Battlestore

[icycalm]

The Gifted Heroes section had been accumulating errors for the past few months while Cult Engine 1.5 was evolving under it. All those errors are now fixed, and the section looks smashing once more.



In addition, the names of all heroes that have been purchased are in strikethrough font now to make it easy to see at a glance who's still available. The first three are gone for example.



Several classes are also entirely gone. Can't get an antipaladin, ninja or vampire hunter anymore for example.

And finally, I have returned to the pool the five heroes I grabbed for myself when I launched the system: Warner the Allegiant, Tannith Vor, Xander the Xenophile, Isilynor Dirke, and Headshot. At the time, no one was signing up for the game, and it seemed I'd have to play it on my own, but now we have some players and I'll have my hands full running the game for them, so I am regrettably returning my ideal party to the pool. Maybe I'll play in another setting with another GM when Game Master Meshing™ technology is finally implemented. So feel free to purchase any of these heroes if they strike your fancy. The threads I made for them will remain in the forum, but if you buy any of these heroes go ahead and bump their threads (e.g. "I bought Warner the Allegiant" is all you need to say) and I will turn them over to you by editing in your username in the thread titles.

All instructions for purchasing heroes are in the sidebar of the Gifted Heroes page. Any questions on that process or the system in general can be posted in this thread. Also suggestions or anything else you want to say.

My next project in this section will be voicing all their lines. I wanted to do that for launch, but it was too much work on top of everything else and I was exhausted at the time. Cult Voice Studios is working on it as I write this.

More cool surprises are in the works for Gifted Heroes, and they'll all be announced in this thread once they're ready.

[icycalm]

I thought I'd included all Pathfinder First Edition classes in the initial Gifted Heroes release, but it turns out I missed a few obscure ones that are very cool. So I added them now. Let's go through them one by one.

GENERAL

The general bolsters allies and leads by example, inspiring and training squads of warriors to assist his allies in battle.

If you're not early, you're late—and if you're on time, you're in trouble.

It makes no difference what men think of war. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here.

Long days, short sleep, endless pride.

The general is detailed in Legendary's Ultimate Kingdoms 220-248 and I'd been aware of him for a while but had only skimmed him. Now that I sat down to study him properly in order to build these three generals, he is my favorite class in gaming ever. This is what I would play if I was a player, because you know me, I love strategy, and this is the premier strategist by far. He was built for it. Great tactician too. He's probably also the best tactician, though depending on how you build him you can specialize more towards tactics or strategy.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about him is that he synergizes with the kindgom-building rules, so that if you place him as General in your kingdom's cabinet, he is by far the best class to place there. So for 4X-focused players a general is a no-brainer. Maybe even multiple generals if you want to field several armies plus have a general back home in your cabinet. And by combining a general with extensive investment in the Leadership feat you can really raise an army from scratch.

The squad that comes with the general btw is NOT his army. Although this isn't mentioned in the rules, I see them as his personal guards, and the way they move on the battlefield, and the way he can command them, is fantastic. He's not meant to fight himself very much. He's mostly meant to command this squad of 6-18 warriors, and he gets them at 1st-level! If you also look at the archetypes available to him (same book, same pages), the level of customization is insane. I'll just give the names: crusader, guerrilla, kingpin, mindbender, noble (more on this soon on the nobility system I am preparing, exclusive to Ultimate Edition), rallier, reaver, redeemer, revolutionary (this is what you want if you plan to take over an existing kingdom), strategist, tactician, tyrant, warbringer.

Just reading his pages was more fun to me than most games I've ever played. You've never seen such a cool class in gaming. I recommend you read his rules if you have the slightest interest in strategy.


HORDELORD

The hordelord sends forth groups of undead to do his nefarious bidding.

Only the dead have seen the end of war? That's cute.

You get used to the smell.

This is again from "Ultimate Kingdoms", same pages as the general, but meant as the evil alternative to him! Though the general can also be evil, but the hordelord can only be evil. They share some of their powers, like the squad of 6-18 warriors (or zombies in this case) but far from all. For example, no bonuses to your kingdom if you put the hordelord in the cabinet. But he gets some necromantic spells! And better hit points than the wizard and sorcerer, plus light armor. His zombies can eat corpses off the battlefield in the middle of the battle for a +2 str bonus and extra temporary hit points! And the bigger the corpse, the more hp they get! Imagine the tactical possibilities this opens up. I've never seen anything like it in any game ever, not even in D&D, let alone programmer games. It's basically They Are Billions: The Roleplaying Game. And at 20th-level he can become undead, like a lich or vampire! Doesn't have to if you don't want to, but he can.

What irks me though is that he's not the direct undead equivalent of the general. What if I want to run a necromantic kingdom? I am not saying he should be general reskinned. I am not asking for him to lead an undead version of the kingdoms in the kingdom-building rules. I am asking for something more appropriate to his theme, something perhaps more... underground. Which as it happens I've been working on for over a year now in the background, so I was overjoyed to discover that there is a general-adjacent class that would work perfectly with it!

I am talking about a new Cult Games title called Alex Kierkegaard's Dungeon Master that will launch this year in Alpha 3.0. Just the other week we finalized the cover illustration, and we're working on the logo now.


Insomnia world-exclusive: "Alex Kierkegaard's Dungeon Master" (2025) cover illustration

All this to say, that if you want the undead equivalent career path of the general, the hordelord will be able to get you there as soon as my new game launches (and it will be soon). To be sure, there will be other classes that can get you there, like e.g. the necromancer, and many others. But only the hordelord will do it with 6-18 zombies from 1st-level and with many of the cool tactics of the general. So take a look at his class description if this sort of thing appeals to you. It's fascinating reading.


DOOMGUARD

Doomguards are grim individuals who face each day as if it were their last, spending their lives challenging mightier and mightier foes in preparation for the final confrontation against a terrible prophesied enemy at whose hands they are doomed to die.

Fear only the gods, and the man who doesn't fear them.

The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.

The doomguard is the opposite extreme of the general/hordelord; whereas the latter truly shine in the strategy layer while in command of their armies/hordes, the doomguard shines in very zoomed-in personal roleplaying sessions. In fact, I would say he is among the most difficult classes to roleplay, almost on par with the paladin. And as a kind of semi-joke, I made one of them LG so that THAT guy DEFINITELY is harder to roleplay than a paladin, since he is basically a semi-suicidal paladin lmao! However keep in mind that you can roleplay these heroes in 16-page scenarios or standalone adventures, so you can get a taste of all types of tough/weird characters and builds without having to commit to a 600-page campaign with them.

Also, I do think the doomguard can play a strategic role if you raise him as a kind of missile that you unleash on his fated enemy/type of enemy at the right time. One could potentially have several of these missiles in his arsenal. In any case this is a very interesting class, so I built two of them to add to the gifted hero roster.

All three of the above classes btw are too obscure to have RPGBOT handbooks, so I spent several DAYS studying them to figure them out and make the above cool builds. It was lots of fun and I look forward to seeing some of them in the game if they strike anyone's fancy.


MISC. ADDITIONS

Then in addition to the above, I added an antipaladin (because they were depleted), an occultist (ditto), and a female diviner because I was missing this wizard specialty from the original roster, plus this update needed more females (and she looks stunning).

When choosing the lesser of two evils, remember: it's still evil.

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.

A prophet is not without honor except in his own country among his own people.

That's all for today. In all, I put a week's work in this update and it set me back a little in my other update plans, but I believe it was worth it because it's paramount to Master of Heroes that it boast the greatest collection of stunning and complex heroes in the entire history of gaming available to recruit. I am going back to work on the (slightly delayed) updates now, and look for them to start hitting the frontpage soon.