What's New In Aether 1.2?

Happy holidays to everyone celebrating this week! Thanks to my wonderful artist, I've been able to update Aether in time for Christmas. So here's a run down of the big changes: 

New Cover Art!

That's right, Aether has its own fancy cover art now just adding that extra level of polish to make the whole game worthwhile in my opinion. 

New Damage Rules

Dealing damage in Aether has changed. Instead of a hit or miss scenario with skill checks, dealing damage is now an exchange. When you attack a target, whoever plays the higher skill or defense check deals damage to the one who loses, to mimic the idea that when someone is attacked they aren't just going to let it miss and not do anything, they will have an opportunity to counter attack and deal damage. However, this only works if both targets are in range of each other of course. 

New Sacrifice Rules

Heroic Sacrifices have been altered to be more tempting to use, and overall more effective. They have a generalized list to give you ideas for the consequences of making a sacrifice, and each one is designed to heavily impact a character. 

Retiring Characters

The section previously about death and consequences has been altered to focus more on retiring characters. I wanted to make sure that character death wasn't the only way to make a character unplayable and give the players more control of how they choose to end their character's story, so these new rules do just that. 

If You Won't Use It, Don't Write It Down

A small rules addition to the character sheet and skills sections. If you know you won't use a character skill upgrade but still want to level up that skill, just don't write it down. Make the character sheet work for you instead of being overly cluttered. 

Quality of Life Updates

The new PDF file for Aether 1.2 is now fully searchable with CTRL+F, and it has hyperlinks to the Session 0 YouTube playlist that walks players through the individual segments of the book. The links can be found throughout the book directly underneath their relevant headings so that newcomers to the game can follow along. 

Hopefully you all enjoy Aether and get to play some games using the system in the new year. Happy holidays, stay safe and enjoy!