I am always disappointed in roleplaying games that were clearly not well tested. Most developers use playtesters that they know, people that will let little things slide, and play in the spirit the authors intended. This leads to either monstrous piles of errata (see D&D) or monstrous piles of houserules being required to actually play the game.
I am very pleased with Novus, as it has wisely chosen to open its testing phase up to anyone, including people that will bend and twist every rule to its breaking point to see where the flaws are. People like me. If you will allow me, I will make every possible effort to break your game and mercilessly critique its writing and clarity, so that, in the end, this game is as good as it can possibly be.
Let me begin with things I've said elsewhere:
1) All the casters should probably be a single class with some options regarding skill packages and which school of magic/casting stat they use. I am pretty sure this was being worked on, last I heard.
2) The quadruple damage boon blows the death save boon out of the water in every conceivable way.
Now, new things I've noticed since last time:
3) What does Willpower actually do? I did a search through the .pdf and found its uses extremely limited. It is the Mystic's casting stat. It is an option to resist Influence/Trickery, but you could always use the seemingly superior Intelligence for that. It is used to cast a spell while taking damage, but I don't believe that there is any way to actually harm a spellcaster while they are actually casting a spell (I see no "ready" or "delay" actions). A few spell effects and monster powers call for often arbitrary seeming Will Saves.
I think you might be best off dumping this stat, because its benefits for anyone not a Mystic are so minimal. You could easily fold in most of its function into other stats--Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom are prime candidates. It honestly feels like Willpower was just included for symmetry between mental and physical stats, and you needed a fourth because you (I think wisely) separated out Dexterity's customary effect into two stats to prevent it from being too powerful. I would say, don't worry about the symmetry and either get rid of Willpower, or I don't know, at least tie it to a skill or two.
4) Armor choice is all illusion in Novus. There is no reason to wear any suit of armor after Reinforced Leather. The problem comes because Armor reduces incoming damage 1 for 1, but for every point of armor you gain after Reinforced Leather, you suffer a -1 penalty to your speed bonus (which means your Defense is lowered). Remember that when you hit, you add the net amount by which you hit to your damage, so what's happening here is that you're just reducing the damage caused by your reduced Defense (not to mention taking more hits in general and giving up more Boons to the enemy).
For armor to be worthwhile after Reinforced, it's AR has to scale faster than it's Penalty. Metal Bracers and Metal Greaves are at least a trade-off in this regard, and Metal Helmets don't penalize your Defense, but these are obviously not worth the extra Character Points to get Heavy Armor Training.
5) The Firebow's double scaling effect is vastly too cheap for it's effect. Scaling is where the majority of your damage will come from. Not to mention the fact that dealing +4 damage costs 1200g, while essentially doubling the scaling of your attacks costs 1000g. Think about that. As soon as you hit by 4+, you're dealing equal damage to someone that spent more gold to get their bonus. If this sort of upgrade is even available at all, it needs to be incredibly more expensive to equal how valuable it is.
6) I don't think the non-magic classes are even close to balanced. Is this a concern? I think it is, but if you don't care about having balanced classes, ignore this comment. The Fighter is generally a better choice, CPwise, than any other option.
Compare the Fighter to the Archer: the Archer trades out two skills (First Aid and Riding), Medium Armor proficiency, and Shield Training for three skills (Navigation, Stealth, and Tracking). Unless you somehow consider the Archer's skills to be more valuable than the Fighter's (which would be a problem on its own, as all skills cost the same, so should be of the same value), the Fighter has, effectively, 3 more CP to start, and doesn't have one of their three Combat Skill choices already made for them.
It gets even worse for the Rogue. Compared to the Fighter, the Rogue loses out on a 20 CP talent and First Aid and only gets Navigation and Tracking in return. This is just awful.
The Thief, at least, gets a totally different skill set, though they actually get fewer skills overall than the Fighter, and less choice about which ones they get (only 1 open choice). The Minstrel, at least, could be argued that getting every Performance skill favored is worth something in trade, but I don't know, how often do you think people will be pumping multiple kinds of Performances?
I don't know, it almost feels like Novus might be better off with just two or three character classes: Warrior, Mage, and possibly Warrior-Mage (who would get Combat Training I and a Minor Adept).
7) This is minor and nitpicky, but--I can use Speed to stab you with a short sword, dagger, and even a Spear (through the Staves skill), but I have to use Strength to use a Rapier? I find that odd. Not broken, just odd.
8 ) You should clean up the language surrounding the hits gained from various Combat Trainings and whether or not default class talents are included already in the class builds. For example, it seems to me that Fighters get 3 HP/level specifically because they start with Combat Training. However, I saw elsewhere on the forum (a thread about making a level 16 Orc I believe) where someone clearly believed the 3 from Fighter stacked with the 3 from Combat Training II to make 6 per level.
9) I assume it's a typo that the Half-Orc gets +6/-3 to their stats. Which should they actually get, +3 Con or +3 Str? Some other combo?
