Paper Story v1.4

Oh man, if I thought v1.3 was meaty, I had no idea what I was setting myself up for with v1.4.

In addition to a whopping 19 new playable races, this update sees major changes to core mechanics such as Guard and Magic, the brand new Item crafting system, significant changes to Exceptional Techniques, and a lot of quality of life improvements to the formatting.

The big thing obviously is the player races - in previous versions I had some criteria I looked for in player races, which kept a lot of Paper Mario staples - and wider Mario icons - out of the game. In the interests of giving people options, though, I decided to open the floodgates. It's by no means comprehensive, but the world of weird and wacky creatures is a whole lot wider now.

You can read the details right here - if you're the type of person who likes getting the full bundle with each update, a copy of the changelog has been added there too for future reference.

• Added a whole host of new races:
  • Birdos are strange, but brawny and quick-witted, dinosaurs.
  • Bumpties are tough and resilient penguins with a love for the cold.
  • Chucks are paragons of athletics, and excellent team players.
  • Duplighosts are sneaky tricksters with the unique ability of Mimicry.
  • Fuzzies are shifty parasites that infest the dark corners of the kingdom.
  • Jabbies are tiny little guys with a bad attitude.
  • Monty Moles are sturdy, cunning fighters from underground.
  • Ninji are quick-witted and crafty rogues who can turn invisible.
  • Nokis are a laidback aquatic people who rely on their charm and tough shells.
  • Pokeys are curious cacti with fantastic reach.
  • Punies are tiny little guys with big hearts.
  • Rexes are short-tempered dinosaurs with a dragon's attitude.
  • Snifits are self-sufficient loners with strange masks.
  • Stars are wish-granting celestial guardians.
  • Swoopers are cunning bats from the shadows.
  • Thwomps are menacing flying crushers.
  • Whomps are sturdy stone sentinels.
  • Wigglers are tough caterpillars with a dangerous berserk button.
  • X-Nauts are mysterious researchers/soldiers.
• Added subraces:
  • Dank creatures are tougher and less refined denizens of the underground.
  • Hyper creatures are magically supercharged creatures.
  • Mini creatures are smaller and trickier, but weaker than their counterparts.
• Modified existing races:
  • To give more interesting options, Boos now have Boost (Evade), Squeeks have Confuse, Dayzees have Charm and Hotheads have Lingering x2.
  • Bloopers now have a modified Counter, giving it more of an electrifying personality. They're also giving up Fly, but Hover should be enough for them to get about.
  • Bob-Ombs now combine Scaling with Element (Blast), and have Counter. They also have +1 Defense... whoops, I must've missed that.
  • Clefts now have Boost (Defense), replacing Secure.
  • Craws are giving up Sequential; they already have Tool and Strike-Through, so Sequential was giving them a narrow focus that didn't reflect the source material. Adding Hearty x2 to make up for it, giving them more of a focus on tanking hits.
  • Koopa Bros are now officially split into two subtypes; Warriors and Elementalists.
  • Piantas now have Launch and Throw; these Traits are two sides of the same coin, and it makes sense for Piantas to have both. They're giving up Tool for this, though it makes sense for them to rely more on brute strength.
  • Shamans are losing Weaken to focus on Boost instead.
  • Reverted Shy Guy's to have Snatch instead of Weaken (Attack); this was changed to differentiate them from Bandits, but currently they're different enough and Snatch is more appropriate.
  • Radically overhauled and rebranded Spirits to remove the Generalist/Specialist split; the new Sirens are devoted to an element, and their Traits are more flexible to accommodate.
  • Reduced stat penalties for a number of Subraces to make them more appealing; now all subraces are at most a net -1, and mostly +0.
  • Subraces can now take away Tech Defaults where appropriate, giving them more room for customisation.
  • Removed Self and Unwieldy penalties on most Tech Defaults to make most races generally better.
  • Re-examined racial weaknesses and immunities – mostly to make races stronger, but some have received new flavourful weaknesses.
  • Standardised Steady checks on racial weaknesses, now requiring at least a Good result; this keeps them in line with normal statuses while keeping a higher difficulty and Great as the target result.
• Added Item crafting!
• Added lots of examples to help clarify how things work.
• Simplified a number of skills; in particular, dodging now exclusively uses Trickery, and guarding/dodging attacks are simpler and more rewarding.
• Made fleeing from battle harder, requiring at least a Great result no matter how many enemies are present; after all, it's difficult to have a partially successful escape.
• Adjusted Exceptional Results to have a hard and fast rule – if you would ever receive or restore SP for a target, you can't get more SP from an Exceptional Result. Stylish Moves are the one exception.
• Statuses are now completely ignored in any case that you block the damage, and resisted by Steady otherwise.
• Slight tweaks to Stylish Moves, making them more generally usable.
• Slight nerf to Magic; spells now have a minimum cost of 3 FP, or 1 FP with Efficient. Efficient now also modifies each Technique Trait added when improvising Techniques.
• Buffed Charm to provide +1d6 to Persuade for each Status Level.
• Buffed Daze to incur penalties on Steady for each Status Level.
• Reworked Stun to give it a purpose to having a Status Level. Now you have a chance to act and ignore the Stun, but if you're frozen, you can't even defend yourself.
• Improved all existing Contact traits that inflict Stun to vary the number of turns.
• Reworked Fire Drive and Tornado Jumps to be clear single-purpose Techniques, instead of customising existing Techniques.
• Buffed Quick Change to now only cost 4 BP, with an additional effect to dodge enemy attacks.
• Fixed error with Exceptional Techniques not providing enough effective FP.
• Modified Technique Traits:
  • Increased the cost of Auto to 2 FP to prevent shenanigans with Unwieldy.
  • Swapped costs of Charm and Confuse; Charm is stronger so it should cost more. Adjusted Tech Defaults accordingly.
  • Added Secondary defaults to Charm.
  • Rebranded Cure as Dismiss to highlight its versatility; it now uses Trickery for positive Statuses, or Heal for negative Statuses.
  • Tweaked Fear and Stun to align with the changes to Stun Status; they both now cost 2 FP, and the Stun caused by Fear scales less effectively.
  • Buffed Launch to deal more consistent damage, and made the Secondary Check determine launch distance. With this buff, the Spin Smash Badge now also uses Launch instead of Throw.
  • Added Lengthen as a cost-effective way to extend durations without affecting Status Level.
  • Tweaked Secure to cost more, but be more effective; it can now last for multiple turns.
  • Tweaked Snatch to be a single-purchase Technique with variable options based on your Grades of Success.
  • Tweaked Strike-Through to lower damage directly instead of Power, making low-Power Strike-Through weaker but multiple Strike-Throughs stronger.
  • Buffed Split to cost less, making it more accessible.
  • Added Situational as a catch-all for Techniques that can't be used unless certain conditions are met.
• Removed Crystal Star Technique examples; these weren't clean enough fits into the Paper Story system to be useful examples.
• Removed Example Characters; race entries cover how to design a Technique better, and otherwise the sheets are fairly self-explanatory (I hope).
• Tweaked damage in the Partner System to remove the 1 damage safety net; the new Guard/Dodge system should be sufficient for this style of play without any extra handicaps.