Design Diaries: Sniper

Bunson, sniper luminary

Art by Raphael Ferreira Braga

Working on the sniper class for the upcoming Infinite Re:Imagine TTRPG has been a lot of fun.

Several years ago, I was tapped to do the gunslinger design for Pathfinder Second Edition and I had a lot of fun with that, too, but there were significant restrictions:

It had to have legendary proficiency with guns (which sounds obvious but actually puts some big limits on the design space because of how powerful that proficiency progression is.)

It had to be, first and foremost, a gunslinger. Guns had to be at the forefront of everything it did and while we could backdoor crossbows in so the class had functionality for people who didn't like guns in their games, we needed to avoid diluting the theme by having it be too good with other weapons (so, for example, we never published the sling feat I wrote for the class since that diluted its core theme of “guns” too much.)

There were a few other strictures but those two were the big ones and they always left me wanting to do more than the space allowed. Later, I'd get the opportunity to do the Guns & Gears Remaster release. At that time, I had a new set of strictures to work with; I had a lot of free rein to make whatever changes I wanted mechanically, but the themes needed to remain the same, and I couldn't make any change that changed the page count or general layout of the book, since we were processing it like a heavy errata. I also didn't have any other design resources available since everyone was juggling so many other projects, so I had to stick to changes I could make myself while managing the largest creative team at Paizo and helping with production on multiple other products, like Battlecry! and the Impossible Playtest. So, I was able to get rid of some pieces of design that I'd never been happy about (like Singular Expertise), and brush up a lot of other content, but there was still fundamentally a lot of content that was enshrined by the needs of the brand.

So, Infinite Re:Imagine and the sniper. When we started work on the core system design for this new game, we knew that we were going to use pieces of the PF2 engine that we really liked, but that we were also going to change/replace/remove a lot of other elements, and that created a ton of design opportunities. One of the big opportunities we've all been really excited about is making a TTRPG that isn't specifically constrained by D&Disms. For example, there's no fighter class in Infinite Re:Imagine; this is a game inspired by JRPGs and rogue-likes, so our classes draw from those inspirations.

The sniper is a master of ranged weapons, starting out with top-tier proficiencies in long guns, pistols, bows, and slings (note that we also completely redesigned the weapon system in IR:I, but that’s probably a topic for a different blog!) We drew inspiration from characters like Shadow Hearts’ Margaret Zelle, Final Fantasy VII’s Vincent Valentine, and others when we started developing this concept. Their core mechanic is a “targeting reticle” that gives them a bonus to hit and lets them pick a special effect they can get against their locked on target (if you’re familiar with PF2’s gunslinger, think about something kind of like Called Shot elevated with the support of a core class mechanic.) As you level up, the new feats you gain represent things like trick shots, new effects for your targeting reticle and new ways to deploy it, and unique ways to customize your ranged weapons to make a ranged fighting style that’s truly your own.

At this point in time, I don’t necessarily know what future classes we might do; the core four we’ve built for the Quickstart Guide cover all the major roles and party needs. However, we’re building a system that’s modular enough it can technically hold an infinite number of classes, and one of the reasons we have a sniper instead of a fighter is to create a design bucket that is broad enough that anyone with a ranged striker character concept they want to build can jump right in, but also narrow enough that we know now that it won’t be so overwhelming in the space that all future ranged strikers will need to be excessively specific thematically or excessively complicated mechanically to avoid stepping on the sniper’s toes. “Specific themes, accessible mechanics” is one of the guidelines of IR:I’s design, which I’m super happy about.

I’m really enjoying this design space we’ve created and getting to draw upon these inspirations that are so much a part of fantasy for me, but which aren’t part of the D&D lineage that other games I’ve worked on are kind of compelled to stick to. I’ve got this big inspirations board with names like SaGa Frontier, Shining Force, Chronicles of Amber, Shadow Hearts, Baten Kaitos, and others scribbled all over it, representing some of the games and influences that, for me, are part of the core conceptualization of what I think when I hear the word “fantasy”. Getting to make a game that taps into those inspirations has been some of the most fun I’ve had doing TTRPG design in a long time, and I’m hoping that when the Quickstart Guide finishes its journey through layout, people who grew up with the same influences I did will get to find this game and enjoy it, too.

Michael Sayre
Design Lead
Infinite Re:Imagine