~or~
Losing My Marbles in Front of the Entire Sirlin Forums
a tragedy in one act
For the sake of discussion, let’s assume a set of interesting principles:
- Codex is Good.
- Despite this, Sirlin somehow forgot to put like a good eight or so critical waifus in this game, to the detriment of all.
- It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single game community in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of Additional Content.
These principles would lead us to perhaps a natural conclusion: More Codex. This is not a revolutionary proposal. We’ve seen at least one intrepid hero attempt to create an entire fan spec out of whole cloth, possibly as a result of some particularly virulent brain parasites in a poorly-cooked discount hamburger.
However! Codex is also the result of a long balancing process, designed to get the 20 individual specs within pretty dang good spitting difference of one another. Attempting to add more specs to this ecosystem seems like trying to spice up a fine dish with a hint of butane: an interesting notion, but one that seems likely to result in Very Many Problems, Very Fast.
So that seems kinda sorta nuts.
But why go so far? If the critical flaw in this diamond is an unbearable dearth of Persephone, then why not just add some Persephone, and whatever I guess those other losers can come too. New heroes! The rules already seem support the idea, what with all the mentions of “your Ninjitsu Hero” as though that might refer to someone other than Setsuki. It seems like the perfect material for a feasible expansion that wouldn’t upend the entire game onto the floor.
Well, okay. One tiny little detail. We are, by my count, missing eight FS-universe characters–nine if you count poor getting a demotion. Meanwhile, there are 20 individual specs in Codex. So uh. There’s that little hurdle of content.
So it was somewhere between my second and my third bottle of bourbon for the afternoon that it hit me: Dual-spec expansion heroes! Who can sub into one of two specs in place of the normal hero, opening up some small but interesting new strategic options for each. That also reduces the pile from 20to a more manageable 10 Or 9, if we don’t worry overmuch about Bashing/Finesse. That sounds almost doable!
Plus, its not like any of our missing heroes cleanly fit into the current archetypes. But they might be interesting bridges between two archetypes.
I’m starting to throw together some concepts/madness to get started. Here are my stated goals:
- Nine or ten new heroes.
- Each hero covers two-specs, with no overlap.
- As little color-pair repetition as mathematically possible.
- Don’t break everything, as best as I can.
A task that’s at least only Sysiphean, rather than full-on Icarus!
So that’s my starting point. I was curious if anyone else wanted to help me pursue this particular white rabbit to our inevitable tragic oblivion.