Greetings, brave heroes!

In Against the Darkmaster, your Vocation determines which Skill Categories you have the most Development Points to spend in. Warriors get more DPs in Combat Skills, Rogues get more in Roguery, and so on. Points can be moved between Categories, but it will cost you, meaning some Skills will be harder to develop for some Vocations. This system gives each Vocation their niche, and reinforces the classic fantasy character stereotypes.

When we started designing Against the Starmaster, we tried using a similar approach at first, but the more we playtested it, the more it felt wrong for the setting.

Space opera heroes tend to be a little more versatile than their fantasy counterparts. Think of the kind of characters that populate the genre: smugglers who are also decent pilots and passable mechanics, and princesses who can shoot as well as they negotiate. Using the same Skill progression system we used for VsD didn’t feel right.

So we came up with a different solution: instead of having the Vocation determine how many DPs you get for each Skill Category, we decided to have it determine how much each Skill costs to develop.

Each Vocation now groups all Skills into one of three Cost Categories:

• Vocational Skills (marked with a V) are integral part of a Vocation’s training, and thus are easy to develop for characters of that Vocation. It costs 1 DP to develop a rank in a Vocational Skill, and you can develop up to 3 ranks per level in Skills marked as such for your Vocation.
• Standard Skills (marked with a S) are either easily accessible to anyone, or tangentially related to a Vocation’s training. It costs 2 DPs to develop a rank in a Standard Skill, and you can develop up to 2 ranks per level in Skills marked as such for your Vocation.
• Restricted Skills (marked with a R) are either completely at odds with a Vocation’s basic training, or extremely difficult to learn for other reasons. It costs 3 DPs to develop a rank in a Restricted Skill, and you can develop up to 1 rank per level in Skills marked as such for your Vocation.

For example, Intimidation is a Vocational Skill for Fighters, as being scary and intimidating is very in line with the archetype this Vocation represents. Persuasion, on the other hand, is a Standard Skill for them. It’s not their specialty, but not out of their reach either. Science, however, is Restricted, as it lies well outside the abilities of your typical Fighter.

This way Vocations still feel distinct, since some Skills will always be cheaper and faster to develop than others depending on what you picked, but buying Skills that are unusual for your Vocation feels less punishing than in VsD.

We’ve been using this system throughout our playtest sessions and we’re happy with the results so far. Characters feel like they belong to their Vocation without feeling constrited by it, and players have been making some interesting choices with their Skills picks.

As always, let us know what you think. You can find us on our Discord server, we’re always happy to answer questions about Against the Starmaster!