So, a second playtest is starting next week, the first one's still going as well. This new one will be testing out roll20, so I'll be trying to build custom character sheets for it, building up a library and so on. By the time open beta rolls around, you should be able to play Saorsa on roll20 easily with official support!

Whelp, it's been awhile buuuuut...! The v0.360 release is ready to go! The link to it will be posted in a separate post for subscribers of that tier. For now, here's what was covered!

Pets and monsters have been overhauled entirely, plus there's a bunch of other changes too!  The changelog since 0.3516 is as follows:

(Sorry the formatting sucks, there's a lot of it, and I'm exhausted after getting this prepped to go.)

Updated the Cat's Eye Gem crafting material so that it can now also be applied to curio as well as armour, and has additional ranks. Rank 1 lets it detect ley lines by default, rank 2 now includes this functionality for magic in general like magical items, and rank 3 it can boost your aethershield by a multiplier of +0.5x. If applied to armour, this allows even medium and heavy armour to produce an aethershield.
Added a second tier to Elemental Cores, so they give +1 resistance to one element at rank 2, and +2 at rank 4, instead of just +1 at rank 4 only.
Updated the monster creation section with the new slots system, replacing the old point-buy system. This fixes a lot of issues, and is much quicker and easier to use. In particular, you no longer have to balance interesting aspects about enemies against their useful stats, as these are separate slots now.
Pets now have 1 base quirk and gain a second upon gaining sapience, down from 2 and 3 respectively before. This should make it a bit easier for characters with multiple pets.
Using a 2H weapon 1 handed now only counts as +1 size class difference instead of +2.
Weapons which are smaller or larger than an opponent now also decrease or increase knockback by -1 or +1 per size difference respectively. Meaning colossal and titanic enemies are kind of hard to shove backwards, while you can flick a K'yuubi across the room with little effort, even before taking their stances into account.
Mind control explicitly states each individual suggested action must be defended against separately now, and it now uses the Anima Skill and Willpower Skill instead of just the attributes anima vs willpower.
Pets no longer automatically upgrade to the next higher tier unless it's part of a class ability. They can be upgraded using Unique Slots to do so, however. This helps to keep the uniqueness of pets distinct and allows a character to choose to keep the pet they got at the start of the game to be that way throughout. After finishing this change, I realized that it means you can basically treat your pets as pokemon, complete with the idea of pikachu or eevee refusing to evolve. This oddly enough also means you could fairly easily convert Saorsa into a pokemon game. ...This was not intentional, I just kind of realized it now. Huh.
The Archer's Nature's Call ability now lets you instantly teleport your pet to yourself and grants the pet +1 additional pet slot. The old version... uh, let you call your pet at all, and control it in combat. And it ran away at 25% health. So... yeah, basically the ability did nothing with the recent pet update.
Quickdraw now reduces the AP cost of swapping weapons down to 2. It used to remove the AP cost to load your ranged weapon on its first shot! ...Which doesn't exist any longer, so yeah, again, it didn't do anything, so this has been fixed.
Fight or Flight now triggers at 1/2 the pet's max HP instead of at 25%, and either gives the pet +10 base movement (removing movement hindering buffs), or +5 base attack damage on its natural weapons until above 1/2 health again.
Kindred Spirit's bonus rephrased to state that it upgrades the Archer's pet from Common to Exotic.
The Woodwaen's "The Joining" base passive has been overhauled. It used to give +25 points to be spent on pet abilities, made the pet magical, granted +6 willpower, and the pet became sapient/intelligent. It now upgrades the pet from either common to exotic, or from exotic to magical, grants +1 intelligence rank, and adds +1 unique slot.
The Woodwaen's Rider's Bond now requires that the pet is a mount to be used as a specific prerequisite.
The Woodwaen's Eye of the Tiger now applies Aim Correction stacks with every hit instead of every full attack, but no longer increases the pet's base damage by +1 per hit. Because that would be a nuisance to keep track of in between each and every attack.
Woodwaen's Defense Order: Catch has been changed from 3 squares to range 6. This is pretty close to the same thing honestly but standardizes stuff better.
Firewall changed from 1 square to range 3.
Null Barrier has been changed from 5 squares high to range 20, the same as low air.
The Sundering has been updated to be range 6 instead of 3 squares, and increased to slow 6 up from slow 3, but it drops off every 1 distance instead of every 1 square now. Stronger at short range, at least.
Ætherbond now upgrades the pet to magical automatically if it wasn't already, and gains +1 intelligence if it was already. This basically gives a bonus for picking kindred spirit and woodwaen together.
The Ballistae's Area Denial has been updated to distance modifiers instead of squares.
The Druid's Lush now counts as difficult terrain for enemies instead of a -2 to their movement. This makes it more consistent for value, especially against faster enemies.
The Alpha's Ætheric Infusion now grants pack members +1 ability slot and +1 pet slot each instead of 25 points.
The Alpha's pack members now begin as common pets, Ætheric Infusion upgrades them to exotic, and titansbane upgrades them to magical. Titansbane now also grants all pack members +2 Ascended Slots immediately upon ascension.
Reworked Seireadan Behemoths for Alphas. They now use the Legendary Monster template, rather than a pet template, and are Titanic in size by default. They already were that size, but the template replaces the previous 1,000 points to be spent on them. It also now explicitly states that, if you actually somehow have enough charges, you can summon more than one, and they persist through phase changes.
The Beguiler's Distortion specialization's Augment Self now allows for Transmutation to apply pet/monster modifiers to the illusion spell, but otherwise works mostly the same as before. It now innately has the same skill as the beguiler's illusion spell, but doesn't include skill mastery.
Universal Augmentation (distortion again), now automatically applies skill mastery.
The Apex Predator's Feral Shift ability has been considerably reworked. Instead of 20 points +2X magical potency in points to spend, it now transforms the druid into a Mythical Monster, retaining his skills but losing his weapons, natural or otherwise. He can allocate additional slots based on his magical potency: 10 for +1 strength slot, 15 for +1 ability slot, 10 for +1 pet slot, 20 for +1 unique slot.
Removed the Apex Predator's upgrade to a magical creature from Ferocious Casting.
Specified that Dire Form can apply to Seireadan Colossus.
The Seireadan Colossus ability of the Apex Predator has been reworked in much the same way as the Behemoth was. The only major difference is that it now also doubles the Magical Potency of the Apex Predator at the time of casting, to allow for twice the bonus slots.
The Paladin's Enforced Penance now triggers off each hit instead of each attack, so will normally deal twice as much damage.
Mage Familiars now count as Non-Combat Pets.
Removed the 5-points-per-level scaling on Combat Familiar, since the magical pet template covers that innately now.
Specified the Rectora Luminary's Holy Bastion ability replaces the healing from the heal spell if used that way.
The Suzerain's Two Hearts summoned Second Heart now uses the Magical Pet template, and also deals double the base damage as it otherwise would.
Empowered Hand now grants any 1X pet or strength slot instead of packages, making it a lot easier to use than before. If the suzerain is ascended, this may also included ascended slots.
One Mind specifies it gives +3 empowerments, not 3 total now. It was worded a bit weirdly.
Divine Reach now causes Together Forever to be active at all times, regardless of distance. It used to only apply in respect to Divine Reach.
Third Heart now specifies that both the second or third hearts can empower one or the other, since it was worded originally that only the third could empower the second as written, but clearly wasn't meant to mean that.
Specified the Rectora's Ascendant ability, Transformative, costs 0AP since it's using charges anyway already.
The Rogue's Consistency skill only applies to skills she has skill mastery in, instead of all skills across the board.
The Reaper's Bound Servitude now allows for controlling Legendary monsters for 3 charges. Bosses are now 4 by default, up from 3.
The Eclipse's Mental Purge ability now specifies it can remove 1 skill entirely per use. Also, it now explicitly specifies it can't be used against player characters, since there are some enemies which can use charge skills in the game now under certain conditions, and the game flat out isn't balanced for such. Stripping a rank 6 ability from someone would take 5 levels and skill mastery to relearn, so really not fair.
The Summoner's innate pet is now a Common pet instead of a 50 point pet.
The Summoner's nanolathe now affects up to 5 slots instead of 50 points.
Inner Workings no longer gives +25 points, but rather +1 pet, strength OR ability slot.
Summon Tool now gives a base rank of 1, +1 per 4 summoner levels instead of 1 per 50 pet points it would have.
Rapid Redistribution affects slots instead of points now.
The elementalist's elemental Core abilities now specify the default magical ranged attack under the monster ability traits rules. This effectively increases their damage from 4 to 5 +1 per 5 levels, and their range from 10 to 20. This is more in line with other scaling weapons so better balanced at higher levels.
Fire Cores now inflict burning off each hit, not each attack suffered, effectively doubling the rate at which they stack burning.
Elemental Overload now also doubles the minion's base damage, making it a bit more useful for expending an extra control on it. Also, it now specifies that it can affect cores that affect the Summoner herself if she uses Elemental Infusion.
Augmented Targeting now doubles the range instead of giving +6. The attacks used to be range 10 but now they're range 20, so not that useful as it was.
Elemental Fusion causes the shadow damage bonus to change to be the same element as whatever damage type it deals to a target so you don't have to figure out two separate damage values every hit. Also, the Fused Core is specified as a single core for purposes of Elemental Overload and Elemental Infusion.
The Golemancer's Heart of Stone now grants +100 base HP instead of doubling HP.
Heart of Iron now gives +10 base HP per strength slot instead of +1HP per pet point after all modifiers. This will tend to be worth more total HP anyway.
Strength of Steel now gives maximum skill rank based on the golem's level, and automatic skill mastery if it's ascended, instead of a flat rank 4 in all situations.
Specified at the top of the Elementalist and Golemancer pages that their abilities turn their minions into elementals or golems. This wasn't clear previously, but the necromancer's Death With Benefits does make such clear so yeah.
Cross Study wording changed to reflect more than one ability can be used on the necromancer herself.
The Lichess' Unliving Tools now also applies to curio.
The Overlord's Swarming now uses the swarm monster template.
Expendable now uses the cost for summoning modified by the overlord's magical potency for damage, instead of the HP of the summon, since swarm units only have 1HP.
Mob Rule, instead of restoring minions to the 1/2 health penalty, instead gives swarms an Æthershield, significantly increasing their potential lifespan.
Dominance has had its control cost removed and also removed the line stating enemies can try to regain control every turn. Given how mind control works now, this is fairly redundant, especially since they have to have less HP than the overlord already.
The Transcendent's Symbiont no longer uses 150 pet points, but rather uses a magical pet's slots with the stats of a mythical monster.
Indestructible form now grants the symbiont immunity to physical damage instead of double the HP. The shift to a mythical creature's stats already boosts its health enough.
Shouldered Burden no longer requires 5AP to activate or deactivate, but can only be used on the Transcendent's turn.
Merge no longer grants all stats and attributes to the transcendent, but does grant all the pet slots which now affect her own base stats.
Elasticity specifically can affect natural weapons as well.
Towering Colossus has had its upper limit removed - it can now be used to just keep growing the size for as much control as you want to throw at it. This can get to pretty silly levels pretty fast. I am okay with this.
Defile specifies it increases the BASE attribute score by +1 if chosen, since this could be modified further by slots. Symbiont and the target are now both rendered prone while defile is in use, but once absorbed, the symbiont can move again.
Base Spell: Summon, no longer starts the target tiny and increases in size with scaling, but rather uses the basic template for pets and uses their size. Scaling now grants +2 to one base attribute of choice.
Base Ritual: Summoning, no longer uses the point buy system, but rather just creates a standard Common Pet.
The Summoner's elemental link specifies it can't benefit a pet which has its resistances reduced by a flaw slot, so if you give a summon a weakness to ice, then it's going to be weak to ice.
Living tools is... weird, and I'm not even sure how to describe what it used to do, but now it makes summons count as a higher tier, so common becomes exotic, and exotic becomes magical.
All monster and pet updates to slots are finished in totality! Yay!
Fixed some minor formatting issues; chapter header issues, chapter numbering, and the side colour code markers for chapters were off on a few pages.

Hey there! Got some news today that my biggest subscriber over on Patreon is going to have to back out as they're changing jobs. So how does this affect the game's progression?

...It probably won't too much, if any, thankfully!

Thanks to all of your support this has gotten me to the point of being able to proooobably be semi-self sustaining in the near future. It's going to be dicey for the next month or two as I try to roll out a proper website and finish the novel (which should've been done like a month ago... I never said I was good at time management), and hopefully the novel sales will help to keep things rolling with your help! Anyone who subscribes at the $10 level will automatically get the novel free of charge, just by default when it's ready so yay for that! The game's still being worked on as well, just not as fast while I try to juggle a bunch of other stuff all at once. Don't worry, play testing is still going, most of the tests have come out really well with minimal changes needed for the most part as well, so things are going good!

I also welcome a new subscriber to SubscribeStar today so we're starting to recoup the losses already!

SubscribeStar's a bit weird though because it requires 5 active subscribers before it actually lets you make a withdrawal, meaning there's enough buffer cash sitting there I haven't been able to use yet. Which is good, because I would've spent it immediately on more artwork had I access to it, so it's actually kind of handy that it's just sitting there as a backup now. Soooo to my subscribers, if you could do me one more favour and ask about if your friends want to help support Saorsa with even $1/monthly, three more people will bump it over the edge, I can get access to what you've paid in already, and that can cover the costs of the initial setting up of the Saorsa website and putting the book up for sale with some early advertising, and should keep everything rolling!

Anyway, big stuff on the way, and by Christmas I'm hoping to have the website out, novel done, and the next major version of the game finished. ...We just discussed how I am with time management though, so we'll see if that happens. Maybe all of it will be, maybe not, I dunno honestly, but that's the hope! So yeah, wanted to let people know what's up!

There's more artwork already commissioned that's on the way but not done yet as well, so there should be more pretty stuff to show off in the next little bit, just not sure how soon yet.

Thanks again for supporting Saorsa's development so far!

Posh. As. Fuck.
Yes, I swore. Deal with it. When you have game art this pretty, you get a pass as well.

The point is, Chessi brings us the new definition of what being posh is and you may now take this moment to go update your dictionaries accordingly.

The first picture of a Frostburn Dragon in the Saorsa setting, these arctic Dragons are able to curl themselves into a defensive position so that they're difficult to harm. The largest of the standard Dragon subspecies, Frostburns stand roughly about six feet tall or so and have a habit of blending in with the snow of their home regions. Of course, just because you're built to handle the frigid weather doesn't mean you don't like to curl up with a nice book and a glass of wine in your private library now and then. Gotta hoard something, and knowledge is delicious.

Crystalsong Dragon Intro

Say hello to the Crystalsong Dragons of Saorsa. Yeah. We do Dragons right, here. None of these generic, boring D&D so-called "Dragons."

In Saorsa, Dragons are genetically all the same species but where their eggs are laid determines what kind of Dragon you get out of them as they soak up the nearby ambient magical energies of the surrounding area. Store your Dragon eggs in one of Saorsa's extensive cave systems lined with crystallized ætheric energy and you get one of these nasty Crystalsong Dragons who are heavily resistant to magical spells and damage.

Note that doesn't mean they can't unleash magical power offensively in return, however. That scythe? Yeah, it deals shadow damage by default and bypasses all physical defenses, stealing a portion of the target's soul to replenish that of its wielder.

Who ever knew the reaper would be such a badass crystal Dragon?

Special thanks to the artist for the amazing piece as well! ARKS Sadinian did some seriously amazing work on this piece!

Coloured artwork!

Overall, I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and it's gotten some good attention so far and interest, which is handy. Thank you again to all of those who donate to Saorsa and help to make it possible for this kind of stuff to be added to the game!

The second picture shows the example in the actual book itself - yes, most of the art is still placeholder stuff for the background, chapter headers and other little graphic representations, but it gives a pretty good idea of what to expect and how this new line of art will look in the game in practice.

So here we have the first in a series of new art stuff that'll be added to the Saorsa book! Basically, each weapon skill, combat style and so on will get its own unique little coloured sketch to go with it to help get a good feel for what you can expect from the weapon.

So yeah, thanks to ARKS Sadinian for this particular batch, and you can expect to see more in about a month or so!

It's art time again!
So our lovely Nogitsune sky pirate is finished! Again, thanks to the wonderful Chessi for the great job!

The details are pretty much perfect, right down to the fox skull and nine swords emblem on her hat.

So how does this relate to gameplay? Well, glad you asked, self. (If you ask questions directly here I'll try to answer them as well! ) In short, two main things in play here.

1: Your stronghold doesn't have to be a castle. It can even be mobile, such as the pirate airship she's hanging off of in the picture. You can totally load it up with cannons, a functioning forge, a library and so on should you so choose!

2: Yes, she does have extra swords attached to her tails. In fact, not only is there a weapon skill specifically devoted to tailblades, but there's also a specific combat style known as the Thousand Blades which can be used to overwhelm opponents while protecting yourself amidst a swarm of tailblades from all angles.

Go on, tell me again why you'd rather play D&D over Saorsa.

No artwork today, buuuut... I just finished up the first full combat playtest so yay! There were some things that needed explaining the first time around so that slowed stuff down a bit, but nothing needed really rebalanced, it seems to run smoothly as soon as people know what to expect, things worked as I'd figured the math out in theory, and nothing broke. Er. Mah. Gerd.

Short version: Giant monster scaled a cliff and the players were fighting the top half of it poking over the ridge. They managed to distract it with an illusion, then managed to evade it's big suction ability that draws enemies near it, and flew around back and found the gem powering it on the back of its neck which was protected by an armoured case. They destroyed the case which triggered a doppleganger based on their greatest fears to spawn to defend the gem and they basically had a fight over trying to grab the gem away from the doppleganger while climbing on the back of this enormous creature thrashing about, trying to swat at them like flies and so on.

Yeah, that's all built into the game's basic rules that you can do that kind of stuff. So yeah, the first combat playtest of the TTRPG Saorsa went well! Yay! D&D, your days are numbered >=3

MAD SCIENCE!!1!!!1!eleven

Why would anyone trust K'yuubi with that much power? You know they're just going to do something like this with it.

In any case, the next piece of Saorsa's artwork is completed, as you can see! Lots of other fun stuff in the works as well going on and two more pictures on the way though uncertain as to the timetables on such. Still, should be more amazing things like this!

This one's going up as public though as a reminder that Saorsa could always use more subscribers! More money means more amazing artwork to help get you into the game and get a proper feel for just what you can expect, even nonsense like this. Yes, this is totally in-character for them. You could even do this in-game if you wanted. Why would you want to? ...Because... it's awesome? I dunno, I'm sure there's a reason for it beyond that, but I'm not sure there needs to be further reason beyond that so whatever.

The point is that I can do almost everything in the game's design and such on my own, playtesting is going well and there's some nice updates on the way, but I can't do the art by myself - even a few dollars a month helps to work towards the expensive bits I can't cover myself. As always, Saorsa will be released free of charge, but the amount of amazing artwork will depend upon how much help I can get along the way, so please consider becoming a subscriber or showing it off to others so they can lend a hand! Thanks a ton for the support those who have chipped in have already given, I still can't believe how close we're getting to moving out of alpha testing and getting into beta testing proper!