Classes

The bread and butter of LUMEN games are the classes the players choose from. Classes are quick to build, and quicker for the players to understand. Remember, they only have 3 Attributes. We’ll need a few more things to make the character complete, but we’re already off to a great start.

Before talking about how to make a class, let’s talk about inspiration. LUMEN games are largely inspired by video games, especially those with rosters of unique characters with small sets of powers.

Guardians in Destiny fall into three classes, with a small set of unique Light powers

Overwatch characters all want to shoot people, but have cool sets of powers that make them stand out from one another

Diablo classes customize the sets of powers they bring to the table, so that no two characters have to behave the same way.

We’re going to design classes of characters that have somewhere in the space of 3-5 Powers, unique abilities and talents that they bring to the table. We’ll talk about why it’s 3-5 in a little bit.

Here is what a character in a LUMEN game needs:

♢ 3 Attributes: We’ve already talked about these.

♢ Health: It’s a power fantasy, so death probably isn’t on the line, but we need to track the characters taking a beating.

♢ Resource: Something spendable, and renewable, that the characters will use to activate their Powers

♢ Powers: 3-5 unique Powers that make the class special. These are pretty much going to be combat focused, assuming your making a game about fighting and killing things.

You might include some other features, and we’ll talk about those in a bit. Let’s break down the features of a class, what they represent, and how you might use them in your LUMEN game.

Health

In the LUMEN games I’ve developed, final death is very rarely on the table. Even still, I include Health as a necessary component of LUMEN games. Why?

Well, first of all they are combat games. So if your players are dishing out pain, they will probably take some in return. You need to track that in one way or another.

Second, losing all your Health doesn’t mean you’re dead. Instead, some sort of penalty for “death” occurs, and then the character gets right back into the fight. In LIGHT, Beacons become corrupted with Darkness with each death and resurrection, which messes with how their Attribute rolls work.

Designing Health

LUMEN games are intended to be quick in combat, which means both PCs and enemies are bags of hit points. Most enemies will deal 1-2 Harm when they get the chance, and so LUMEN classes should begin with 5-10 Health, depending on how risky you want to make fights in your game.

That number also connects with your death penalty. You will need to design something to happen when a character runs out of Health. Some ideas:

Change how their Attribute rolls work (more or less dice, new dice rolled with them, etc)

Remove access to Powers

Narrative penalties or reflections of their failure (body horror games are perfect for this)

The lower the starting Health of the classes, the more likely they are to face that penalty.

Resource

The most important part of a class is its Powers, the unique actions they can bring to a fight that make them special. In order to use those Powers, they must spend the Resource.

Energy, fuel, ammo, whatever you want to call it, the characters have a limited amount of it to spend during a fight. The resource is replenishable, and the PCs will recover lots of it throughout the fight (see Combat), so they shouldn’t feel worried about spending it.

Before we talk about Powers, we should discuss what else you can do with the Resource. At minimum, it is there to activate Powers. But, you may decide to allow the Resource to accomplish other things.

For example, in LIGHT, the resource is called Light. Beyond using Powers, Light allowed the characters to resurrect when they died, reroll Attribute rolls, and shrug off huge amounts of damage.

You do not need to include alternative uses for the Resource. But if you do, you will need to ensure you have tools in place for the characters to recover it, otherwise they will be scared to use it ever. Who among us hasn’t hoarded a healing potion throughout the playthrough of a game worried you’d use it at the wrong time? Let’s avoid that.