KHAN'S SPELLS & FEATS is released!

[Kreeba]

Great work! I will be looking to purchase.

Tell me about Feats. What is your definition of the difference between a ICRPG style tag and your Feat? (I never DnD’ed)

[Chaologic]

I’ve happily purchased this and you’ve done an awesome job here. I’m happy to support a community member, and it’s a real bonus that it’s a good product!

[Khan]

Great question.

FEATS are basically special but non-supernatural abilities of characters.

Mechanically they are similar to SPELLS:
You roll a STAT ATTEMPT to activate a FEAT (which STAT that is depends on the FEAT) just like casting a SPELL and if successful, you pay the associated HP cost. Then you gain a benefit which is either for one time use or for a duration.

Differences from SPELLS:
FEATS don’t have levels. Each FEAT has multiple TIERS instead. A higher TIER costs more to activate but gives a more powerful effect and mastering a FEAT lowers the activation cost. Also activating a FEAT is a free action and you can activate multiple ones at the same time if you have them. This allows you to use them as reactions as well. FEATS are a part of character; they cannot be lost, destroyed, stolen etc. and this will allow you to play entirely LOOTLESS games if you want to.

Here is an example:

A character who has this FEAT can choose to activate any TIER by making a DEX ATTEMPT and by paying 1 to 3 HP (character’s choice). When mastered, the cost of activating any TIER is the lowest cost stated in the description, which is 1 in this case.

Long story short, FEATS give non-casters fun and powerful abilities to play with, which are mechanically similar to SPELLS but also are sufficiently different. This of course doesn’t mean that casters can’t use them.

In general, TAGS are simple properties of characters that are always active like “STEALTHY: You only fail a stealth roll on a nat 1.” FEATS provide more depth than this. ICRPG MAGIC expanded SPELLS into what they are today and I expanded TAGS into FEATS in a similar vein.

This is what Wildstar said:

Khan's Spells & Feats

Feats are explained well, both how they work and how they differ from SPELLS and LOOT. They fall into three categories: Defensive, Offensive and Utility. There are feats that will thematically fit just about any class you could want to use. For those who may have complained about casters being super powerful after Magic came out, these feats will let everyone else shine in equal measure.

Hope this helps!
I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions anyone might have.

[Kreeba]

Great! Are they in levels like Magic? Are they in different categories/schools?

[Khan]

No, feats have no levels. You can pick any one of them any time. There are no restrictions.

They are organized in 3 categories: defensive, offensive and utility. This only for browsing convenience and doesn’t have any mechanical effect.

Just like spells, you master feats by using them and doing cool stuff with them. Once you are awarded 4 mastery points for a feat, that feat is mastered.

[Khan]

I’m putting Wildstar’s whole review of the book from the other thread here for convenience.

Khan's Spells & Feats

This thing’s in the wild as of today. I’ve already picked it up and had a go through. I’d like to share with you my initial thoughts (DO GET IT).

The first thing I noticed was the great job with the formatting. It fits right in with the official Runehammer ICRPG books. Aside from missing Hankerin’s art (there is some art at chapter breaks), this book is pretty much identical to the MAGIC book in flavor, iconography and lay out including some great flavor text. The editing is good as on my early go through I’m not seeing any obvious grammatical or spelling issues.

There are SOOOO many cool new spells and feats (the latter of which are a first for ICRPG). Their descriptions are both concise and clear.

Feats are explained well, both how they work and how they differ from SPELLS and LOOT. They fall into three categories: Defensive, Offensive and Utility. There are feats that will thematically fit just about any class you could want to use. For those who may have complained about casters being super powerful after Magic came out, these feats will let everyone else shine in equal measure.

The book includes a sweet d100 RARE INGREDIENTS table. I can see getting all kinds of use out of this especially for the purposes of Alchemy which has been under-served to date in the system. I realize I could use plenty of other tables from elsewhere for this, but this one is already formatted to ICRPG mechanics saving me time. There are multiple other tables provided for spells and fails.

Khan also provides a custom character sheet for the magic user. Unlike ICRPG character sheets I’ve seen before it, it breaks out the source of stat bonuses in more detail, something I appreciate.

I look forward to spending more time with this book and using it for character creation. I also expect to frequently return to the RARE INGREDIENTS table in adventures that I run.

This is the first time I have bought such a supplement created by a community user. I get so much from the Runehammer community, so I was happy to support Khan’s project. But beyond that, I’m happy with it because he did a great job and clearly invested a lot of love and attention to detail. My hope is that many of this community will pick it up so that we can see its content in use together at the table!

[analogtrill]

@Khan, This looks incredibly slick and I’m thinking about picking it up. A couple questions. What would it take for a physical copy to happen? Are you planning on continuing this line of development with ICRPG, expanding on metamagic and feats or moving in a new direction? If you release more material for metamagic and feats, would it be in a new supplement or would it be an update to the existing one? Thank you : )

[Khan]

Hey, thanks for the kind words!

I’m glad you asked, excellent questions!

Physical book
Depends on sales like I said somewhere above. Why is that you ask?
It will take some work to adjust everything to print-on-demand format (it needs different page dimensions etc.) and you need to pay and wait for proof copies to arrive and so on and this will take maybe more than a month. It is not extremely difficult, but also it is not a simple process and it will take some time. There should be a demand for me to do this, which I don’t see right now (see sales below).

Further development & other projects
I did not consider making adjustments to the book like adding new metamagics and feats. I may update the book when ICRPG 3E arrives, depending on what will be in it. I was planning on doing a sequel to this book though. I can easily write 200 new spells and I started to write these down. Feats is kinda difficult but I’m having some ideas there too. I also have other new stuff for the sequel in mind. But I don’t really see the demand at this time.

Other than a potential Spells & Feats vol II, I am thinking about creating new index cards. This doesn’t depend on sales of the book but it will depend on my drawing skills.

I’m also planning to create a community book for ICRPG where I collect house rules, monsters, adventures, classes, tags and anything and everything the community has to offer. This book will be free and will be updated periodically.

I have other projects too which are related to the hobby but not directly related to ICRPG.

Sales
So, how are the sales going since a lot of things depend on it? To my shock and horror, the book only sold a couple of handful copies and that’s it, even though I did not get a single bad review from anyone who’s bought the book. Maybe they were too nice but I don’t think so.

So there you go. This is how things stand as of now.

If you have any more questions, I’ll be more than happy to answer them.

[Vihar]

Sales
So, how are the sales going since a lot of things depend on it? To my shock and horror, the book only sold a couple of handful copies and that’s it, even though I did not get a single bad review from anyone who’s bought the book. Maybe they were too nice but I don’t think so.

I’ll be honest here. I am interested in your work, but I am not $15.50 interested. I am not saying that it isn’t worth it; I am sure it is a wondrous tome. The price tag is what keeps me personally from clicking buy. But I am a bargain basement shopper when it comes to this hobby so I’ll have to wait on Black Friday sales

[Khan]

What something is worth is different for everyone, so you’ll get no argument from me.

[HotChokletyMilk]

Aw my dude. I literally bought it Twice. And every single one of my players (4) said they already bought it, or were about to get into it. The spells alone are worth the price imho, even tho you can (and should, methinks) create your own spells every now and then, this book understands the very core of how spells work, shape, and change the world. Sometimes a lot of DIY and oportunities can be a wee restraining to some players, and some peeps can feel hella overwhelmed by such freedom. I’d love to see more schools/ types of magic added in the future (as a general thing). We’ve created a couple ourselves just to fit our roleplay needs. Longstoryshort: THIS BOOK IS GOLD. The feat system added a lot of depth to an already very distinct and practical combat system. THE LISTS, OMG MY DUDES; The ingredients are brilliant, i tell you. And you get not 100, but 200 MERCURIAL FAILURE ROLLS. Are ya kidding me? I can’t believe you sold only “a couple of handful copies”. I guess i’ll have to convert more peeps into ICRPG and fill your halls with gold. For it’s more than deserved.
Thanks a lot for your hard work. This is why i love ICRPG so much.
Cheers :).

[Khan]

I wish I was kidding. A couple of people told me that they are waiting for their paychecks to make a purchase but that’s it and they number less than 5.

Creating tables was fun. I intended the RARE INGREDIENTS table to also be an inspiration for alchemists and herbalists.

Coming up with all those MERCURIAL FAILURE effects was more challenging than I anticipated but I’d say it was worth it. Since it happens rarely, rolling a new effect each time is exciting.

I agree that people should create their own spells every now and then but having a nice list of inspiring and functional spells is useful. I think I covered most of the bases.

Thank you for the support and this nice review! I have no idea why you bought the book twice though. Did you gift it to someone?

Cheers to you!

[Vihar]

Don’t get my wrong, my friend, I am sure it’s amazing. I just can’t swing the expense currently. I am jealous of everyone who has it though

[Alex]

Purchased!

I am eager to dive in.

[Khan]

Great!

Let us know what you think after you read it.

[Angelo]

I’ve done my part! Looks good so far.

[Shadymutha]

To my shock and horror, the book only sold a couple of handful copies and that’s it, even though I did not get a single bad review from anyone who’s bought the book.

For comparison, here’s an article with stats on another publishers results from DTRPG and the amount of sales/dinars he’s earned…

OSR: How To Become A Hundredaire On DriveThruRPG

[Alex]

I’ll chime in on the sales part and also note that any work here is being pitched to a strong DIY community. You might have the best expansion of ICRPG in the universe, but that still doesn’t overcome someone’s need to create things himself or herself, which can be inherently more satisfying sometimes. That factor could certainly account for low sales.

[Khan]

I saw that link on discord chat. I concur with the author’s conclusions, at least for now.

[Khan]

Yes, that’s a good point. I knew that before I started writing and that didn’t stop me from writing the book. I think ICRPG needed it and we deserve it.