The third (and final) of the three classes - today we're digging into the Packrat.

Design Story: The Packrat is the youngest of the three, and it's also the one that came together the quickest. I think some of that is that it got the benefit of coming after doing a lot of thinking about the other two, but I also think it's a testament to the resonance of the idea. "Alchemist who turned their body into a fungal alchemy lab" and "Psychic who got powers from a special crystal that a secret society shoved into their head" are both a lot of fun, but they take a little wind-up and buy-in to get there. The Packrat is, on the other hand, "just" a thief - granted, a thief with a lot of friends.

A Heart class can begin for me in a couple of ways, but in order to bloom into a full, beautiful, horrible amalgamation of text, I think it needs to have all three; the first pathway to existence is through a really solid fictional concept; the second is through a gap in the game's mechanical space. It's great when those two can be blended into a single strand, like the Myco-Alchemist, but sometimes they need to be hammered together for a while until something sticks, like the Splinterhead. The third and final pathway is the arc, culminating in the Zenith abilities - cool ways to die or end the character permanently.

Unlucky Packrat started off with only one. Way back when I first started concepting the Myco-Alchemist, I noted a mechanical gap - the Sneak skill and Warren domain weren't "core" to anybody. Well hey! Someone who sneaks through tunnels - that sounds like a Heart class, doesn't it?

But that was as far as the inspiration went. What would a "Rogue" actually do in Heart? Stealing is fun, but the city beneath doesn't quite have the dense social web of Spire to infiltrate, nor the heights of upper classes to steal from. Worse, there's already a class that's about wealth acquisition, that dips into black market dealings, backstabbing, and similar kinds of crime. It's the Incarnadine, which rules, and makes a pretty convincing thiefy-cleric. What's the fictional space left over?

The answer came in two parts. The first was thinking about other mechanical gaps - one that I'd been thinking about for a while was a system to support inflicting stress without using "Kill". The whole point of Stress is that it's meant to be more abstract than "HP" or meat points - but all the weapons being Kill items undercuts the idea, I think. To bridge the gap, I started wondering about items that could inflict stress, but aren't used like weapons, and that made me think of traps!

I liked the idea of being a sneaky thief who set traps for people, instead of trying to just shoot them. From there, it was a short jump to imagine rats turning the traps on people, and that spiraled out into a whole communist ratty-robin-hood kind of thing, an image of thievery not (just) for personal gain, but because the poorest have no recourse but to steal.

Somewhere in there, too, was the vision of the class who would become the Packrat as a classic, OSR-ish adventurer. They don't have much they can rely on except for the stuff that they carry and the ability to plan ahead. I've sometimes chafed against different OSR takes on scarcity, but I thought stealing a usage die for Heart would be a natural fit.

Even the Splinterhead, whose final zenith moves came together fairly late, had a pretty clear arc the whole time. Unlucky Packrat's zenith moves and arcs only cleared up at the very end - but I think they're pretty fun.

Mechanical Considerations: There were two big mechanical considerations for me: the first was to make sure that the Packrat stayed distinct from the Incarnadine! This wasn't too hard, since they now occupied different fictional niches, but it was still important I think to make sure that they didn't have too much skill overlap. The second mechanical piece was to make traps interesting and useful, without outshining more traditional weapons. It's a semi-delicate balance - the goal is to offer alternative things to do in the fiction, without being too disruptive to the usual play pattern. That meant making sure that the Packrat had fun and interesting things to do in more typical scenarios, while retaining its core identity. I think it wound up in a neat place - it's not really geared towards front line fighting, but it can prepare nasty traps, use a handful of support abilities, and help the team sell resources for profit.

Assorted Inspirations: Easily the biggest rat-specific inspiration is Fallen London, whose talking, unionized rats were hugely influential to me. There's also something of Kill Six Billion Demon's treatment of Royalty. I think there's some Neil Gaiman-esque something in here too, probably a little Neverwhere. Ratatouille too, of course.

Favorite Ability: One of my favorite things about the Packrat was getting to write flavor text in a different tone. Both the Splinterhead and Myco-Alchemist had something slightly ironic going on - there's something a little humorous about them. But the Packrat gets to be played mostly straight - I think I was aiming for a mix of tragedy and nobility, which you don't expect to find in a lowly rat, but that makes it all the more impactful. My favorite ability text has to be for DEATHTRAP - the idea of summoning all the ghosts of every rat who died in a trap was one of the first ideas, and I think it's a powerful one. One ability gets to reference Gundam, Pacific Rim, and Lancer all at once, but just to be cheeky I'll pick one last piece of flavor text, for TAKE EVERYTHING: "Until we have defeated the enemy Want, until all our thousand thousand mouths are fed, we must provide for each other as best we can. Your lord is a lord of thieves."

That wraps up the classes! Pretty soon I'll write up the callings, probably all in one go, since they're simpler mechanically.