STILL Not Dead (Terrors & Tactics Updade)

Given how flexible Action Focus is/is becoming, it's a really good thing that you didn't give it the buff keyword to let captains/sidekicks/benedictors pass it on to their teammates.

Just a heads-up: I was futzing around with the second path rules for abjurer and maledictor (abjurer main, maledictor second path) to see how well they integrated, and I noticed that, with Painful Spells's current setup granting every use of a minor spell a level bonus to damage, the abjurer's rebuke and retributive ward traits would get double-level damage each time they triggered: Abjurer's Rebuke + Painful Spells, and Retributive Ward + Painful Spells. I figure that that's a little too painful, especially at higher levels. The best thing would probably be to have Painful Spells specify that it only applies to Minor Spells on your turn.

Edit: Energy Zone still references the focus stat instead of Int/Wit/Pre like Energy Missile. I'm sure that this late in the game it's supposed to, but I just wanted to check.

Just checking in to see how you're doing - it's been a long while since we've really talked. I tried to send a message to you via PM, but it's still sitting in the outbox, so I'm not sure you ever got it. I hope you and your family are okay.

ETA: Perfect timing it appears; LOL!!!

Okay, so its a been awhile since I last posted.

The main reason for the delay was a mix of realizing my section on building ruins just wasn't working and needing to be scrapped and some serious burnout.

However, here's the good news... about a week ago I finally got over it and had my breakthrough and...

IT'S DONE.

The writing, barring editing, is DONE. What's it been... seven years? But I am done with the writing and ready to start the next steps.

A part of that, as a bit of celebration to anyone who's actually been reading about the progress here is I'm posting the draft pdfs here in the open thread as a sort of "Open Beta" (for those who can find it).

If you haven't checked it before; now's your chance. If you want to brutalize it with comments, you can do so here or at the email address now included.

So without further ado... here they are;

Ruins & Realms Player's Guide
Ruins & Realms Game Master's Guide

To the nitty gritty since the last update; in addition to multiple typos, I also removed the "I hit it with my sword!" sidebar in favor of listing each of the default talent lists in the classes themselves in pretty much the following format...

Special: If you do not wish to select talents for your character you can use the following default talents for a simple (but still effective) character; 1 (weapon skill, aggressive offense), 2 (accurate offense), 4 (mobile harrier), 6 (quick strikes), 8 (improved attribute), 10 (armor efficiency), 12 (expanded critical), 14 (durable).

... this makes it easier for new players to find the default lists without having to search for them.

The main new stuff for checking out is in chapter two of the GM's Guide with Ruins and Events now complete. I also managed to squeeze a page into chapter four on "Supernatural Terrain" for things like gravity wells and fonts, temporal and spatial fluxes, energy discharges and the like for all those magical anomalies that can pop up when exploring a high fantasy world.

My next steps are; First, get feedback on the new sections. Second, start working on artwork (there's a LOT to do on that front). Third, find an actual printing shop to get a solid and current cost estimate from in order to create a budget for my Kickstarter (though given its politics I may have to use a different platform when it comes time to actually crowd fund it).

My hope is that I can find someone, if not local, at least within my state rather than the typical approach of having it printed overseas to save a few bucks. If I can't be superversive in my real life, what's the point of making a game about heroes who are so?

Good to hear from you!

Seven years is a long time to spend on a project like this - burnout was frankly inevitable. The fact that you pushed through it to get things done is what counts.

***

Speaking of being done, it's hard to believe that we're finally here.

As to the physical printing, another reason to try and stick with in-state sources is the recent transportation issues - I've been hearing about overseas cargo ships unable to find port, as well as a lack of truck drivers to haul the loads once they do arrive. Combined with what I'm hearing about a supply crunch, I think that relying on overseas shipping is going to be dicey at best.

And as for Kickstarter, I'd just go ahead and try to find a different platform, because once they get wind that you're not part of the woke cult, they're going to drop you like a hot potato - though the free press you'd get out of it might make Kickstarter worthwhile as free advertising, then have a backup source for if/when they give you the boot. And if they let you stay (without trying to make you bend the knee), then you're still good to go.

***
I'm going over the realm-building section now and will have a more proper critique when I get off work.

First pass and the ruins section in the GM's Guide looks good, covering the bases of what might go into the ruin.

I did notice a couple of typos in the GM section:

1) Elemental Presence on page 4 of the GM’s Guide is spelled “Presenc.”

2) Assassination in the notable events table on on page 84 lists 5 twice for the targets, instead of 5 for  one and 6 for the other.

Edit: just for clarification, when the War Wizard on page 170 of the Player's Guide says you can pick Physical Adept boons or three cantrips as a boon, does that mean that picking the three cantrips locks you out of the Physical Adept boons and vice versa? Also, would you be allowed to pick the "three cantrips" option more than once? (I'm thinking no, but I'm just throwing it out there for clarity's sake.)

Finding typos is always welcome. My intention for testing is to have several people run through creating a region and a ruin without my input and see what the results look like. The intention, which you can probably tell from the GM’s Guide as a whole, is to give new GM’s a lot of tools and advice for putting together their own campaigns even if they don’t have someone more experienced to help them.

Because that’s a thing I’ve noticed as I’ve researched a lot of other systems. Their GM advice is almost invariably written with the presumption they already know what they’re doing and just need the bare mechanics normally relegated to GMs (typically monsters and magic items) to be able to throw a campaign together. The 4E DMG was one of the notable exceptions to that trend.

Even worse with a lot of rpgs is they presume you’ve already learned both sides of the screen from D&D and so don’t need to do anything but lay out the mechanics of their system and they’ve done their job.

I want Ruins & Realms to be able to function as both a player and a GM’s first RPG; not just after they’ve played under someone else, but like I did all those years ago with the Red Box… I had to figure out how to GM and recruited my friends who spent an hour on the school bus each way (because this was rural Wisconsin and the routes were “first on, last off”) to be my players. I don’t want them to have to make all the mistakes I had to (they’ll still make mistakes, but hopefully new ones).

Hopefully, the 56 pages devoted to creating a setting will prove useful in that regard.

* * * *

The intent with the War Wizard is that they can select from both Physical Adept boons and “pick three cantrips as a boon” any time they could select a Boon. Not one or the other, but both (and that three cantrips could be chosen multiple times if desired). The ‘or’ in this case was intended to be taken as “any time you can select a boon you can choose a physical adept boon or three cantrips as that boon.”

Basically it’s meant to be identical to the Social Wizard above (cantrips + other category of boons) just worded differently… which I can definitely clean up.

Both are intended to contrast with the Lore Wizard who gets cantrips as part of his Arcanist boons… basically the alternate boons are fluffed as alternate spells… various charms and enchantments for the Social Wizard and physical boosters for the War Wizard.

Side-bar: the reason the Lore Wizard gets the Spellcraft cantrip and the Social Wizard gets the Charm cantrip for free is because there are 19 cantrips, but the boon gives you three per selection… so most people are either stuck with missing one or blowing an entire boon on one cantrip (or having to devote a magic item slot to the missing one). The Lore and Social Wizards are the only ones who can learn all 19 cantrips without waste or items to assist (war wizards and the potent and swift mystics are the only spellcasting classes that can learn multiple physical adept boons and War Wizards also get expert skill with four weapons while the mystics only get basic skill with three… if you want to be a gish, War Wizard is going to be the most effective route).

I’ll see if I can’t make that clearer with a re-write of that. If it’s clear for the Social Wizard, I should probably just duplicate that (though I think I can make both clearer).

That's a consequence of the designers not stepping into a new player's shoes - they're subconsciously ceding that ground of "player's first RPG" to DnD and relegating their own game to something that players switch to after learning DnD, because that's the designer's own experience. In doing so, they're setting themselves up to fail.

***
Even if the GM never picks up a die and rolls for the realms/ruins creation portion, you're giving them ideas to consider for it - even the 4e DMG didn't do that, if I recall correctly. It never listed out tables that the GM could mine for ideas.

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I feel you on that "first on, last off" thing - I lived out in a rural area and was always one of the first to get picked up.

***

RE: War Wizard: I'd probably go with the Social Wizard version, with an addendum confirming that you can pick Cantrips multiple times, just for clarity.

I kind of figured that the alternate boon selections would be refluffed as spells - War Wizard especially works well with it. If, for example, you're willing to blow a boon on Iron Body, you never have to pick the Defensive Wards armor option. And yeah, War Wizard makes the most natural gish, given that Mystics only have basic weapons and don't even really use runic weapons, and the Militant Theurge might get two entire weapon categories instead of four weapons, but most players are going to pick a weapon or two and stick with it, and the only way that Theurges get physical adept boons is via Church Militant.

Exactly on the boons/weapons observations. Another element that my testing has shown me is that players want there to be more mechanical differences between things.

It makes strict balancing harder, but having the potent mystic be more akin to Samson whose primary weapons were the jawbones of an ass or his bare hands (i.e. improvised weapons or unarmed) while the militant theurge gets more weapons but only the religious boons (so only one physical adept boon) while the war wizard gets all the boons (with the tacit idea that they are combat spells rather than physical conditioning) means there’s a few more differences than just what their spellcasting attribute is.

Of course if you want a more physical type you can also take the Fighter class and pair it with the Arcanist or Religious background. You’d be limited to utility spells for magic by default and even the second path talent for a spellcaster is fairly limited (you only get one implement, can pick one stance/infliction with “extra attack” and three other spellcasting talents using “cross-talent”… but only one of those per tier).

So among the “paladins” you’ve probably got Aristocrat/Military Fighters (who gain one or two spells from Cross-Training or Exotic Tutor), Religious Fighters, Military Theurges and Religious Theurges in a continuum of martial/divine power focus.

The need for each class to feel really different is ultimately why I just made one Fighter class; the variation between strong, swift and berserker isn’t nothing, but it’s very close and the paths make so much more difference to ability.

One of the reasons “Fighters can’t have nice things” is a trope about D&D is because they kept splitting stuff off from it. The original “Fighting Man” covered everything non-magical… until someone split off the Thief from it (losing their skill focus).

Then AD&D cleaved the Ranger, Paladin and Monk concepts off the Fighter. Then Unearthed Arcana split off the Barbarian and the Cavalier (and later merged into the Paladin rather than returning to the Fighter) and Oriental Adventurers made the Samurai it’s own class.

So my Fighter is basically a reset to OD&D… the thief/rogue, ranger, barbarian, cavalier/paladin, samurai and monk are all under its umbrella as options for it, just as spells provide options for the magic users.

Update to the Update;

The editing fixes you suggested have been made. I also went through and cleaned up all the page references (no more p. XXX).

Here also is a blank character sheet for printing;
Ruins & Realms Character Sheet

The war wizard looks good and clear, and the only change that the social wizard needs is to change "add their PRE" to "add your PRE" to maintain the same grammatical tense.

The character sheet looks good as well - it's pretty much the same as always, but it's already at a state where there's not much you can do to improve it for general use.

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I hadn't figured Samson into the idea of the Mystic, but it fits, especially with the Potent Spirit's free Improvisation Expert talent. The theurge getting a couple of weapon categories makes sense, since polytheistic gods, especially in D&D, tend to be associated with certain weapons, and for the purposes of gameplay, it's a good idea for the associated weapon to not be too specific. And the war wizard only training in three basic and four expert weapons represents their having limited time to fully train in certain weapons because of their arcane studies, because unlike theurges and mystics, wizards have to work for their magic.

***
RE:the origins of "fighters can't have nice things," I agree. The fighter's been hollowed out over the course of several editions, when the other martial classes probably should have been variants of the fighter, subclasses in 5e parlance. You've got the sneaky fighter, the berserker fighter, the bow/twin swords/beast companion fighter, the bare-handed fighter, the fighter with a code, and plain vanilla fighter. The warlord could have worked as a replacement for the generic fighter, but 5e pretty much killed that one dead.

Looking back, in 4e, Fighter could have been the power source, with the Warlord, Rogue/Thief, Ranger/Hunter/Scout, Monk, Barbarian/Berserker, and Knight/Paladin/Cavalier as classes. Funnily enough, the knight could work as a martial paladin, kind of like how the slayer could serve just fine as a barbarian.

I've also sometimes wondered how it would have looked if DnD had merged the mage classes back into the wizard, going back to the ODnD fighter and magic-user as power sources, with specific archetypes like rogue, druid, or swordmage as classes within that power source.

Not that I disagree with how you handled the fighter, of course. You broke each fighter archetype down to its basic elements, showing just how similar they really were in the end.

Honestly, I think the biggest problem with the Magic User (and later spellcasters in general) is that they gave them the ability to be too many things at once.

As noted with the Fighter, the ranger, barbarian, thief, etc. work as specialized fighters; but for spellcasters they mostly specialized every day when they prepared their spells; only a couple spellcasters actually had to build towards specific themes; the 3.5e (and to a lesser extent 5e) Warlock due to very limited slots and the 3.5e and 5e Bard (because all their spells were limited to a fairly tight theme). The Sorcerer was the only other one with limited spells known, but had enough options due to the ever expanding wizard lists that if you picked carefully you could cover just about any situation).

The one thing 4E did really well (with the exception of the wizard class which they dumped EVERY arcane subclass and it’s options into come Essentials) was silo the classes into specific roles so they couldn’t do everything just by waiting a day to reassign all their spells/abilities. Invokers got one set of spells, Paladins got another.

In a way, I did kinda end up where a lot of the early attempts at 4E retroclones wanted to do (i.e. save space by building characters as power source chunk + role chunk = class) and what you suggested about merging classes into essentially a power source.

I mean, with the exception of the Mastermind, all the classes now basically are the power sources; Fighter is Martial, Mystic is Primal, Theurge is Divine, Wizard is Arcane, Gadgeteer is a particular expression of Arcane that, like Mastermind, was unique enough to spin off. Then the paths are the roles flavored to warrior or spellcaster.

Honestly, it does sometimes make me wish I’d loaded more into the class part and less into the path part for the spellcasters; just so a Mystic Interdictor and a Wizard Interdictor didn’t feel quite so alike.

Far too late now, but I mean something like one of the classes (probably Mystic) could only select the casting talents, while another of the classes (I’d lean Gadgeteer) could only select Inflictions, and the other two had some sort of ratio (say equal number of casting and infliction talents). Something on that magnitude to really make it feel like you were making a major choice going with one over the other.

That said, I am glad there’s as much flexibility as their is for people to make the characters they want… I just wonder sometimes if I had reached the conclusion about making the classes/power sources more distinct early on if I couldn’t found something that would still give full flexibility for talents, but made the differences more notable.

Here I am waxing nostalgic over what my design looked like seven years ago… but I think that’s part of realizing/accepting that the primary design is now DONE. I could tinker and second guess forever, but this is where all the playtesting and feedback led me and I need to break myself of the “just one more thing” that’s been with me this whole time.

I’ll get there… but it’s barely been 48 hours now since I actually said “done” so I think my heart hasn’t quite caught up to my head yet.

That said, I did actually start to look up printers in my area, though the search engines really want you to shop Asian even when you ask for local and a bunch may not even actually do books. I’ll figure it out, but that’s my next step.

Yeah, casters definitely needed limits - the whole "let me completely reset what kind of caster I am by reading a spellbook in the morning" nonsense was always a load of crap to me. I don't care if it was inspired by Jack Vance, it's still counterintuitive and inelegant. It makes the magic seem more like a series of gadgets than proper spells that a wizard knows.

***
Making everything a wizard subclass in Essentials was also stupid - the bladesinger could have been a reworked Swordmage like your old Essentials option, the Witch could have been a primal subclass or a warlock subclass, and the sha'ir (or however you spell it) wasn't really necessary - just release a series of elemental attack spells to complete what the wizard didn't have. As for the necromancer, I've seen a few pre-Essentials shadow power source classes, and one of them was always a necromancer.

***
While you could have merged gadgeteer back into the wizard like you originally had it, that would have cost you the gadgeteer's various Focus options. While part of me wonders what a mage class built in the vein of your fighter's combat style and combat focus options grid would look like, differentiating the classes/power origins is essential to your setting. If players are using another setting that has one kind of magic, then they'd probably be better off picking which spellcaster class best suits that setting's magic system

***
Frankly, I think that restricting talents like you suggested for the mystic and gadgeteer would only annoy certain players who want more freedom to build their concept. It's up to the players to make their classes more distinct. I could see you putting the idea forward in an article on character builds, with the Mystic having casting talents and the Gadgeteer using inflictions, but anything more than that is going to unnecessarily restrict certain players.

***
You've put seven years of your life into this - of course it's going to be hard to let go. You've been over this thing thoroughly enough that you could have gotten two editions' worth of games out of it. This thing's grown into something huge. To finally be able to say that you're done, and to really feel it, is going to take time.

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Worst-case scenario you could just go the PDF-only route, but that's if nobody wants to print this beast, and I don't see that happening.

Yeah, I wanna get it printed. I just really want a local company to do it if at all possible. Shipping these days, supporting local businesses and just being able to talk face to face with a real person when something goes wrong are all reasons for that.

I’m hoping I can find something in Fort Wayne, but if not Indianapolis or Dayton, OH or maybe Columbus would be tolerable… Chicago is kinda my last choice. I wonder who Kevin Sembedia (Palladium Books) is using these days? He’s just up in Detroit.

I’ll figure it out.

I found half a dozen more typos going through the opening section of the GM’s Guide and while I muddle through the printer stuff I think it’s time I also start in on more art for this beast. That was my go to for a lot of my dry spells… and you don’t get much dryer than “done.”

I think for that I’m going to start with the existing art and just really do a clean up pass on it. Arinine with her pink halo-y magic in the class section has always been rough; the Beastman opening pick needs to be redone since my kobolds are now expressly cobalt blue color… etc., etc.

Like I said, PDF-only would be an absolute worst-case scenario. Good luck finding a good printer shop.

***

I'm looking forward to the art update.

Honorbound wrote:

Yeah, casters definitely needed limits - the whole "let me completely reset what kind of caster I am by reading a spellbook in the morning" nonsense was always a load of crap to me. I don't care if it was inspired by Jack Vance, it's still counterintuitive and inelegant. It makes the magic seem more like a series of gadgets than proper spells that a wizard knows.

Ironically 4e has as Book Vancian as default flavor read page 54 of the PHB, Vancian + at-wills (the number of spells is like Jack Vances Novels and no one cannot remember a spell twice ) and encounter spells can be visualized as looking a less complex spell back up in a book between encounters.

I always disliked amnesiac casters but the 4e culture of reflavor however you like managed to fix it.

Garthanos wrote:

Ironically 4e has as Book Vancian as default flavor read page 54 of the PHB, Vancian + at-wills (the number of spells is like Jack Vances Novels and no one cannot remember a spell twice ) and encounter spells can be visualized as looking a less complex spell back up in a book between encounters.

I still wasn't a fan. Ironically, I liked how certain Essentials classes like the Elementalist did it best, and Chris's old Essentials Options article really brought out the potential of that design dynamic.

Chris, just a heads up: on page 248, the Cantrips (Astral Only) boon says that you can pick three cantrips each time you pick it, but it lacks the "You may select this boon multiple times." text that the Primal Spirits (Primal Only) boon has on the next page.

Honorbound wrote:

Chris, just a heads up: on page 248, the Cantrips (Astral Only) boon says that you can pick three cantrips each time you pick it, but it lacks the "You may select this boon multiple times." text that the Primal Spirits (Primal Only) boon has on the next page.

My thinking was probably that "each time you select this" would be the key that it could be selected multiple times (I haven't significantly touched the backgrounds in quite some time so I'm not even 100% on what I was thinking there).

I can certainly reword it to make that clearer though.

Thanks for the catch. I should have a new upload with some additional art (and all sorts of corrected typos) late this coming week. My current priorities are background images and the ones for the opponents section as ones for other sections can potentially be filled by outside material more easily if crowdfunding goes well.

I doesn't help my quest to find a printer that I'm moving into my busy season for my day job. Kinda hard to hold conversations when you're stopping every two minutes to swap out a glass to meet a deadline; but this too shall pass and I will find someone to do the job. If it takes too long it just means I'll have more of my own art complete and less I'll need to subcontract our for.

I figured it would be better to have its text match that of the primal spirits version, to remove any possible wiggle room for somebody to say that you couldn't select it more than once.

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I'm looking forward to the art update. Just don't go crazy trying to do too much this holiday season.

So, not much of an art update, but I've been getting some feedback from someone who knows layout so while mechanics aren't really changing, how its getting organized is going through some revisions that has, in turn inspired a few tweaks.

The first one is purely cosmetic; I'm switching fonts from Mentor Sans to a serif font called Apolline which is closer to Mentor (non-sans) but slightly lighter in weight, on the advice that serifs will make it easier to read and the lighter weight will keep the text blocks from being less heavy (he specifically likened it as... "4E had lots of fluff but good mechanics. 5e killed the mechanics and added even more fluff. Your game is like freeze-dried 4E; almost all mechanics, but also very little space for your eyes to rest.").

We'll see how that looks when its done.

The next change isn't mechanical either, but is a name change for a long-standing favorite; after consideration the Gadgeteer is being renamed the Mechanist. This puts the focus more on engineering and technology and less on "gadgets."

But the main reason for this change is that it drops it behind the Mastermind in the class list so that the order becomes Fighter (martial), Mastermind (martial), Mechanist (spells), Mystic (spells), Theurge (spells), Wizard (spells). This allows for a layout where ALL the martial class material (paths, clever tricks, talents) can be places right after these two classes and then all the spellcaster class material (paths, aspects, dweomers, minor spells, talents) can go right after the spellcasting classes.

The actual meaningful mechanical changes are two-fold. First, I merged the Disabler and Sharpshooter... there was all of 1 flurry/volley different in their list and I reworked the differing features into a set of two options akin to the Defender's Heavy Armor or Harrier Option; in this case Close Combat or Sharpshooter and added the ability to select the alternate range category as a talent (the 'targets dodge' of the Ranged and 'inflict effect on free strike' are already available as talents).

The idea here is that you can become an all purpose disabler without needing to "multi-class" so you don't have to be locked into only the controller role where only some of your flurries/volleys applied at some ranges. Instead you can pick a completely different role if you desire.

The second change that sorta spread from that was that , in trying to line up some of suggestions for improved organization, I had the inspiration to do a little something with the Mastermind. Specifically, I cut the Captain abilities (Clever Tricks, Inspiring Words, Team Player) from the class and instead the Mastermind now chooses a FighterCombat Path from the shorter list of Captain (so all the removed abilities), Disabler (a controller-based mastermind) or Striker (a slayer-based mastermind who can use their main action for Create Opening and their minor action to attack themselves).

Brigand got left out because its Clever Tricks don't make it much of a Striker if it still needs its main action to attack with. Ditto the Ravager. I also couldn't justify either the Defender or Sentinel as both relied largely on off-turn actions (so grant attack, grant minor, still use lockdown). But being able to cover 3/4 of the roles with the Mastermind class now I think will add some flexibility to it and allow for a few more concepts of PCs who help their party indirectly.

The Mastermind also gained the following;

Disabling Taunts (special): If you choose the Sharpshooter option of the Disabler path, you can use Disabling Strike even when not armed with a ranged weapon. Doing so has a Range 10 and the Piercing Strike option deals psychic damage.

If you have the Dread Threat or Goading Taunt talents, you may apply the Disabler’s Sweeping Attack action to them.

This will allow a Disabler Mastermind to fulfill the Controller role without doing anything more than screaming out distractions at the enemy.

So that's the current news from the front.

The mechanist change is a good idea - not only does it improve the formatting as you stated, it brings a sense of gravitas to the glass that gadgeteer didn't.

***
I remember us discussing the disabler/sharpshooter merge a while back - I forget why you decided against it, but I've been thinking for a while that it could have gone either way. I approve of the change and look forward to seeing the actual text.

***
The new Mastermind looks interesting. It basically turns the Mastermind into a second path option for whichever PC the Mastermind chooses. The only thing I'd consider would be to give the Striker Mastermind a version of Disabling Taunts, so that even non-weapon Masterminds like the classic princess/sidekick build can be Strikers, but that may be a bridge too far. It reminds me of 4e/5e's Vicious Mockery killing opponents with taunts.

Would the new Masterminds be able to let an ally use their minor action on the Mastermind's turn like the old Mastermind could, or would that be exclusive to the captain mastermind?

Looking at the text of Flurry of Blows and Disabling Volley, there's really not much difference - you could expand Flurry of Blows's targets to be Melee 1 or Ranged Weapon and have the shift apply only to melee uses of the action. I'd probably call it Disabling Flurry. You could then put Sweeping Strikes and Fistful of Arrows under that switch mechanism you discussed.

After consideration I replaced Disabling Taunts with;

Demoralizing Words: You gain skill with an innate weapon with these properties; d6 psychic damage die, offhand (no hands to use), melee 1, range 10 and targets Will. It uses INT, PRE or WIT for attack and damage checks, but does not gain the skill bonus to attack checks. You may not apply stances to this weapon.

This is available to all Masterminds, and though not super-useful on its own, it will interact with the Striker's minor action attack (needs offhand) and the Sharpshooter's ranged options (needs a ranged weapon). If someone wants to cross-train they can also pick up the psychomancy casting talents to improve it. Melee 1 is meant to allow it to be used safely even if you're demoralizing an enemy up close and personal, but it also allows it to be used with the Close Combat Disabler options (I suspect that obscene gestures and other offenses may be occurring if used as an AoE melee demoralize).

Also of note; unless it states "lethal psychic" damage all psychic damage is non-lethal... so that won't kill a foe, but may make them curl up in a ball and cry.

A friend of mine calls it "Self-Esteem Damage."

Right now the Create Minor Opening is a core part of the Mastermind class since the core of the class is that they can, in theory, give their entire turn (main and minor) to someone else if they want to. But the thing is that both Create Opening and Create Minor Opening are very party dependent. They can only add more of what the party already has. The role selection now is what they're doing when they're not giving actions to others. Given the elements they give up relative to the Fighter class, I don't think having it baked in is a bad idea.

Oh, and here's the revised Disabler;

Combat Style: Select one of the following styles. As a talent selection you may use both melee and ranged weapons with Disabling Strike and Sweeping Strike;
   ● Close Combat: Your Disabling Strikes and Sweeping Attack can be used with melee weapons. You can use movement between affecting targets with Disabling Strike, but cannot take any other action without ending the action. At level 5 you can shift the first 3 paces used between affecting targets with Disabling Strike and the first 6 paces at level 10. In addition, when you hit with a Free Strike, you can add the effect of a Strike that you know to the hit effect.
   ● Sharpshooter: Your Disabling Strikes and Sweeping Attack can be used with ranged weapons. In addition, your Ranged Weapon Attacks can target Dodge instead of Armor. Starting at level 5, your ranged attacks no longer provoke Free Strikes and, at level 10, when using Sweeping Strikes, you can target an additional creature adjacent to the Wall area.

Disabling Strikes (minor): Weapon Range (2/3/4 (by tier) creatures) / target suffers the effect of a Strike you know. At level 15 the targets suffers the effects of two Strikes you know (these can be the same Strike if the effects would stack).

Strikes Known: Select two strikes at level 1 and one at levels 3, 8 and 13.
● Blinding: Shadowed (1r).
● Blunting: Weakened (1r).
● Confusing: Confused (1r).
● Dazing: Dazed (1r).
● Distracting: Flat-footed (1r).
● Grappling: Grabbed (TN 18+Focus).
● Piercing: Dealt Focus damage.
● Rattling (fear): Shaken (1r).
● Hammering: Push Focus paces.
● Herding: Shift target ½ Focus paces.
● Staggering: Slowed (1r).
● Sundering: Vulnerable (1r).
● Tethering: Tethered to you (1r).
● Unbalancing: Knocked prone.

Sweeping Attack (minor): Your next Weapon Attack targets a Wall 4+2 per focus spent and, if it was a melee attack, you shift to an open space adjacent to the last square of the wall after the attack. Special: You can use this as a free action for 1 focus.

Okay, Demoralizing Words looks good - good idea not letting people use stances on it.

I get why you didn't give it more classes - You could give Ravager and Brigand Masterminds a version of Team Player that's exclusive to Ravager and Brigand benefits, but that's probably more work than it's worth. And the guardian role as a whole runs counter to the idea of a Mastermind. A mastermind is someone who gives orders or manipulates the situation, whereas a traditional guardian steps into the breach to defend the people around them. A Mastermind could pick up a guardian second path, but it's not inherent to the concept. That and your point about the off-turn actions is a solid one.

All in all, this is going to make the Mastermind much more flexible - they can contribute a role of their own in addition to doubling up already-present roles, and that role doesn't have to be an enabler, either.

Random aside: how many Masterminds have you seen take a caster second path?

The Disabler looks good - Close Combat and Sharpshooter both cover the original classes' schticks, and Disabling Strikes is solid, as are the Strikes Known. I'd probably call the overall feature Disabling Style, but that's just me. I do notice that you went with the Disabler's version of the AoE instead of the Sharpshooter's - I get why you did it, given the needs of melee Disablers, but it does reintroduce that glitch you mentioned a while back, where a Sharpshooter couldn't target two guards who were more than a certain distance apart - I know that they could spend focus to make up the difference, but it's still something to consider.