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Here’s my mechanical spit-balling for the 2019 season. These are merely my opinions and I will gladly respond to any questions regarding clarification on mechanics in regard to my proposed changes as well as concerns that I think warrant additional conversation.

Essence pools: Get rid of it. It was an unneeded addition, and in my opinion, just makes another stat to track. Any skills that rely on Essence pools should be converted into lifepoint, reload, or charge up skills (or a combination thereof)

Resists and Immunities: Any call that you are able to resist or call immunity to you are also interrupted by. The call “No effect” should not be used. Use only either “Resist” or “Immunity”

Remove Lifestyles: They haven’t served their purpose for years and is merely a roleplay consideration and is only a gatekeeper to certain disciplines nowadays.

Racial Essence boons and disciplines: Go back to racial essence boons, drop racial disciplines.
• Avyana: Flee
• Beastman: Resist Disease
• Dwarf: Resist Poison
• Elf: Lesser Channel (10 sec charge to Throw/Swing “3 Magic”)
• Ga’Vin: Regenerate
• Guthrie: Resist Fear
• Human: Income (Gain 5 silver at game on)
• Orc: Lash Fear (10 sec charge to call “Lash Fear”)
• Tsunotaur: Add an additional minute to bleed out
• Valkyn’Vi: Knockout (10 sec charge to swing “1 Sleep”)

Pathways: Each pathway will have 8 skills per tier to choose from. You may only select 4. Possibly drop Magus and Arcanist for balancing purposes. I can certainly give my opinions as to the skill selection for each pathway but I’ll save if anyone is legit curious.

Pathway specialties: If the skills per pathway get an overhaul these will inherently change, but the biggest one that needs change is Improved Modify Spell. This specialty should only work on gamestop area effects, not screams, and there should be a cap on how many you can remove. If essence pools stay I recommend making the above distinction and adding an additional cost of 1 essence per 2 people added beyond the first 3.

Alchemy and Crafting: Remove the very specific components and instead make it Basic, Advanced, and Master components across the board. Convert costs to reflect this. For example: A small basic building will cost 10 simple crafting components. A Medium basic building would require 10 advanced crafting components. A large basic building would require 10 master crafting components. (Take these numbers as merely an example of mechanic).
Potions could either be converted just to stay in step with this mechanic, or keep them as is. Although I would recommend removing the current batch mechanic and just giving everything a brew time similar to how waypoint handles it.

Max level cap: Maximum character level for a PC is 50. Any characters currently over this may convert their levels over 50 as if they retired their character and bank them like earned NPC levels/reward. This is done to remove an avenue of power creep.

Disciplines: Remove all level 2 swap outs.

Shields: I feel the current shield number system is clunky and while it maintains the realism that a shield that’s comfortable for my frame isn’t the best fit for someone else’s, it does so in a way that creates some headache. I feel going back to a static value for shields would be best. Shields also increase your armor category by one step. NoneLightMediumHeavy. If a player were to go beyond their current allowed armor category, they cannot run or swing for more than “0”. Use shield should be rewritten to reduce this effect.
• Light shields: max surface area is less than 2 square feet.
• Medium shields: Max surface area is less than 4 square feet
• Heavy shields: Max surface area of 6 square feet
• *A shield may have any square footage from 1 square foot up to its category maximum*

Holdings, Military, Trade Routes: These things honestly bog down the stuff that staff has to deal with between events. I propose getting rid of them entirely. They’re pretty much money sinks anyways.

Like I said, any questions regarding mechanics changes I’ll gladly delve into. If you agree with an idea, let it be known. If you disagree, then say so and concisely say why. I'm all for cordial discussion. Any blatant inflammatory remarks that add nothing to the discussion will be directed to Angie or Noah.

Again, this is only my opinion. This is not what’s currently on the roster for changes. Any likeness of actual changes is purely coincidental.

Disclaimer: Just my opinions, doesn't mean this is what is being done.

I'm a magic person and I still really like Essence points, especially in the current setting. I'd be into the idea of adjustments but I'm not sure I want to remove it entirely.

Resists and Immunities - I kind of feel like resists should still interrupt and immunity shouldn't, but I don't have a strong opinion on this one way or the other.

Lifestyles I have no issue with dropping. They worked in the previous versions of the setting where resource gathering and survival was an overriding theme, but I agree that they don't seem to fit the current gameplay.

Races - Not nessesarily against the idea of dropping racial disciplines (and implementing some of the existing skills in another way) but I NEVER liked racial boons or skills being tied to race...I'd prefer a racial skill/s pool for people to pick from or if that's too complicated, expanding the essence (racial) boons list and letting people pick one or two at character creation. I realize the reasoning is that no one will play a non-human race without some kind of benefit because of the extra costuming, but is that really true? Even if we end up with more humans than non-humans, in both Phanterra and currently Solaria, humans are more numerous anyway. It still doesn't preclude the idea of racially-restricted things like Magic Items. I kind of like the Waypoint system where race isn't really a thing (and you just build your character) but I don't feel that dropping race entirely as a hard mechanic is feasible for Haven without a huge overhaul of the setting as well as the rules.

Pathways - I think this is a pretty solid idea. I'd like to explore this direction. I'm not 100% sure we want to cut Magus, but it needs to be fixed and the spell list probably should be fixed and pruned.

Pathway Specialties - Not crazy familiar with this skill so no opinion at the moment.

Alchemy and Crafting - No issue against simplifying the system/tags.

Max Level Cap: This is an idea. I've also been trying to come up with alternate advancement ideas that don't jack up the power level too much, but you can still feel like you are working towards something but just implementing a cap seems easier. 50 is pretty high for a cap. It could probably be a lot lower. I also want an overhaul of the retirement system to make it more appealing, with things you can spend banked levels on OTHER than just a new character that aren't overpowered.

Disciplines - I like swap outs. I like stuff that gives character customization and flavor. Could we get away with dropping disciplines altogether while keeping paths and just have skill buys for the rest?

Shields - I had some issues the last couple events with shields, so I agree this needs to be cleaned up.

Holdings, Military, Trade Routes - I see multiple sides on this one. I'm not sure what to do with it.

My biggest two biggest issues with essence points are 1) Do they make the game more fun? Personally I don’t think they do. And 2) What do they accomplish mechanically that the rules didn’t allow in the first place? Why not use Magical Components to fuel spells? (I already have an idea on how to do Magus doing this method)

There was an issue that came up at the third event that brought the idea that even though immune to the damaging effects of a call, that being affected as an interrupt would have brought some balance. Something along the lines of Active skill counts, charged skills, and reloads get interrupted. Immunity still functions while in critical life and being incapacitated.

Racial stuff- I think trimming the disciplines away and making 2 to 3 boons a particular race has access to is a step in the right direction.

The particular specialty allows a magus to change the shape of their area spells. There’s also a line that allows them to select any number of targets within the effect to not take the effect. This has been applied to Scream effects which I believe goes against the spirit of the Specialty.

I chose level 50 for the cap because it followed shortly after the Master specialty is earned.

I think keeping disciplines is what sets this game apart from Waypoint as well as pathways. I’m definitely torn because I enjoy the WP system but at what point does the Haven system cease being Haven and something else entirely. Sorry, just rambling on that last point.

While im not able to do a full post, needed to put this in here:

Shields: I feel the current shield number system is clunky and while it maintains the realism that a shield that’s comfortable for my frame isn’t the best fit for someone else’s, it does so in a way that creates some headache.

The reason the current shield system was enacted has zero to do with realism, and 100% to do with player safety. So the headache is out of necessity.

I feel going back to a static value for shields would be best. Shields also increase your armor category by one step. NoneLightMediumHeavy. If a player were to go beyond their current allowed armor category, they cannot run or swing for more than “0”. Use shield should be rewritten to reduce this effect.
• Light shields: max surface area is less than 2 square feet.
• Medium shields: Max surface area is less than 4 square feet
• Heavy shields: Max surface area of 6 square feet
• *A shield may have any square footage from 1 square foot up to its category maximum*

I know the crafting chart still has three shield types, but they no longer exist. every phys rep now has a number based on total area, so do players. Cant use a phys rep over your number. Prevents turtling and unsafe fighting like CJ trying to use Brian's giant square shield. He just couldn't control it safely and effectively. It was also enacted to shrink shield sizes, and keep the phys rep sizing fair and standardized.

Races - Not nessesarily against the idea of dropping racial disciplines (and implementing some of the existing skills in another way) but I NEVER liked racial boons or skills being tied to race...I'd prefer a racial skill/s pool for people to pick from or if that's too complicated, expanding the essence (racial) boons list and letting people pick one or two at character creation. I realize the reasoning is that no one will play a non-human race without some kind of benefit because of the extra costuming, but is that really true? Even if we end up with more humans than non-humans, in both Phanterra and currently Solaria, humans are more numerous anyway. It still doesn't preclude the idea of racially-restricted things like Magic Items. I kind of like the Waypoint system where race isn't really a thing (and you just build your character) but I don't feel that dropping race entirely as a hard mechanic is feasible for Haven without a huge overhaul of the setting as well as the rules.

Frankly I have always been of the mindset that players of non-human races do it for the fun of it, and there doesn't really need to be anything more than a token benefit for the effort involved. TONS of people play very extravagant non-humans at Waypoint with absolutely no mechanical benefit, and I have been playing a Guthrie for most of a decade (and I grow the physical sideburns specifically for Haven, not use fake ones), and all I have been taking as a benefot that whole time was the +1 LP for non-human racial costuming, no discipline skills at all.

A major part of the benefit of playing a non-human is the same feeling as having awesome armor or very cool costuming. It's the nerd-cred.

Essence points make it so that magic users aren't slinging around essence bolts and channels whenever they feel like it. They're much like mana in other fantasy settings. Also swap out skills allow diversity in character creation