Skills Progression

We have been lately working on the airbender class and skills.  As the airbenders aren't ready for preview yet, I'll talk a bit about skills.

Skills in Avatar will be mostly the dame as in D&D 4e.  The same set, the same utility, etc., with a few notable differences.

The Arcana skill hass been replaced with Elementalism.  There is no "magic" per se in Avatar, so Arcana would be useless as a skill.  Instead, we have taken the essence of what Arcana represents, and modified it into something appropriate for Avatar.  The study of Bending and the Elements went through two states, first as the "Bending Arts".  We decided that the name doesn't fit with the guidelines presented by the rest of the skills (single word skill names), so we dropped it in favor of "Elementalism".  As a knowledge skill, it covers understanding of bending, bending culture, the elements, the elemental spirits, etc.  It also covers any knowledge about the Avatars themselves.

Secondly, the Religion skill doesn't exist in Avatar.  D&D "religion" is roughly based on real life Western religious movements, especially the polytheistic ones of ages past.  Avatar instead focuses on Asian-style mysticism to cover the idea of religious movements.  We toyed with the idea of replacing Religion with Mysticism, but we soon realized that in the Avatar world, Mysticism was part of what the Elemelntalism skill espoused: the study of the elements and the spirit world.  Thus, we completely scrapped the whole skill set.  Of course, DMs who wish there to be a Religion-type skill in their campaigns may implement it.

Later, when we publish the booklet describing how to place benders in a standard D&D game, we'll reimplement the Religion and Arcana skills, so that a bender may have them.  This will include its addition to skill lists per class.

We don't yet have the per-class skill lists, though we'll release those with the full class releases.

We're going to (hopefully) have airbenders finished soon, with earthbenders soon to follow.

Powers Progression

We have quite a few powers for Water- and Firebenders.  Old favorites such as water whip and flame kick, plus new ones such as frozen spear and scorching cyclone.

We have a few Airbender powers, but no Earthbender.  Those will come later as the class design is complete.  For now though, we do know that Airbenders will be controller primary, striker secondary, and that Earthbenders will be defender primary, striker/controller secondary.

We'll keep you posted when the new stuff comes out.

Firebender Preview

Work on the Firebender is going  bit more slowly than the Waterbender.  It took a while for us to nail down what the class options should be, and frankly we kinda suppressed the class for a while because of it.  No more, however.

The Firebender will be the strongest DPR in thr group, able to spread good damage around an area or focus in on one target to deal massive damage.  In that spirit, they have a focus effect similar to rangers and warlocks.  They also have a natural resistance to flame.

Waterbender Preview

Here's what we have so far for Waterbender's.  They're a Leader class, with secondaries of Controller and/or Striker.  They're somewhat strongly based on 4e Runepriests, but only in their Jing State feature (which is itself modified).

Progress Report Update

This is the first progress update for the game.  I'll post these monthly, or unless something significant happens.  You can also always find the current progress report to the right.

Player's Handbook [11.9%]
------------------------------
Background Fluff - [30%]
Airbenders - [10%]
Earthbenders - [5%]
Firebenders - [20%]
Waterbenders - [25%]
Skills - [0%]
Feats - [0%]
Equipment - [0]%

The first book is the Player's Handbook (as you can see).  This will allow the use of bender characters in either a stand-alone Avatar game or standard D&D 4e. (Firebenders?! With my paladin?! NO WAI!)  As each class nears completion, I'll begin posting download links for the playtesters.

The Legend Begins...

Welcome to the inaugural post for the Avatar D20 Development Blog!  Although this blog page has been in existence for a while, this is the first post I've made on it.

Let me introduce myself.  Name's Chase, and I've been playing tabletop role-playing games for a long time. Almost a decade.  A few years ago I decided to try writing materials, starting with modeling new player races in D&D 3.5e, as well as adventures (one of which was actually published).  This is something new for myself and my group, however.  An entire game system (sure, based off of an existing game), customized.