Chapter 11: Design

Golden Flame grew out of Pathfinder Second Edition, and it keeps what makes that game work: the twenty-sided die, the three actions of a turn, the four degrees of success, and bonuses that only add together when they come from different places. Those four ideas carry most of the weight of any fight, and none of them needed fixing.

Everything else was questioned one rule at a time. Each change in this book answers a specific problem, was measured against the rest of the system before it was kept, and is recorded with its reason. This chapter collects those reasons.

One goal shapes all of them. Golden Flame is meant to be played at a table, on a virtual tabletop and in videogames, with the same rules in all three. A rule that only works because a person at the table fills in the gaps can't be run by a program, so the rules here try to say exactly what they mean.

Golden Flame renames several of Pathfinder's terms. Each new name tries to say what the thing does at the table.

In Pathfinder, your level is added to almost every number you have. That makes every level feel like progress, and it also means a creature four levels above you is nearly impossible to hit, and a crowd of weaker enemies stops mattering at all.

Golden Flame builds every modifier from two numbers only: your proficiency and your attribute. Proficiency climbs from Untrained −2 through Trained +0 up to Ascendant +10, two points per rank.

The result is a flatter world. A gap of four levels is worth about three points instead of about six, so a stronger foe can still be fought and a band of weaker ones is still a threat. The numbers that matter most on your character are the ones you chose: your training and your attributes.

Some levels don't raise your main number. We decided that's fine: on those levels other proficiencies climb, such as your Deflection, your Defenses and your Perception, and you still gain feats.

In Pathfinder, a character is expected to carry a weapon and armor with rising bonuses, and falling behind on them is falling behind on the game. Golden Flame removes that expectation.

Runes never add to attacks, damage dice or Defenses. An item's quality decides how many runes it can hold, and each rune adds an effect: fire on a blade, cold that armor shrugs off. Your number of damage dice comes from your proficiency with the weapon, not from a rune.

Item bonuses still exist, but they are rare, and because nothing else raises your numbers, a +1 from an item is worth having. A character stripped of their gear is still themselves.

Every character has a Class Proficiency that rises at the same levels for everyone: 1st, 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th and 19th. Two ranks were added to the four Pathfinder uses: Paragon at 11th and Ascendant at 19th.

Class Proficiency does three jobs. It is your class's main number, it sets the highest value your attributes can reach, and it opens your feats. Feats have ranks instead of levels, so at 7th level a fighter and a wizard can both take Master feats.

This replaced dozens of class tables with one ladder. It also made archetypes simple: a character with a second class uses their highest Class Proficiency, and nothing else needs to be tracked. When you gain a feat slot, you can take two feats of the rank below instead, so lower-rank feats stay worth taking.

Every character also gains an archetype feat at every even level, next to their class feat. Learning a second path is part of every character, not a sacrifice.

Not every number on a character climbs at the same pace. In Pathfinder, each class wrote out its own progression for attacks, saves, armor and Perception. Golden Flame replaces those tables with a handful of tracks: a track is the list of levels at which a proficiency gains a rank, and each class picks one track for each of its proficiencies.

The tracks were built with three rules in mind:

• No two grades ever cross. A better track is never behind a worse one at any level.
• The gap stays small. The best and the worst track of a kind are never more than 4 points apart.
• Tracks rise out of step. A track that trails another climbs on the levels where the other one doesn't, so the gap keeps opening and closing instead of growing.

A class's main thing follows its Class Proficiency, and its other thing follows the secondary track, which rises on the levels in between. A warrior's spells and a caster's weapons stay at most 2 points behind, and they tie on half the levels.

At 19th level, a general feat of Ascendant rank lets a character raise a Legendary attack or a Legendary spellcasting to Ascendant, so a gish can end the game with both at the same rank. The Fighter and the Gunslinger also gain a +2 acuity bonus to attacks with their chosen weapon group.

A strong Defense starts at Expert, the way a good save did in Pathfinder. From 5th level on, the best and the worst grade are always exactly 4 points apart. The Excellent track climbs on 5th, 9th, 13th and 17th level, the levels where attacks don't, so a character's best Defense can sit a little ahead of the attacks aimed at it.

Deflection keeps two tempos. The Excellent and Moderate tracks rise together with attacks, on 7th, 11th, 15th and 19th level; the Good and Bad tracks rise on the levels in between. The gap between the best and the worst alternates between 2 and 4 points.

Perception has only three grades, because it decides who moves first and who notices the ambush: nobody should go through a campaign unable to see anything. Even the Bad track reaches Paragon.

Pathfinder has three saving throws, tied to Constitution, Dexterity and Wisdom. That leaves Strength, Intelligence and Charisma with nothing to protect you from, and some attributes end up as places to put the lowest number.

Golden Flame gives each attribute its own Defense. Strength defends with Stability, Dexterity with Evasion, Constitution with Resilience, Intelligence with Clarity, Wisdom with Spirit and Charisma with Resolve. Every attribute also adds to something you roll and sets the size of something you carry, so no attribute exists only to be spent.

Lies follow the same idea. You deceive with Charisma, because deceiving is performance, and you catch a lie with Clarity, because catching one is noticing that two things don't fit.

At Paragon a success on a Defense becomes a critical success, and at Ascendant a critical failure becomes a failure.

Every class spends the same budget on its six Defenses. The grades are worth 4, 3, 2 and 1 points, from Excellent to Bad, and every class spends exactly 15: one Excellent, two Good, two Moderate and one Bad. A class can be great at resisting one thing, but it pays for it with a weakness somewhere else.

Perception and Deflection stay outside the budget. Paying for them from the same 15 points would have forced the same grades on every class, so each class gets its own, decided by its role:

• Deflection. Defense specialists are Excellent, defensive warriors are Good, most martials, casters who fight at the front and gishes are Moderate, and pure casters and the Oracle are Bad.
• Perception. Scouts and hunters are Good, most classes are Moderate, and the rest are Bad.

The table was built in four steps. It started from Pathfinder's own progressions, measured class by class. The three new Defenses, Stability, Clarity and Resolve, were placed by each class's theme, since Pathfinder has no data for them. Then two rules of theme were applied: Spirit is low for purely martial or technological classes, and Resolve is the power of a personality. Finally the table was checked so that no two classes share the same six grades, and so that every Defense is about as strong as the others across all 28 classes.

Your Deflection is what attacks roll against: 10 + an attribute + your proficiency. Armor no longer adds a bonus. It decides which attribute your Deflection uses: Dexterity in light armor or none, Strength in heavy armor, and the higher of the two in medium armor.

A strong character in heavy armor and a quick one in leathers can end up equally hard to hit, each through the body they built. What armor adds beyond that is its traits, its runes, and an armor specialization once your Deflection proficiency reaches Expert. Heavy armor also carries the bulwark trait.

Every class has a Key Skill, the way it has a Key Attribute, and that skill rises on its own with your Class Proficiency all the way to Ascendant. You never spend a skill increase on it, so your increases go to everything else.

Other skills can't rise above your Class Proficiency. That is the same pace Pathfinder already used, with Paragon and Ascendant added in between.

Recalling what you know about something always uses Intelligence, whatever the subject, except where a class names another attribute. And the number of Lores you know is your Intelligence, so a sharp mind is also a well-stocked one.

In Pathfinder, your heritage is a gift you receive at 1st level and mostly forget by 5th. Some special heritages, like the nephilim, also unlocked long lists of extra feats at no cost, so they were simply better than the common ones.

In Golden Flame a common heritage grows at 1st, 5th, 9th, 13th and 17th level, so where you come from keeps mattering. Heritages that open another feat list already have their reward, and don't grow.

Your attack attribute adds to your damage. A finesse weapon swung with Dexterity deals damage with Dexterity too. A ranged Strike adds half the attribute, a thrown weapon adds all of it, and a propulsive weapon adds half your Strength as well.

Weapons you have to reload have the aiming trait, which adds your full Dexterity. Reloading costs actions, and without aiming a crossbow dealt a little over half the damage of a longsword over a turn. With it, the crossbow reaches about three quarters, and a bow still does better for a character who never stops to reload.

Combination and duet weapons join two weapons in one item. Each part's damage die drops one step, and switching between them costs no action. Golden Flame has no rarity, so no weapon is held back for being uncommon.

Spellcasters in Pathfinder have little to do with a third action once a spell has used two. Golden Flame gives them a weapon category of their own: the locus. A wand, an orb, a tome, a lantern or an instrument can make a locus Strike at 30 feet, with a d4 and as many dice as your proficiency allows.

The rule for its power was set before any number was written: a locus should be a good third action, weaker than a weapon and clearly weaker than a cantrip. Each category has its own damage type, trait and critical specialization, so a censer and a mirror don't fight alike. A locus trait never changes the spells you cast through the locus.

Golden Flame keeps spell slots, and changes what you can do with them.

• Every caster heightens freely. Any spell can be cast from any higher slot.
• Prepared casters prepare a list for the day and can cast any spell on that list with any slot, changing the list every day.
• Spontaneous casters can join two slots of one rank into one slot of the rank above, and join those again, up to the highest rank they can cast. They cast about half again as many top-rank spells as a prepared caster.
• How many slots you have depends on how much of your class is magic: four per rank for a full caster, three for casters who also fight, two for those who are mostly warriors.

We also tried replacing slots with a pool of points, and set it aside. It added one more pool to track next to focus points and investiture, and it became tangled when one character learned magic from two classes. The full rules for magic are still being written.

Golden Flame is a working draft, and some of it is still being tested at the table. The creature tables are being rebuilt for the flatter numbers, the magic chapter is being written, and several classes haven't been converted yet. When one of these changes, this chapter will say why.