How it’s Dan Da Dan…

This is the fourth in a series of behind the scenes looks into the TTRPG game design and development process, specifically the creation of a brand new character class for an established game.

If you’re just joining the blog and missed part 1 or any previous post (part 2, part 3), you can head back there now. For everyone else, let’s get to it.

If your keeping track of the timeline, you’ll notice it took longer than I allotted for to get back to the blog—about 5 days instead of 2 or 3—but I can see the end of the tunnel now (and as any spiritualist will tell you, we should definitely “walk towards the light!”). Granted, part of the delay was some IRL (in real life) stuff which, while it turned out to be enjoyable, was ultimately unavoidable. Still, 8,000 words of deep game design in 8 days is nothing to sneeze at, if I do say so myself.

To be transparent, I still have two archetypes and a few feature options yet to spec out in full, but they are at least stubbed out. In retrospect, what I hadn’t really accounted for was the “balance-as-you-go” way I went about the feature construction. Now I’m not saying everything is all perfectly executed and super balanced yet. But there is a significant amount of balance analysis that goes into even drafting an entire set of class features, especially when it’s a brand spanking new class that doesn’t have established output expectations at each level.

The other thing I took for granted was all the analytical and templating tools I already have available to me as part of my design process. And even with all that, I probably wasn’t as efficient as maybe I should be by now. A lot of back and forth between open tabs and windows on my desktop: cultural research, image searches, thesaurus and dictionary checks, and mostly rules lookups and cross-references. Spells, maneuvers, feats, features, monsters, other classes, and spreadsheets for everything. It’s a lot, and I realize how insufficient my course outline currently is when it comes to this aspect of putting a class together. 

For projects with a more limited scope like a set of spells or a single custom monster or even an archetype/subclass, so much of the design is already constructed, constrained, and accounted for. These are smaller elements that have an existing ecosystem, action economy, and framework within which they operate. The design decisions are important, fewer and more manageable, and they pale in comparison to the complexity and interconnectedness associated with designing a full class.

Or maybe that’s just me and my particular methodology talking. There is a scientific art to it. Achieving balance isn’t just about number crunching and side by side comparisons. In fact there’s an argument to be made for avoiding absolute balance since that can result in boring design. I do believe in the  importance of balance, or at least in a sense of balance and fairness. The classes should have a relatively predictable output within certain reasonable tolerances at the various tiers and specific boost levels. But I also think a sort of “imperfect symmetry” can be just as important. Where balance serves to avoid one class from shining brighter than all other classes, the imperfect symmetry helps ensure each class does still shine in its own unique way.

But enough waxing poetic about the philosophical intricacies of class design. Back to the class itself. I’ve gone ahead and designed for A5E which means combat maneuvers, expertise dice, and exploration knacks (which for the spiritualist I’ve named Mystic Secrets). I feel at this point I’ve got a bit of an identity crisis since spiritual magic feels like it should slant psychic but also psychic can be psionic and there was a mystic that was psionic back in o5e unearthed arcana. But my spiritualist is magic and rituals and halfcaster bard so not psionic, and yet I have an archetype that summons psionic (ish) weapons…well you can see it’s a bit of a mess. Nothing I shouldn’t be able to overcome, but needs to churn around in the old noggin for a bit.

I’ve mentioned one of the principal inspirations for this class is K-pop Demonhunters (and of course their psionically conjured demonslaying weapons). But as I discovered early on in development, it turns out demon hunting wasn’t a broad enough class concept to hang multiple archetypes off of. Generalizing one level higher, Spiritualist became the base class with demon hunter as just one archetype thereof. Which meant I needed to come up with 2 or 3 other archetypes to include with the class.

Enter another animated show I’ve recently been following: Dan Da Dan. Getting back to mixing the psychic and the psionic, Momo Ayase (one of the main characters) has a strong psychic connection to the spirit/supernatural world in that she can see yokai (a general class of spirit/demon/ghost) and they can see her. But her innate ability extends beyond merely perceiving the supernatural. She can also manifest a telekinetic force which she learns to psionically manipulate into having the shape and utility of a grasping hand.

So what to do with this? If I go down the path of blending magic with psionics in a single class we may be at risk of placing a handy haversack inside a bag of holding and simply implode. For now, I’m putting a pin in trying to come up with a Momo inspired subclass and take elements from other Dan Da Dan characters instead. First, Momo’s grandmother who is sort of a mentor but also a spirit medium and a guardian that stands between the spirit world and the material world. Her talent lies in identifying spiritual threats and ways to diffuse or counteract them. Second, Okarun whose curiosity placed him in the wrong place at the wrong time which resulted in him being possessed by a powerful yokai, (an event that has actually occurred with other characters in the show now as well but spoilers so not gonna go into any more depth there). And that puts us at the requisite 3 archetypes: demon hunter, occult guardian, and possessed one, plus a bonus telekine medium if I can sort that one out.

8/25/25

Update: At this point the class draft is complete (including 3 archetypes) and is ready for a more in depth balancing and editing pass. I’m considering putting something out there for public opinions, but it’s maybe still a little on the raw side of ripe for me. I wouldn’t quite call it half-baked (that was a few days ago), but there’s still a little batter on the toothpick if you catch my meaning.

Of the established half-casters in o5e, Ranger and Paladin, definitely lean towards the “martial half” while the Artificer leans towards the “magic half” of the equation. I kind of wanted the spiritualist to land somewhere in the middle with some archetypes heavier on the martial and others heavier with magic (or as previously mentioned possibly even psionic? jury’s still out on that one, but as it stands I’ll probably stick with magic). The tricky bit of that is where does that leave the Core of Power? At a high level of analysis, both Ranger and Paladin seem to keep magic sort of delegated to a secondary level of importance. This is reflected by the “quick build” suggestions regarding ability scores: Strength then Charisma for Paladin, Dexterity then Wisdom for Ranger. Artificer on the other hand prioritizes Intelligence. For the Spiritualist, I think it would be Dex (or Str) then Cha for some builds, and Cha then Con (or Dex) for other builds. This doesn’t strike me as ideal from a general game design perspective as it generates a duality that opposes the more standard and simple approach of always knowing which type of ability to prioritize, mental vs physical.  Without a clear winner, there’s a danger the class’s core concept can get diluted a bit which could lead to players also diluting their ability score distribution and ultimately suboptimal performance.

It also could mean forcing players to choose their archetype at 1st level when they set up their initial ability scores even though they won’t get archetype features til 3rd level.

Still, there’s lots in the class I’m super happy about. I’m particularly pleased with the Totemic Objects. Feature sets themed around a physical object that the spiritualist imbues with spirit magic. And the Artful Maneuvers feature which is the key to allowing players to choose whether to go down a more martial path or a more magical path. The new Golden Harmony combat tradition is pretty fun too. Although I may review and rework slightly.  Maneuvers are intentionally designed to be nonmagical in nature. Powerful to be sure at the higher degrees, but nonmagical all the same. For this tradition, I tried to keep it as grounded as possible in the physical rather than the magical, but as a reflection of the ritualistic nature of the spiritualist class, some of its maneuvers can produce magic-like (if not outright magical) effects.

Overall I love the potential for this to be a really great class. I feel I need to tighten up and simplify certain areas of my design, but the frame of it seems solidly built. I like the archetypes and feel there’s still room to add more. Besides the telekine medium, I’m noodling a stage magician and a dark practitioner. But later. Later. First I feel I’ve a little window of opportunity, while HUNTR/X is still topping the pop charts, to get a strong class option published out in the wild and available for folks to start playing with.

Which takes us back to the course outline and Lesson 5: Iteration. For a freelance project, I’d typically at this point hand the document over to an editor for feedback and constructive criticism to help me get it in playtest shape. Then the draft might go out for public, or limited public, comment. As this class is more of a personal passion project, I’ll be sharing it with some folks I trust to provide their thoughts. I’d also ideally hire a line editor and a balance consultant.

[8/26/25]

Update: After some initial number crunching and design review, I’ve already encountered some output-by-level issues that need adjustments, as well as some retooling on how the different features interact with one another. There are also places where things are probably wordier than required and some features that just need to be moved up or down to a different level. So far nothing that breaks the underlying framework or alters the overall theme of the class. But I can tell  it will take some work before I’m ready to playtest. Perhaps I’m being too nitpicky at this early stage. And it will definitely be good to get other eyes on it. I’m super impatient though, and that’s good for driving a sense of urgency, but it’s also something that can lead to missteps, so I’ll need to be aware of that.

I’ll block some time out tomorrow to get more analysis and revisions done. In addition to an A5E playtest (maybe 5 levels, maybe 20), I also want to make a playtest packet for o5e (5e14) and 5e24  to post over on Reddit. And for those I will need to strip out and/or sidebar some of the A5E stuff.

Time to get to work.