. More recently, expected defense values have been gradually shifting lower through a series of patches. However, this was not applied uniformly, and some related systems were not updated to reflect these changes to expected hit probability.

For example, healing abilities that spend fatigue should generally heal more damage than characters expect to take in the same round. They originally used the same damage scaling as damaging abilities. This made since when damaging abilities had a 50-60% hit rate, since healing abilities have a 100% hit rate. However, when a typical attack has a high likelihood of hitting, the raw recovery of healing abilities needs to be higher.

Solution

Reduce all defenses by 1, except for player characters using medium and heavy armor. Medium and heavy armor is not optimal when stacking defenses, and can't be used to reach the extremes of high Dexterity light armor. Monsters also generally have higher accuracy, lower defenses, and more hit points and damage resistance. This should make them similarly dangerous overall.

Specific changes

• All standard action healing abilities now provide more healing

Classes

• The Fortitude, Reflex, and Mental defense bonuses from all classes have been reduced by 1
• Fighter: Equipment Training has been redesigned to be more interesting and limit massive Armor defense scaling

Combat styles

• Ebb and Flow
  • Power Strike now has a -4 accuracy penalty instead of -3
  • Power Strike+ now has a -3 accuracy penalty instead of -2
• Flurry of Blows: Barrage now also doubles longshot penalties
• Penetrating Precision: Penetrating Shot+ now has a -2 accuracy penalty instead of -1

Mystic spheres

• Polymorph
  • Power Claw now has a -4 accuracy penalty instead of -2
  • Mighty Power Claw is one rank higher and now has a -3 accuracy penalty instead of -2
  • Added a new Flesh-Rending Claw spell at rank 3
• Vivimancy: Wellspring of Life now maximizes healing instead of providing a flat extra healing value

Equipment

• Light body armor provides 2 Armor defense instead of 3
• The Armor bonus from other light body armor-ish effects, such as mage armor, have also been reduced by 1

Monsters

• Monsters now gain an accuracy bonus at 5th and 17th level instead of at 11th level
• Monsters now gain a defense bonus at 11th level instead of 5th and 17th level
• Monsters now have lower non-Armor base defenses
• Monsters now add only half Dex to their Armor defense
  • Warriors do not add any Dex to Armor defense
• Elite monsters no longer have an extra +2 accuracy bonus
• All monster roles have had their hit points increased by one hit point scaling tier (wizard -> cleric -> fighter -> barbarian -> extreme)
  • This required creating a new "extreme" scaling tier, which only Brute and Leader monsters have access to

General changes

• Characters now have 14 attribute points to spend instead of 15
  • This is primarily intended to increase the pain of starting with a 4 in an attribute, which is very high
  • It should also slightly reduce the frequency of awkward dangling attribute points

Classes

• Barbarian: Rage has been buffed, and now grants extra damage resistance while active
• Cleric: Bless the Worthy now affects a larger area
• Fighter
  • Combat Discipline now also makes you briefly ignore any new conditions
  • Shifting Stance is now Swift
• Rogue: Sneak Attack now has stronger high level scaling
• Sorcerer: Now has a higher Fortitude defense than Reflex defense, and has Endurance as a class skill
• Vampire: Now has a new Gentle Fangs ability at rank 2
• Wizard
  • Alchemist now grants access to the Toxicology mystic sphere
  • Alchemists can maintain 5 items with Portable Workshop instead of 3

Skills

• Creature Handling now has more explicit limitations to prevent using a zoo of trained friends in combat
• Elite monsters do not get double actions while being controlled by Creature Handling

Combat styles

• Flurry of Blows: Quickdraw and Heavy Quickdraw have had their accuracy penalty reduced by 1
• Penetrating Precision: Full-Body Thrust+ now deals more damage

Equipment

• Legacy item body armor now has slightly better DR scaling

Feats

• Juggernaut: Trample now has clearer wording, and is affected by glancing blows and critical hits as normal for damaging attacks

10.5.0: Damage scaling adjustments

Changes to damage scaling with power

Problem

Previously, some abilities granted extra damage dice "per four power".
The gap between these breakpoints was too high.
This was especially true since they often appeared early enough that characters could still be in the 5-7 power range, where the breakpoint felt especially punishing.

Solution

All effects that scale damage with power have been adjusted so they no longer use "per four power" scaling.
Instead, the closest scaling is a flat "damage equal to power" bonus.
In order to make this change, all damage scaling with power was revisited, and many other standard scaling values have been slightly adjusted to minimize breakpoint gaps where possible.
The overall damage dealt should be similar, but most abilities now have slightly more emphasis on power scaling instead of flat damage.
To support low-power characters, abilities that previously were defined as having high flat damage and low power scaling now have pure flat damage, with no power scaling at all.

Specific changes

It's not meaningful to list every individual ability that changed its damage scaling.
Only abilities that had additional significant changes will be mentioned here.

• Classes
  • Barbarian: Savage Rush has had its scaling redesigned and generally buffed
  • Druid: Elemental Strike now adds half Strength to determine its magical power
  • Fighter: Disciplined Strike now deals more damage
  • Paladin: Smite has smoother scaling between rank 1 and rank 2, making it less overpowered at specifically rank 1
  • Rogue: Bardic music abilities now use non-power scaling for damage and healing
  • Warlock
    • Abyssal Rebuke now has more unusual scaling
    • Secret of Bloodsharing now grants slightly more healing
• Feats
  • Greatweapon Warrior: Power Attack now also applies a -1 defense penalty to make up for its higher scaling

General changes

• Combat mechanics
  • Damaging attacks with special effects now only inflict those special effects on a full hit, not a glance or miss
    • It was previously ambiguous which special effects, like debuffs, only triggered on a full hit and which would trigger on a glance or even miss
  • Brawling accuracy now correctly adds generic accuracy modifiers in the Roll20 sheet
  • The rules for making dual strikes while dual wielding are now written more clearly
  • Flying and gliding creatures are now immune to being knocked prone
• Classes
  • Barbarian: Battlerager has been slightly buffed
    • Rage now applies the standard enraged debuff and grants an accuracy bonus with melee and thrown strikes, rather than mundane abilities
      • This should discourage longbow barbarians, which are narratively odd
      • An amulet has been added to restore the old behavior
    • Fearless Rage is now Fearless Anger, which works while not raging
    • Insensible Anger ignores all vital wound effects, not just accuracy and movement penalties
  • Paladin: Lay on Hands now removes all poisons and diseases, not just one
  • Sorcerer and Wizard: Mage Armor no longer increases its Armor defense scaling to +4 at rank 6
• Mystic spheres
  • Characters can now learn rituals from mystic spheres they do not have access to
    • Those rituals are treated as one rank higher and cost twice as many fatigue levels
  • Cryomancy: Cryostrike has been redesigned
  • Pyromancy: Flame Blade can now target allies
• Equipment
  • Wands are now much easier to use
    • They are no longer associated with a specific magic source, and the minimum spell rank required to use a wand is one lower than the wand's rank
  • Claw sheaths can explicitly only affect punches, but not kicks
  • Added Gauntlets of Brutal Fists
  • Magic weapons that grant standard action strikes now consistently have a minimum accuracy
  • Frenzy weapons now only trigger if you attack with them, not with any weapon
• Feats
  • Celestial Ancestry and Executioner have been reworked
  • Telepath: Mental Assault has a revised accuracy bonus mechanic that should be simpler to use in practice
  • Twin-Weapon Fighting: The Balanced Armor bonus is now considered to come from a shield, and Two Weapons As One has been removed

10.4.0: Vital wound rebalance

Vital wound changes

In general, a character who enters combat after a short rest with no current vital wounds should have an extremely low probability of dying in that combat without repeated and obvious tactical errors (or a noble sacrifice). This was not reflected in some of the rules for vital wounds, which were not updated since more emphasis was placed on damage resistance as a core defensive mechanic and classes lost their intrinsic bonuses to vital rolls. If characters suffered life-threatening injuries, their allies could rarely do anything to help, leaving very little distinction between "in danger of dying" and "already dead".

To address these problems, some of the core systems for gaining and dying from vital wounds have been made less punishing, and martial classes have easier access to vital roll bonuses.

Specific changes

• Core systems
  • Vital rolls from 0 to -5 now cause you to die after one minute, instead of after one round
    • This should give allies more time to tend to dying characters
  • Characters now gain an additional vital wound for each increment of their full maximum hit points that they reach in negative hit points, rather than only half their maximum hit points
• Classes
  • Barbarian: Battleforged Resilience and Totemist now both grant +1 vital rolls
  • Fighter: Sentinel now also grants +1 vital rolls
  • Monk: Transcendent Sage now also grants +1 vital rolls
  • Ranger: Beastmaster now also grants +1 vital rolls, and improves the vital roll survivability of the companion
  • The Treant archetype now grants +1 vital rolls
• Skills
  • The Medicine skill is now more effective at treating vital wounds
    • The DV now scales by +5 for each more deadly tier of vital roll, instead of by +10
• Equipment
  • Potion of Wound Closure has been redesigned as Potion of Healing, which both recovers HP and mitigates vital wounds
  • Potion of Regeneration is now lower rank

General changes

• Core systems
  • Effects that increase the odds of exploding on attack rolls now stack
    • This required adding a new "explosion target" concept, which is defined as the minimum number you need to roll to explode
  • "Magic bonuses" have been renamed to "enhancement bonuses"
    • This should avoid the previous confusion between "a bonus from a magical ability" and "a bonus with the specific type 'magic bonus'"
  • The "enhanced maneuvers" class abilities have been renamed to "augmented maneuvers"
• Species
  • Base class bonuses from optional species have been buffed to encourage members of those species to follow their standard narrative traits
    • Dragons now have 2 insight points instead of 1
    • Dryaidi now have 2 insight points instead of 1
    • Harpies now have fighter-level hit points instead of cleric-level hit points
    • Oozeborn are now proficient with medium armor
    • Treants now have barbarian-level hit points intead of fighter-level hit points
    • Vampires now have fighter-level hit points instead of cleric-level hit points
  • Vampires are now less vulnerable to true sunlight
• Classes
  • Barbarian: Outland Savage's bonus to exploding attacks is now capped at +2, rather than stacking for each explosion
  • Cleric
    • Chaos domain mastery now further increases explosion range rather than giving a bonus to exploding attacks
    • Strength domain has a slightly simplified aspect and a redesigned essence
  • Druid: Shift Body now provides an enhancement bonus instead of an untyped bonus
  • Fighter: The Protect ability from Sentinel can now also target yourself for a lesser bonus
  • Monk: The Ki archetype now provides an alternate standard action strike at rank 3 instead of a bonus to magical power
  • Paladin
    • Chaos paladins now increase explosion range with their aura rather than giving a bonus to exploding attacks
    • Detect Anathema can now be used as a minor action, and has slightly more useful scaling
    • Smite now has slightly different effects on same-alignment targets
• Equipment
  • Added a new "titanbow" exotic weapon
  • Magic items that grant +1 to a single attribute have been reduced from rank 6 to rank 5 and no longer have "Epic" in their name
  • Antitoxin Elixir is now lower rank
  • Bloodfrenzy weapons are now slightly stronger and have different scaling
  • Cloak of Death's Door is now lower rank and has a ++ variant
  • Distant Protector's Amulet also affects the cleric Divine Protection ability
  • Fortified Armor now grants an untyped bonus instead of an enhancement bonus
  • Quilled Cloak now deals more damage
  • Seeking weapons are now lower rank
  • Tireless+ weapons are now lower rank
• Mystic spheres
  • Umbramancy
    • Suppress Light can no longer dim brilliant illumination
    • Deep Darklantern is now higher rank
• Feats
  • Entropist's Friend of Chaos ability does not affect vital rolls

10.3.3: Expanded unusual species and various tweaks

General changes

• Escape Grapple no longer scales directly with size category
• "Enraged" is now a standardized debuff that compels attacks instead of prohibiting non-attacks
• A standard overland travel day is now 8 hours instead of 10 hours to more closely match real world travel limits
• Elite monsters now have 3x normal monster HP instead of 4x normal monster HP
• Classes
  • Hit point progressions are now written in a way that should be more understandable`
  • Cleric: several Preacher abilities now have the Emotion tag
• Species
  • Dragons now gain a +2 Armor defense bonus to offset the barding penalty
  • Dryaidi have been redesigned, and now have a species archetype
  • Harpies now gain a +2 Armor defense bonus from Winged Agility to offset the barding penalty
  • Humans now gain +1 to one attribute (max 4) instead of an additional insight point
  • Naiadi have a slightly buffed Aqueous Form ability
  • Oozeborn do not have to wear barding while using Mold Body to appear humanoid
  • Saplings have been added
  • Vampires now have darkvision
• Equipment
  • Armor for unusually shaped creatures is now called "barding" and provides -2 Armor defense
    • This penalty also applies to armor-like effects such as Mage Armor
  • Whips now deal slashing damage and no longer have the Subdual tag
• Mystic Spheres
  • Aquamancy
    • Wall of Water now affects a larger area
    • Liquifying Grasp is now rank 4 instead of rank 3
  • Enchantment: Monologue is now Subtle
  • Photomancy: Searing Light has been redesigned and is now rank 2
  • Polymorph: Baleful Polymorph is now Short range instead of Medium range
  • Prayer: Curse of Rage has been removed
  • Umbramancy:
    • Darklantern no longer dims brilliant illumination
    • Deeper Darklantern has been added, which can dim brilliant illumination
  • Verdamancy: Wall of Thorns now deals half damage on a miss
• Feats
  • Clarified some ambiguities with the Ascetic feat
  • Combat Style Versatility now only requires 1 Int
  • Sphere Focus: Photomancy now creates barriers instead of difficult terrain with Hardlight Photomancy

10.3.2: Class defense bonus rebalance, feat adjustments

General changes

• Class defense bonuses have been reduced to 3/4/5 instead of 3/5/7
  • This should bring non-Armor defenses into line with Armor defense
• Classes
  • Barbarian: Savage Rush has been redesigned to be stronger
  • Cleric: Wild domain now grants only one wild aspect
  • Druid: Form of the Bear has been nerfed
  • Monk: Perfected Form now has different and slightly weaker scaling
  • Paladin: Smite now sets power to 0 against same-alignment targets instead of being a weak strike, which scales more reasonably with level
• Equipment
  • New item: Circlet of Desperate Visions
• Feats
  • New feat: Ascetic, which grants an extra archetype but prevents using items
  • New feat: Fateweaver, which allows using fixed results instead of rolling attacks and checks
  • Executioner has been redesigned to make it more generally useful
  • Ghostblade now has a cooldown on its ghost step ability
  • Juggernaut has been redesigned to be stronger
  • Prepared Spellcasting now grants four spells known instead of three
  • Toughness has a more useful rank 1 secondary effect

10.3.1: Armor buffs and restoring Jump

General changes

• Many typos have been fixed
• Abilities now say "Miss: Half damage" instead of "Miss: Glancing blow"
  • This should make the distinction between a miss and a glancing blow more well-defined
• All sources of body armor now provide +1 more Armor defense
  • Armor defense was too low relative to non-Armor defenses
• Species
  • Dwarves now have a minimum speed 10 feet slower than their base speed, rather than fixed at 15 feet
    • This is generally stronger, and solves weird narrative issues for dwarves that have been magically reduced in size
• Classes
  • Warlock: Secret of Bloodforging now has slightly better DR scaling
• Skills
  • The Jump skill now exists again
    • It increases your fixed maximum jump distance, and can be rolled to jump precisely or in unusual circumstances
    • Jump distance now scales half as well with Strength unless you are trained in Jump
• Mystic Spheres
  • Cryomancy: Hailstorm no longer knocks enemies prone on a miss
  • Electromancy: Lightning Rod has been buffed
• Equipment
  • Bracers of Armor now provide slightly more DR
• Feats
  • Rapid Reaction has slightly weaker scaling at level 12+
  • Sphere Focus: Pyromancy has a redesigned Spreading Flame ability
  • Sphere Focus: Terramancy no longer allows treating adamantine as unworked stone
  • Sphere Focus: Vivimancy no longer allows choosing an Attune or Sustain spell with the Soulscar Spell ability
• Monsters
  • Elite monsters now deal less damage
  • Monsters now have slightly lower accuracy scaling and slightly higher defense scaling