Class Design in Dowager: The Sacred & Strange
By popular demand, ya girl Absentia is a blogger now. I’ll be honest, I’m not a very flowery essayist nor am I that interested in prescribing how you, the lovely person reading this, ‘should’ make a game. I’d much rather just walk you through some of the process of how I make mine, and maybe you’ll learn something! This is the first of a bunch of blog posts/”developer diaries” I’d like to write about DOWAGER: THE SACRED & STRANGE, my sci-fantasy tactics rpg about being randomly chosen by the God of Righteous Violence to hunt internet ghouls and blow up datacenters (that’s where they come from.)
Today I’m breaking down how I design Classes in the game. Importantly, your Class(es) in Dowager are just the abilities you use in combat: They’re distinct from your Ancestry and Background, which I’ll talk at length about in future posts.
Before we get into things, let me quickly explain a few key rules and conventions of combat in Dowager:
Every character starts with the same baseline stats. If you’re curious, this is 20 Health, 20 Stamina, and 0 across the board on everything else. When you make a character, you have a choice of a dozen Ancestries, but these do not confer any stat boosts or unique abilities. Every character is similarly capable, and the majority of your stat bonuses will come from your Rank in various Classes.
I do this for a few reasons: I’ll write an article later about Ancestries in general, but it was a conscious choice I made to cut those entirely out of mechanical/build decisions and have all characters be similarly capable as a starting point. Moreover, your stats mostly come from your Class Rank(s) as to eliminate a potential newbie trap: If it’s your first time playing Dowager and you wish to go all in on playing a Gunslinger, then simply taking a few ranks in Gunslinger will give you all the stats you need to do that well, even if you haven’t fully learned what all your stats do yet.
Damage is almost always static, not random. The amount of Damage you deal as a baseline depends on your Weapon of choice: A Broadsword will always Strike for 4 Damage, a Carbine will always Strike for 6 Damage, etc. Class abilities add to this: “Strike +4 Damage” means your Broadsword will reliably hit for 8 Damage when you use that ability.
I do this for two big reasons: First, as my own preference, when I’m playing a game and I hit with an attack but only roll 1 or 2 on a d10, it doesn’t meaningfully feel much different from missing to me. A ‘good attack’ in Dowager is only one good dice roll (to see if you hit) rather than two (to see if you hit and how hard). Second, time: The game is faster when most of your actions only come down to one die roll rather than two.
Everyone spends the same resource to use their Abilities. All characters have Stamina (SP), and regardless of whether you fight with a sword, firearm, spells, psychic powers, or any combination of those, your Abilities cost Stamina to use. When you are out of Stamina, you can continue fighting, but every deduction to your SP will hit your Health (HP) instead. You can make a basic attack with your Weapon at no SP cost, generally Stamina isn’t very scarce.
I do this for a big reason: Rather than playing a game of pure attrition around daily abilities where you know your character is fully spent when they’re used, Stamina gives you more granular, moment-to-moment control of how hard you want to fight. Your Stamina isn’t bullets in a revolver, it’s your foot on a gas pedal. Even when you’re out, you can gamble burning down your Health to finish off a powerful enemy before they kill you.
…Of course, some Abilities also have a number of Dots that do set a hard limit on how often they can be used between resting- But this is a unique feature of some Classes, not a core feature of all of them.
I’m listing these out up front because generally, these are things that apply to everyone playing the game and every class that you can play as. There are exceptions: The Fighter adds various amounts of d4s to their abilities’ damage because they’re wild and reckless, Submachine Guns will Shoot for 3d4 damage instead of a static number because they’re inaccurate. Exceptions like this allow for unique playstyles that deviate from the baseline rules, and can cater to people with different preferences: Like I said, I personally don’t like rolling for damage, but there are ways to build for that in Dowager if you’re someone who does.
Next, let me lay out a design goal: When I make a new Class, these are the things actively on my mind before, during, and afterwards. While I have plenty of different goals, let’s just focus on a big one for this blog post.
I want it to feel rewarding regardless of how thin or wide you spread your Classes. There are currently 16 Classes in Dowager (20 when the game is complete) with three Ranks each. When you make your character, you have 3 points to spend on Ranks, so you can immediately lock in to a single Class or dip into others. In some games, like Dungeons & Dragons, you are typically only ever playing one Class and dipping into others is a messy affair. In other games, like Lancer, it’s expected you invest in many different Classes (Licenses, I guess) because each one caps out at a low number. I want to design Dowager around letting you do either and get something fun out of it.
Alright: That’s a lot of preamble, so let’s bust out a screenshot and I’ll show you some examples of what I’m talking about.
This is the Vanguard, one of two classes in the Guardian role: If you prefer videogame terminology, this is a ‘tank’ Class: The Vanguard is meant to fight on the front lines, endure powerful attacks, and control enemy NPCs to protect their more fragile allies. In Dowager, every Rank you take in a Class confers a stat bonus and three Abilities. When you take Ranks in Vanguard, you’ll get a lot of Health (HP) and Armor, as well as Evasion (EVA) and Endurance (END) to protect yourself against mostly physical attackers.
When it comes to Classes’ various Ranks, I generally follow a loose template:
Rank 1 will usually give you a basic, low Stamina attack, a useful Sub Action or Reaction, or a valuable Passive ability that gears you into a particular playstyle.
Rank 2 will usually give you a new ‘bread and butter’ attack or two, or introduce a new mechanic that the rest of the Class builds around.
Rank 3 will always give you something big and fantastic: A strong passive bonus that changes your playstyle significantly, a devastating attack with a heavy cost associated, a “panic button” you can press in reaction when enemies push you into a desperate position.
Importantly, Rank 1, 2, and 3 Abilities always cost 2, 4, and 6 Stamina across all Classes.
When it comes to my goal of letting people focus or spread their Class Ranks as they like, you could think of each level like this: Rank 1 is the dip option, Rank 2 is when you become that class, and Rank 3 is when you go all in.
At Rank 1, the Vanguard already encourages a ‘tanky’ playstyle: Beatdown rewards you with a harder melee attack if you go after enemies that are targeting your allies; Topple gives you a means of making an enemy more vulnerable to other characters’ attacks, and Grit gives you a helpful status effect and damage reduction when you’re taking a beating. Even if you only take a single Rank in Vanguard, these already reflect playing a more tough and scrappy character.
At Rank 2, Sunder allows you to inflict a rare and potent status effect (Armor Break) on foes; Intervene further encourages you to launch yourself into the fray and prevent powerful Focused attacks from going off via Interruption; Guard allows you to force an enemy to target you instead of an ally. At this Rank, you already have more than enough tools to lean into your role effectively: You can think of the Class as ‘fully online’, and it’s here where you’ll want to consider branching out into something else, or leaning further into this playstyle.
At Rank 3, Gigantic Heave is effectively a long-range football tackle where you can cover a lot of ground and position an enemy far away; Punishing Strike allows you to deal incredible damage if your foes have neglected to chip away at your Armor in favor of your more fragile peers; Unbreakable allows you to simply shrug off an entire attack, albeit at the steep cost of a lot of Stamina and a Dot, both of which must be regained separately during Downtime. Your third Rank is always nice, but never strictly required: Not every character needs to have a big super attack that consumes all their resources or a powerful passive bonus that requires three whole Ranks of investment just to obtain.
If you’re still with me, you can see how this Class achieves the goal I set out- Whether you invest just a bit or a lot into Vanguard as a ‘tank’ class, you are going to be more ‘tanky’ on the field. You might’ve caught something in the above screenshot I’ve been dancing around, however: In the top right, you’ll notice that there’s a stat bonus associated with Ranks 4 and 5 as well, but you only have three ranks of Vanguard abilities to work with. I should also mention off-hand that another of my design goals is to have a variety of simple and complex options for players to cater to their different preferred levels of crunch: I’d consider the Vanguard to be on the simpler end of that spectrum, so let’s look at a more complex Class as we get into Master Feats.
This is the Runesmith, one of four Classes in the Striker role: That means they’re also a frontline fighter, albeit focused more on dealing damage rather than mitigating powerful foes. I won’t break down every single ability again like with the Vanguard, but in essence, the Runesmith uses magic to empower their physical melee attacks and cast spells across the battlefield.
The Runesmith also has a unique central mechanic: Runes. You can only have a single Rune active at once, but they’re activated with a quick and simple Sub Action (of which you have two, every turn) and are essentially ‘modes’ you can toggle to adjust your fighting style to best suit whatever trouble you land in. At first Rank, Rune: Growth makes you grow very large and Rune: Thorns pricks enemies with magical damage just for approaching you. Both of these could be very handy if you find yourself fighting in tight quarters! Alternatively, all the way at third Rank, Rune: Indomitable effectively turns you into a backup tanking role, while Rune: Demonbuster makes you incredibly deadly to a few specific enemy types.
Classes in Dowager don’t just have their main Abilities, hower: They also have Master Feats, which are acquired with the same points you’d spend on Class Ranks, and you only need Rank 1 in any Class to start picking up Master Feats.
To start off, every Class has a straight forward Class Mastery Feat that raises them to Rank 4 or 5. If you are already happy with your arsenal or abilities and don’t want to make your life more complicated, this is the nice and simple option. Achieving 4th or 5th Rank will give you another stat increase, and some Classes’ Abilities use your overall Rank to scale their effects. For the Runesmith, a higher Rank means more damage from Rune: Thorns, greater momentum from their Wind Tunnel spell, a more punishing bite applied from Null Strike, and more.
Master Feats aren’t limited to just raising your Rank, however: They can confer entirely new abilities, passive effects, or augmentations to your existing abilities.
For the Runesmith, the majority of their Master Feats (at least as of right now) lean into their core mechanic: More Runes! For the relatively low investment of 1 Runesmith Rank and a single Master Feat, any character can wield Rune: Nightmare and summon a spectral steed at will. This creature isn’t considered a separate Unit from yourself, it simply makes you an incredibly mobile fighter that can cover huge distances.
If you aren’t in need of new abilities and just want more out of the Runesmith’s main kit, Rune Pairing is an incredibly valuable passive ability: You can have two Runes active at once instead of just one. Pairing together Rune: Growth and Rune: Indomitable allows you to be an immovable gatekeeper in any tight corridor, or pairing together Rune: Demonbuster and Rune: Stellafire allow you to smite wayward spirits and internet demons with explosive force.
In the end, there’s a wealth of rewards and incentives to go all in on one Class or branch out into others, and Master Feats encourage both. A Class that may have already been tempting as a single Rank dip may be even more enticing with the passive and active abilities that that Rank opens up to you, but your playstyle will never become needlessly more or less complicated than you prefer: As much as I’m marketing Dowager as a game by and for tactics sickos, I think there’s room for the girl who just wants to do one thing really well and guy who wants to have a dozen different abilities and effects that synergize together to play in the same party.
If you like what I’m cooking, consider throwing a few bucks my way for the current preview build of Dowager: The Sacred & Strange (v0.03) off my Patreon. Admittedly the current version is a little sparse on Master Feats, but there are otherwise 16 fully playable Classes ready to go, and a whole bunch of other fun player-facing things. Later this April, I’ll be introducing a new system and filling out more of the PDF in general. Please look forward to future blog posts where I talk about other aspects of game design and the setting.
