A Mechanical Review of Changeling: The Lost's 2nd Edition (And What Went Wrong)

Regular readers around these parts know that if I'm not playing Pathfinder that I love me a good Chronicles of Darkness game. Of all the spheres I've played, Changeling: The Lost is my favorite. The combination of twisted fairy tales, beautiful madness, and cosmic horror is the perfect brew to slowly sink into and immerse yourself, and the game was flexible enough that you could make basically any concept you wanted to play. When I heard there was going to be a 2nd edition of the game I didn't rush in and follow every development as it was happening. I waited calmly and patiently for the smoke to clear, and to see just what had happened.

My current verdict is that if you have to choose between the original Changeling: The Lost and the newer second edition, just play the first one. It doesn't commit the sins I'm about to get into.

There's no beauty here... only madness.

For folks who want to check out some of my World/Chronicles of Darkness content, consider checking out my 100 Kinfolk Project, as well as my 101 Savage Kinfolk and 100 Stargazer Kinfolk for Werewolf: The Apocalypse, as well as my recent release New World Nights: 100 Ghouls For The American Camarilla. I've got some Changeling: The Lost content coming down the pipe, as well, and if you don't want to miss out on it then make sure you sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates sent straight to your inbox!

Soft Where It Needs To Be Hard, Hard Where it Should Be Soft

Similar to what I said a while back in my mechanical review Chronicles of Darkness Second Edition... What's The Difference?, the second edition of Changeling is pretty recognizable in a story sense. Changelings are still people who are stolen by the True Fae, their souls torn on the Thorns between worlds, and the gap filled with fey magic. They are still Other, altered to become whatever the True Fey needed. Escaped back to the Real they are creatures of two worlds, now, and they are hunted. Changelings still form courts for mutual protection, they still use Contracts as their magic powers, etc., etc.

If you're familiar with the first edition of the game, the broad strokes are still there, and still the same.

Now we get into what's different.

Aside from the difference in the core game that I already covered in my previous review (the beats system for gaining XP, the Doors system for achieving long-term goals, etc.), if I had to explain what's different in Changeling: The Lost now it's that the game has been over-scripted, and shrunk down, so that you feel like a character caught in a web of conflicting laws and promises, but in the worst possible way.

A concrete example of this is the changes made to Pledges. Changelings are creatures who can bind people to promises spoken, in keeping with fey lore and the themes of the game. In classic Lost there's one chart split into four pieces. You have the Task (what the person has to do), the Boon (what they get for doing it), the Sanction (the punishment for breaking the pledge), and the Duration (how long does it last?). There's a simple chart with attached numbers, and as long as all the numbers add up to 0, the pledge is ready to rock.

The second edition, rather than just having this single mechanic with a basic chart that lets you compose the pledge, has several different varieties of oaths, all of which are only applicable in certain situations. They each have their own caveats, and long-winded explanations, but there's never a chart explaining how to use them in a practical sense, or how they're supposed to function. Instead, it feels like reading a product user agreement read by a frustrated fantasy writer trying to spice up their day job.

And that's the new edition in a nutshell; it takes simple, functional, practical mechanics of the original and softens them until they melt like wax. Often to the point where, though I can see what the designers were trying to achieve, they just end up making a more limited version of the original game. Or, worse yet, they take aspects that were left vague and open-ended for players to fill in themselves, and create rules for how you have to play certain aspects that limits your freedom and options.

More Examples and Frustrations

While what happened to Pledges is emblematic of the changes made, there are a lot more examples I want to talk about, because I feel they're indicative of the direction the game was moved in.

First off the list, Clarity. While a lot of folks hate that Clarity was just a list of Thou Shalt Nots in terms of actions that forced you to roll, I'd argue that if any game will accept an arbitrary system of rules that characters have to follow even if they disagree with them, it should be those bound to the fey. That said, Clarity has become an absolute mess. The new edition treats Clarity checks as a mental attack, with a huge list of complications and modifiers that made my head spin just trying to figure out what it was trying to say. Not only that, but it enfolded the Virtue and Vice system from the previous edition, allowing players to (at least in part) custom make their own Clarity, what they draw strength from, and what triggers affect them. A nice idea in theory, but one which is so soft that it feels almost pointless because it leaves the players to do all the heavy lifting on their own with only a bit of guidance. It's a perfect example of an idea that was deemed too simple, then overcomplicated till it just became a confusing morass.

But what about stuff that was open-ended that's been codified in ways that hurt the game, since I mentioned that, too? Well, another thing that's changed is the Seemings themselves. The broad categories of changelings (Beasts, Darklings, Ogres, Fairest, etc.) are all still here. And as folks know in the first edition they could spend glamour to increase pools involving certain attributes or skills associated with their Seeming (Strength for ogres, Stealth for darklings, etc.). This created a system where certain varieties of changeling had certain mechanical strengths, but it was still loose enough that the line of changelings coming in an infinite variety that's sometimes hard to codify felt true. In the second edition that was done away with entirely, and from what I read there's now no abilities that increase your attributes and skills via glamour at all. Instead, every seeming gets one magic power. Darklings turn invisible, for instance. All darklings, of every variety, have this one power. Might just be me, but that feels like it's solidifying those lines pretty damn hard, and nailing down specifics of what you are and aren't in ways that were previously up to players.

There's also a third category of mechanical change... the Nerfing. And despite being some of the most mortal and vulnerable supernatural creatures in the Chronicles of Darkness, the new edition slapped changelings hard with the Nerf bat.

I'm still trying to compose my brain after some of it.

Contracts is where some of the biggest Nerfing took place (aside, of course, from the complete absence of the ability to increase your dice pools with glamour the way you could before from what I saw). Because the Beats system means you're getting less XP overall, and it takes a lot longer to acquire it, this system did away with the exponential cost for new dots. Now you just pay a flat XP cost for any additional thing you want on your sheet. So whether you had a Strength of 1 dot or 4 dots, buying the next dot is just a flat 5 XP now.

That sounds nice in theory. However, it meant that since Contracts can basically be purchased in any order a character wants (instead of having to buy a set from 1-5 dots to get to the really potent ones), that all of them had to be made roughly the same power level. And it was a bizarre experience seeing Contracts that were once big deals sitting there as a ghost of their former selves, hollowed-out husks of their old glory. The Lord's Dread Gaze (the Summer contract that let you shoot beams of solar fire that was usually only had by one or two people in the entire court) is a perfect example... it still lets you shoot lasers, but now they do bashing damage and aren't nearly as potent. You'd be better off just getting a gun and shooting someone with it. Even old standbys like Might of The Terrible Brute (a 1-dot Contract used by any melee bruiser that let you boost your Strength for a round) has now been made into something that only works for grappling, and has a bunch of other caveats attached to it.

Practically every aspect of the game has been made smaller, less potent, and in many cases actively punishes the player for attempting to use it (goblin Contracts, for instance, now incur phantom "goblin debt" which seems to only come into play if the ST remembers it's there, and is willing to do something with it, rather than the clear drawbacks of the earlier edition). Lastly, frailties (inherent, fey weaknesses in the character) are now something you pick up as soon as you hit Wyrd 2, when they used to not come into play until you surpassed normal, mortal requirements around Wyrd 6 or so. Changeling now get actively harmed by cold iron, as well, when they used to be able to wield it as their one, real advantage over the Gentry (it still cut through magical defenses, but it was mostly a single-edged sword).

It's still recognizably Changeling, but it feels like it's been in a major accident. It can't do the things it once could, and it's got a whole new list of weaknesses and day-to-day frustrations you never even considered before.

If you were wondering whether the second edition improved anything, I would be hard pressed to tell you yes. Unlike the core book for Chronicles, which at least had some ideas and systems I could get behind, Changeling: The Lost's second edition is just a frail shadow of its former self.

Play the first edition. It's still out there, and you'll likely have a more satisfying experience with the support and cleaner rules it offers.

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That's all for this week's Crunch topic! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio! Or if you'd like to read some of my books, like my alley cat noir novel Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, head over to My Amazon Author Page!

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The Man Out of Time

Kalaka frowned at the statue, spattered with the monster's blood. It was so utterly lifelike, with every hair and every vein looking like it was one breath away from coming to life. She touched the shoulder of the massive warrior, his ax upraised for a strike, and traced a sigil on it. Her eyes flashed with a touch of power from the charm, and she frowned.

"What?" Celindra asked, noting Kalaka's frown.

"This is no statue," she said softly, her eyebrows knitting together. "This man has been trapped in stone here for... many years."

"Can you free him?" Celindra asked.

"Potentially," Kalaka said absently. She traced the runes along his armor, noting the ancient alphabet that had fallen out of use centuries ago. His great size, and the too-long teeth, like something out of legends only half remembered by the sages. "Stand back."

She spoke the words of the incantation she'd prepared that morning, knowing the enemy they faced. The syllables rang through the air, and with every one that fell from her lips the stone seemed to shudder. To quake. As the last word rang, the stone cracked and fell away like an eggshell, revealing the man beneath. His roar, begun untold years ago, bellowed from his throat as he finally completed the swing. His ax smashed into the stone floor, the steel cleaving into the rock. He leaped back, yanking the weapon with him, and holding it in a defensive position as his eyes flicked from one woman to the other. He noted the headless corpse of the creature whose gaze had entombed him, but disregarded it as unimportant for the moment.

"Que la quora a-na?" He snarled, shifting his grip on the haft.

"What's he saying?" Celindra asked, keeping her hands visible, but near enough to her sword for comfort.

"It's Antarish, I think," Kalaka said. "I haven't heard it in years."

Slowly, ponderously, Kalaka worked through the forms of address of the half-forgotten tongue. The man's frown didn't leave his face, but he lowered his weapon. When he spoke again his words were slow and careful, recognizing that her grip on his tongue was tenuous at best. Kalaka's face shone with a combination of fear, and excitement.

"What are you smiling at?" Celindra asked.

"I can't be sure, but I think he's one of the Karashkala," Kalaka said. "If I'm right, then what he knows might be worth more than all the treasure in this place."

"If you can get it out of him," Celindra said, folding her arms.

"Him," the man said, as if tasting the word. He nodded slightly, as if storing it away for later use. Celindra jumped, but Kalaka just smiled. She had a feeling he would be a quick study.

They put him in the square to honor him, and as the years passed they forgot who he truly was.

Gone A Long Time

It is one thing to play a particularly long-lived character who has watched the world change around them over the decades and centuries (a topic I covered in 4 Tips For Making Long-Lived Characters Feel Old), but the Man Out of Time is the other side of that coin. These characters have been plucked out of their own time, and somehow placed into the far future where everything they once knew has been either lost, or relegated to the pages of dusty tomes of history known only to a select few scholars and a handful of particularly long-lived races.

Sit yourself, my old friend. Many things have changed since last we spoke.

Whether you've simply been gone for a handful of decades, or for centuries, the world has moved on since you have been gone. The nations you knew may have fallen into decay, or become mockeries of the things they once stood for. New countries may have risen, and new cultures born. Gods may have died, and new ones risen. You are truly a stranger in a strange land, attempting to pull together the skills and knowledge you still possess to explore this undiscovered country.

It's a concept that has often been attempted, but which can be difficult to pull off. Because while you need the method of your preservation, you also need to know in which ways the world has changed in your absence, and how that affects you.

Accident Or On Purpose?

The first thing you need to establish for your character is whether they went into their state of preservation on purpose or not. In the classic example of someone failing a save and getting turned to stone, they probably didn't intend for that to happen. The alternative is that your character was put into a state of suspended animation on purpose, though the reason for this might vary. Perhaps it was as a punishment, or it might have been as a protective measure against a foreseen apocalypse that may not have even come to pass. There's a lot of wiggle room, here.

It's also important to remember that something can be done as an accident or on purpose using the same mechanics with differing intent.

As an example, a basilisk or similar creature could be used as a way to preserve individuals of great skill and prowess until their services were needed again by a particular organization, like the Brim or the Aligned found in my supplement 100 Secret Societies. For a pop culture reference, this would be similar to how the Winter Soldier was only brought out of his containment when he had to assassinate a target (one of the many details I made sure to put in my Winter Soldier character conversion, for those who are interested).

Another solid choice, if you're playing Pathfinder, is to use the Awakened From Stasis background trait found in People of The Stars. For those who want something less sci-fi in feeling, though, you could instead opt for the strange difference in time between the material plane and time in the First World of the fey, as we find in stories where someone spends an afternoon or a day at a fey celebration and comes back to find they've been gone for 50, or even 100 years. Even something as simple as getting lost in the mists of the deep wild forests could have you step between worlds and times. For those looking for a reference, there are a handful of the options in 100 Encounters in a Fey Forest.

What Makes You Strange?

Once you've figured out how you survived from a time long past into the current era, the next question you need to ask is what makes you strange or unusual in this setting? Do you have unique skills or abilities that were lost to time, representing a character class or archetype that is considered particularly rare (or even non-existent) in the current setting? Do you lack a traditional shared language, needing to communicate in older tongues like high elven or infernal (or even to use magic) in order to make your way in this new age while you learn its ways? Do your traditions, fighting style, or other skills make you stand out among those who have the knowledge to recognize what them, and when they're from?

It took me several months, but eventually I learned to make myself understood.

What Connections Still Exist?

Another aspect of the character concept is to ask yourself which things have remained the same, as well as which things have changed. If there's a particular style of brewing they enjoyed (perhaps a certain elven mead or dwarven ale) that's still around, it could act as something for them to cling to in a world of change. Perhaps certain plays or music that was fresh and new when they first walked the world are now enshrined as classics, allowing them to have some kind of cultural touch stone they can share with those in this age, even if so much else has changed.

Bigger aspects to examine would be if this character's god is still part of the setting (doubly important for divine casting characters), and whether any orders or organizations they'd sworn allegiance to are still around. A church, a knightly order, or even a mercenary company with a storied history could provide a bedrock for the character to build a new foundation on.

The years have waned, but the strength of my oath has not.

If the character was gone for decades, or even centuries, it's possible there will be old companions or commanders who remember them. People who can act as a reference point for the character, and who can help ease them back into the world. If they were gone for longer, and are a part of an organization's history instead of its living memory, then they could be treated with a kind of reverence as a time capsule back to those older times. Someone who was there in its early days, and who can tell today's aspirants and acolytes what it was like, would be unique indeed.

If their Small Legend is large enough, it's possible they may have been noted in song or story during their original days... and depending on how much time has passed, those songs may have blown their true deeds a little out of proportion. Perhaps claiming they slew dragons when it was merely drakes, or that they stood and fought alone for days and nights to hold back an army when it was more like fighting against a small force for an hour or so with stalwart companions at their side.

While you can sever all connections and drop the character into an alien setting John Carter of Mars style, it's a lot easier if you carve out a small niche for them to step into in the setting. Especially if it turns out that their nemesis, rather than an old friend, is still walking the world. This is particularly good for wizards that have become liches, or evil dragons that have grown to great wyrm status who defeated a champion once, but who did not slay them. Perhaps as a form of cruel vengeance, or perhaps because they were wounded by the battle and left to tend their hurts without checking to be sure the job was done properly.

Extra Inspiration

Whether your character is a noble knight who was turned to stone, an alchemist whose experiment went awry, an assassin preserved in a frozen state to prevent their aging between assignments, or simply someone who ran afoul of a fey queen and returned home to find time had passed them by, there's a lot of potential with this concept. If you're looking for additional inspiration for organizations you can anchor yourself to, or other aspects of your backstory that could make the character feel more organic, check out the following.

- Who's in Your Rogues' Gallery?: Your enemies can define you, and if you survived into the modern day, it's entirely possible some of your most dire foes have, as well. So consider a nemesis as your new point of reference in the world.

- 100 Fantasy Battle Cries (And Their Histories): A battle cry is like a maker's mark for a warrior, and someone from a time that's passed into memory may have a particular war cry that sends shivers up the spines of foes who thought all of that blood and nation had gone down to dust.

- 100 Knightly Orders: With storied histories often stretching back as long as a nation or royal family, knightly orders tend to be where many heroes come from. And if they have lost all other sense of direction, it might be the order to which they return in a new world.

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That's all for this installment of Unusual Character Concepts. Hopefully this one gave you something to chew over, whether you're a player, or a dungeon master.

For more of my work, check out my Vocal and Gamers archives, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my most recent collection of short stories The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!