Greetings berserkers and strategists alike,
Today Javelin 1.5 is being released, it’s a bug-fix release with some minor patches for reported bugs, one or two of which could spoil your adventure mid-game. These seem to be the last (mildly) serious issues so unless something else comes up 1.6 should be a feature release once again – a few new spells and locations are already planned! I’d like to thank everyone who has reported bugs and general feedback recently, in special Greg for his outstanding contributions and follow-ups and Matthew who is just now joining the project in a best-effort QA capacity!
Download 1.5 here https://github.com/tukkek/javelin/releases/download/1.5/javelin.zip
More information on the game https://javelinrl.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/hello-world/
Since the release of 1.3 a week ago Javelin has had over 400 downloads and this site received close to 3000 unique visitors, over 30 comments, almost 20 shares and approximately 200 upvotes on reddit. Thank you all for taking an interest in the game and for all the positive feedback! I’m glad you like the new direction taken with these last releases!
Javelin 
Are martial disciplines from either the Tome of Battle or The Path of War going to make appearances?
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Hi Greg, I don’t have these books so I can’t see if these are under OGL or not. If you have them I’d ask you to take a look at the disclaimer (usually on the first pages or the very last ones sometimes). if there is something like “all the content here except Product Identity is licensed under the OGL” I would be able to use them inside the game, otherwise I can’t do it until the copyright expires (likely to happen a century from now). You’d also have to check out in the Product Identity disclaimer to see if the martial disciplines are considered Product Identity (copyrighted) or not.
It they are OGL and you think they’d fit the game I’d be happy to take them into consideration and try to feature them in Javelin!
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http://pastebin.com/bkSVCKm1
Excert from my PDF copy.
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Win! “the game mechanics of this game product are Open Game Content, as defined in the Open Gaming License”! I’ll take a look at it then! Thanks for the suggestion!
Do you have an excerpt for Tome of Battle as well? Are there different martial disciplines in each book?
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Nevermind, found a PDF copy of the Tome of Battle (Book of Nine Swords) online and opened it just to see the OGL status and it says “no OGL in this book” unfortunately so I can’t use it. Interestingly enough I found the crunchy stuff from Path of War online as well so it’s gonna make my life a lot easier – http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war
Greg, this is amazing! I’ve read the overall rules and this fits perfectly in the game. I probably won’t be using the classes but since the disciplines can be acquired by using feats instead I’m thinking this is the way to go (for now). I already have a pretty good idea of how these can fit into the game (by creating new specialized academies for each discipline) and I’d like to try adding one academy/discipline per feature release, starting with 1.6.
I have only read the basic rules though and I might find that the actual maneuvers and stances are harder to program than I’m thinking here but with any luck at least a few of the disciplines will get into the game soon. A big problem is: when you ultimately reach Martial Training VI it would mean your character has learned 14 maneuvers/stances from that discipline – this is a huge number, especially if you consider there are 11 disciplines, which would mean programming at least over 150 maneuvers/stances into the game. I’m not sure what I should do about that as well, maybe feature only the first training levels at first…
Thanks again, I almost feel each discipline could merit an entire release in itself 🙂 This is truly great! I hope it fits the game! If you know of more d20 stuff like this (which I had never even heard of) be sure to send it my way!
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If you look under Dreamscarred Press, the guys who did the Path of War, you’ll also find their psionics stuff on the PFSRD as well. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed
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Dunno how hard this would be, but you could introduce a specialization system for a creature which would allow it’s HD to count full towards it. Initiator specialization lets each HD count a a full initiator level instead of half(It’s a rule mentioned somewhere in the book that Hd before initaitor levels are counted as 1/2 each when it comes to determining the maximum level maneuver you can learn). You could do the same for things like Arcane, Divine, and Psionics and allow further specialization from there.
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Thanks! I’m not a big fan of psionics, doesn’t feel very fantasy-like to me, except on weird settings like Dark Sun. I’ll definitely put it on my TODO list to read through at some point though! You’re awesome, let me know if you think of anything else!
Do you have any idea how these psionic rules you sent compare to the ones in this site (under the Psionic Rules header)? http://www.d20srd.org/ There seems to be some overlap but I’m not familiar with either one.
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The specialization is an interesting idea. There are a few martial feats that I’ve read today that allow you to make your martial abilities more powerful as well.
I have never played with these rules, I pretty much learned everything about them today. Since I’m not familiar with them I think I’ll just write the official rules first for the initial release and then see what you guys have to say about it (and test for myself how it plays out).
You mention Divine and Arcane specializations as well. These I’m more familiar with. Do you have any ideas in this regard? I guess there are a ton of feats and such that would enable further specialization “by the rules”, from many OGL books.
About the martial disciplines: I made my mind to start out with up to level 4 in each of them (around 80 strikes/stances). After that is done there is still plenty of territory to explore since they go up to level 9! I’ve just excluded Iron Tortoise and Scarlet Throne for now since they assume the user is wearing a shield and Javelin isn’t very equipment-oriented currently. Sounds like a lot of work but many maneuvers are similar – once the base implementation is done it should progress fairly quickly. I do think it will be worth the trouble and fit the game very well, thank you for the awesome feedback, as always!
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As for those Psionic rules there, I believe some of the people working at DSP were some of the guys who created the 3.5 Psionics handbook; PF’s psionics were made in mind of not making similar mistakes to what was left in 3.5’s.
As for the Arcane and Divine specializations, you could make it so while under those specializations they in questions can’t take classes that too large of an HD in exchange for becoming better at their own magic. It’s kind of a dilemma though going about some of this without direct class benefits. Another suggestion I have at some point is the possibility of letting monsters advance their monster HD; though right now it would likely benefit Dragon, Magical Beast, and Undead the most at this point. If not that, maybe you should think about implimenting classes with d10 and d12 hit dice sometime soon.
While I’m not up to scruff as I should be on Psionics, I can probably answer any questions you have relating to Initiator classes and how they function. I’ve been learning a lot lately with my own homebrew class.
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About specializations: I think I’ll have to try to find more traditional ways for now. For example: letting the player pick a few levels of proper classes like Wizard or Cleric. That’s a lot of work though and it’s not on my priority list. This would be easier to make fit into the game currently. Let me know if you have other ideas.
Advancement is surely on my radar. The main problem now is that advancement quickly makes monsters bigger in size and as you see only 5×5 (one square) monster are implemented right now. Supporting larger monsters will be a huge task both on the player front as for the artificial intelligence, not to mention finding someone who wants to create new images for each monster. It shouldn’t happen earlier than the 2.x series at best.
I’ll have at least a few months of work worth with the martial disciplines and other ideas for the next releases, not to mention I need to take a break after releasing 1.3 through 1.5 recently. Psionics then is a long way away, with most everything else I’d like to do. Let you know if I have any psi questions though!
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There seems to be some really overpowered abilities that you can get as a low level team. My level 1 dwarf got lightning breath which deals 12d8 damage and has a range of 100 feet. This really kills the enjoyment of the game for me.
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Hi Jurm, thank you for your feedback! I understand this can be frustrating but consider a few things: expending the XP to get a dragon breath means your low-level character will be weaker on other areas (for example: he could have used the XP to get a new class level for more hit points and other bonuses). This makes the unit overpowered in a lot of cases but in others it makes it very fragile, especially on random encounters of higher difficulty that happen now and again. In my experience taking really powerful upgrades early on is a risky gamble because your level 1 dwarf is very fragile whenever he encounters a tougher opponent.
If you think it is still too overpowered there a few things I can do:
1. Make the breaths cost more XP to acquire as upgrades.
2. Enforce a minimum level before a character can acquire certain breaths.
3. Move all breath upgrades to a new location (Dragon Lair) which require the player to defeat a few dragons in combat before he is allowed access to the breath upgrades.
All of these have pros and cons, let me know what you think.
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Hey, just wanted to pop in and say “awesome job!”. I haven’t played it just yet, but reading up on it and looking at the screenshots, it’s next on my list.
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Thanks Matt! Let me know if the game lives up to your expectations! I think the interface really needs some work but if you can get past that hopefully you will enjoy the gameplay as much as others who seem to like it a lot!
If you ever reply with your thoughts on the actual game let me know how you found out about Javelin as well!
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Still haven’t had a chance to play it, but getting closer (work stuff) :).
How did I find it? I was sifting through reddit looking for “open source games” and I believe I found the link in a subreddit dedicated to just that.
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Putting all of your party members into training freezes the game, and erases your save file when you restart, probably under the assumption that the current lack of an active party is the result of everyone dying.
In addition, the game freezes for no discernible reason upon entering the overworld from time to time, requiring a restart of the program to continue.
Aside from those issues, the game is pretty good.
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Thank you for the positive feedback even though I can imagine these bugs you mention can be pretty infuriating!
Next version is going to bring a lot of enhancements and features – and it will also make it a lot easier to report errors like the ones you’re mentioning here (which I haven’t come across so far). Thank you for your patience and come back in a week or two for the new release – if the errors are not fixed you’ll be able to easily send a lot more information my way to help resolve these issues.
About the training thing: are you training them on an Academy? All of your party in a single academy perhaps?
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Hey Logan, just wanted to let you know I believe both bugs have been fixed. The training issue was identified and fixed (it was training on Academies, not in Towns, I believe) and the “just walking around” was a saving system bug which I hope I have fixed as well.
Right now we’re testing the beta for 1.6, you’re welcome to join the effort as well! Otherwise keep an eye on the site because 1.6 is a big improvement and should be coming out next week if everything works out. More info on the beta: https://github.com/tukkek/javelin/releases/tag/1.6b
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