A new Developer's Blog? Why yes!

[Mataxes]

We felt that in the end Initiative Penalties for shields needed to stay, largely as a balancing factor. Giving them a Strength minimum (like with weapons) doesn't really work, because characters that would most benefit from shields (because of lower Dex and Physical Defense) tend to have a lower Str as well, and thus wouldn't be able to take advantage of the changes to shields as intended.

Without some kind of balancing "penalty" there is little to prevent the more combat focused characters from picking up the best shield they can find to make them even more of a combat monster. As with armor, you still need to look at the trade-off between defensive capacity and the advantage that gong early in the round can provide.

I think there has been a good balance struck. At this point, we'll have to see what happens when the rules are released into the wild. Sadly playtesting can't find every problem (though it is pretty good at finding the big ones).

[kosmit]

Shame there was no time for open playtests...

[Roth]

Was the "going inside the shield" combat option adjusted/changed or stayed the same?

[Dougansf]

[Panda]

Patterncraft is the replacement for Read and Write Magic. It has an expanded role and even the old Read and Write Magic always did a little more than just what the name indicated.

[Spader]

Thanks for that update!

I totally agree with those rules.

For the shields, I've always thought it should be this way from the beginning.

Did I see right about Claw Shape? It has been put back to it's original base attribute STR+3?

[Panda]

That is correct, Claw Shape is Rank + STR + 3.

[Utsukushi]

[Panda]

Knockdown tests are made against a difficulty equal to the damage above the Wound Threshold (the change here is there is no modifier). They are made when the final damage dealt scores two successes on the Wound Threshold, effectively at Wound Threshold +5. The idea is to reduce total rolling on difficulties which are unlikely to cause Knockdown.

This talent allows a bypass because the final difficulty, adjusted for the rank, is going to be at Difficulty 5 in fairly short order. Thus preserving the overall intent of the changes to Knockdown.

[Abandag]

Before I make any other comments on the talent matrix, I have a question or two.

Is the Scout really intended to have Riposte as a 7th circle Discipline Talent? That just seemed strange to me, especially since they don't even have Melee Weapons as a Discipline Talent. I thought maybe the "7" got placed on the wrong line, since Safe Path is the next talent down and makes much more sense for the Scout to have.

What exactly is meant by "Free?" Are these bonus talents available from 1st circle that may be improved like a normal talent, but aren't technically Discipline Talents in terms of Circle advancement? Or are these more like Half-Magic abilities? Sorry if this is addressed somewhere already. I've just recently learned about 4th edition, and I'm sort of working my way backwards through the information.

Can someone point me to the rule change on armor-defeating hits, or briefly sum it up here? I keep reading that it has been changed, but I don't know what the changes are. Thanks.