im a very big fan of your homebrews, especially your subclasses, and i was wondering how much time you spend working on them? which took you the longest to develop?
Ah. Much like with my stories, that probably depends on what we're defining as 'working' on them. I tend to be a bit of a splurge writer, in that I'll have a concept percolating in the back of my head for a variable while (a few hours to a few years) and then at some point I'll actually sit down and get it put on paper/screen, usually all in one shot, although the last few years I've gotten better at doing part of something and then letting it sit for a while and coming back later.
For most of the subclass homebrews, I had them percolating in my head, the themes and flavour of them, for a few days or so, and then once I had time I'd sit down with the books, get other subclasses and classes up to compare them to, and actually sit down and get the abilities/mechanics plotted out. Then some time to refine/reword, possible a day or two (well, an hour or two over a couple of days), and then post it to see what everyone else thought.
What one took me longest ... With the subclasses, a lot of them are rather impulsive on my part, concept-wise, for almost all of them it was mostly 'this would be cool, I want something that feels like this, how would I do that?'. I think the Oath of the Outsider Paladin maybe took me longest in the 'actually plotting out the mechanics' phase? Or possibly the Fleshweaver Artificer, just because paladins and artificers are classes I have a shakier grasp on. I also took a bit of time on the Circle of the City Druid, because there was a lot of comparing subclass abilities across several classes for that one (warlock, most notably). The Darkness Domain Cleric also went through a few revisions, there's half of a whole other version of that one that went in a somewhat different direction ability-wise that I deleted halfway through and restarted.
The Path of the Whaler Barbarian was one of the fastest, just because the Ahab quote sketched such a clear concept for it. Starsworn Rogue was also very clear and concrete in my head. Sorcerers almost always come quickly, once I have the spell list nailed down for them, the rest usually follows quickly. If I've got a clear concept and the class feels friendly to me, it goes quick.
Generally, though? You're looking at a couple of days to percolate, and then a couple of days to write/revise, and I YOLO it from there.
I'm an impulsive writer, I really am.
