Dark Gate OOC Thread

[GargantuaBlarg]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

Ooh, that sounds fun.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

Two handed swords seem like the same thing as a bastard sword. Accounting for averages, Two handed swords do .5 more damage than Bastard swords on average, and lack the -3 to-hit nerf.

Nabbin' myself a two handed sword

 

[Termite]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

I think Bastard Swords are for characters who want to be able to switch styles on the fly, moving from Dueling to Two-Handed without needing to bog yourself down with equipment.

Actually that brings up a question. There currently aren't any penalties to switching weapons in the middle of battle. Will that stay the same in DG3?

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

Wait, so that means a two-handed sword has the specific requirement of being used in both hands, while the bastard sword does not? That sounds weird.

Getting a hammer sounds nice too, since the two handed blunt weapon seems to have less randomization.

 

[Unknown Squid]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

Wait, so that means a two-handed sword has the specific requirement of being used in both hands, while the bastard sword does not? That sounds weird.

Well, that kind of has been the defining feature of bastard swords in fiction and RPG's ever since AD&D in the 1980's.

 

[Termite]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

Question: In thetwo's sheet, how can Stealth and Perception be different when there's nothing affecting either value other than the base Body stat?

 

[thetwo]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

It's not an entirely blank sheet - it still has some of Nadia's information on it. In particular, the mutations "pheromones", "wings", and "glowing skin", which give a net of -7 stealth and +2 perception.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

Pertaining to the bastard sword discussion: bastard swords also only use one talent/skill for skill with, focus, and specialization. So if you want to go duelist and heavy weapons or some other mix of skills then bastard swords will eat up less talents and skills in order to give you all of the important attack boosts for both of your fighting styles.

Mildly related note: while contemplating potential builds for my DG 3.0 PC (I know it's not ready yet but I wanted to tinker with it!) I found some incredibly potent and silly combos. This is all based on the assumption that skills can be used as long as the proper item is equipped (i.e. a two-handed sword for slay, two weapons for flurry and rend, a singular one-handed weapon for dueling, etc.) and unarmed inherently being considered a one-handed weapon. If unarmed won't function with other skills in this manner for DG3 then this can be safely ignored (except maybe as a guide of what could have been >.>).

Unarmed Fighter/Two Weapon Fighting.
50 body character with 2 x heavy hitter, skill, specialization, and focus fists, or what I have affectionately dubbed "the Kenshiro strategy."
Activate Whirling Death, Flurry, and Shattering Blow and punch something: 208-264 damage (assuming all 4 hits succeed) at 4 instances of 40 to hit.
It's worth noting that the 2 heavy hitter talents are incredibly important, without them it becomes 80-136. Because of heavy hitter x 2, however, it gains 32 (16*2) damage and that can be multiplied by as many as 4 hits. Of course, against a heavily armored opponent the whole combo does pitiful damage. Anything else is already dead, though.

Unarmed Fighter/Two Weapon Fighting/Spirit Abilities
True Kenshiro mode! 50 body character with 2 x heavy hitter, skill with and specialization fists, smite (10 EP), after activating battle aura at 10 ep (meaning +30 buff, I believe) the previous round. Use Flurry, Whirling Death, and Shattering Blow. You might want to find your favorite version of You Wa Shock before continuing to read this one.
4 attacks at (1d8 + 2 + 25 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 30 + 10 - 12 - 4 - 10)*2. Something like 70 attack, too, thanks to battle aura.
So... 528-584 damage if all 4 attacks hit? I'm pretty sure even a sizable amount of armor would only bring that down into the 300s. This is at least ridiculous enough to make me hope that my ability to do the math behind it was inherently flawed.

Unarmed Fighter/Anything Else (Except Heavy Weapons, since unarmed counts as one-handed still as best I can tell)
Whirlwind/Scissor Defense/Defensive Strike + Disarm/Stunning Blow/Shattering Blow.
Not quite as potent as going all Fist of the North Star on some demon's face but it adds quite a bit of utility to warriors, which is nice.

Heavy hitter and the various spirit damage buffs become very potent when applied several times over by multiple same-round attacks (this has been true for a while, though). 10 damage from smite, when used with flurry, becomes 40 damage if all 4 attacks hit and when combined with the effects of shattering blow it's increased even more. Battle aura adds a huge amount of damage to the combo and is perhaps the biggest component in potential flurry ridiculousness. I'm not really sure what to suggest as a nerf for this that doesn't hurt warriors who only attack once per round, though, besides maybe having things like spirit buffs and smite only add damage to the first hit of a double attack or a flurry. Then again, maybe I'm just being derpy here and somebody else will have a better thought on it all, if all this theorycrafting is even applicable.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

There seems to be a lot of switching back and forth between the different weapon categories. I didn't think that you could hold your weapon in one hand, give yourself a buff from that, and then hold it in both hands, recieve more buffs, and then use an attack with a weapon category that's buffed by skills from another category.

Using a skill you learned from having a two-handed weapon to boost how much your fists hurt... Sounds kinda silly. Reminds me of the class system from Tactics.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

If you're talking about bastard swords: I messed up my explanation. Their usefulness is in that you can use them in one hand or two hand and get skill with, specialization, and focus benefits the entire time for the price of one talent and two skills. If you wanted to use a one-handed sword and a two-handed sword it would require that you take up skill with, specialization, and focus for both, which means two talents and four skills used.

If you're talking about the the unarmed fighting stuff: there's actually no switching there, it's all one round except for activating your spirit buff. You dual wield fists using two weapon fighting and as such can theoretically use Flurry, Shattering Blow, and Whirling Death in the same round, which kind of breaks things. Using Battle Aura the round makes it ridiculously potent because of the way multiple attack damage and direct buffs to damage are handled. You're basically getting whatever buff you used several times over.

For the most part, using multiple skills in one round tends to balance out with the kind of things a spirit user, mage, or another warrior type can do. Whirling Death and Flurry do about the same amount of damage as Slay and Supreme Might or Lightning Jabs and Power Jab. As of last I checked, all of these tend to do around 80-120 damage at the price of lowered dodge, extreme vulnerability to armor, lowered attack, or other such penalties. This isn't too different from what a well-built spirit user or mage can do. It's only when you start really utilizing (abusing >.>) the way multiple attacks work with other direct damage buffs that things get a bit silly.

While I'm not sure that shattering blow should be usable with two-weapon fighting, or if it is it should only apply on the first hit, I still think multiple skills should be usable in a single round. Additionally, I think a lot of this could be fixed by having smite and spirit buff skills that add damage to attacks apply once per round after other modifiers (assuming an attack hits).

For example: Kenshiro strategy #1 with shattering blow only applying on one hit per round would turn 208-264 damage into 175-210. Setting a cap to one purchase of heavy hitter would lower it further to 135-170. Keeping in mind that multi-attacks are weaker against armor, that's more in line, at least.

Kenshiro Strategy #2 with shattering blow only applying on one hit per round, heavy hitter limitations, and smite/battle aura applying after everything else would go from 528-584 to 160 - 195 (without the +3 damage from focus, with that it becomes 175-210). Again, much more in line if you consider how armor effects multi-attacks and multipliers. They both still need a bit of tweaking though.

Again, some of this is theory. The mechanics behind this might already be slated for a change in DG 3.0. I'm just bringing this possibility to attention at the moment.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

The mechanics behind all that I get. I just don't get the concept of calling your two fists 'weapons,' since I considered two weapon fighting to be actually using two one-handed weapons in each hand, like two daggers.

And you didn't really mess up your explanation, since I pretty much got the same out of what you said as when you said it again. I get that you can specialize in bastardswords and switch them out from one hand to the other. That makes sense since you're specializing in bastardswords. But what doesn't make sense is using it in one hand, and saying you activate one-handed skills, then put it in two hands, and activate more skills, giving you skills from both.

It's my assumption that you can't do that.

But when I see what you're doing, I think, "Okay, he's using an unarmed attack, but... Treating his fists as apart of the two handed weapon category? You don't need to explain mechanics to automatically know that would be extremely valuable, and powerful." So what I'm wondering is if that's really allowed, treating your fists as two-handed weapons, that is, and using skills for both two-handed and unarmed skill categories.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

I don't feel that I'm being too clear as that wasn't the impression I was trying to give. Bastard swords can only use skills based on the type of attack they're doing in any given round to my knowledge and I'm pretty sure you are correct in that it isn't possible to buff up with a one handed skill and then attack with a two handed one.

There is an overlap for fists and two weapon fighting though. As of last I inquired it was entirely possible to dual wield fists once you have the two weapon fighting talent. It was also possible to use rend and whirling death with nothing but fists equipped. While I don't have a 100% confirmation on this particular experiment, past cases lead me to believe that it is possible to dual wield fists and use shattering blow with rend and whirling death.

In the end, though, that isn't really what I'm trying to point out. My main point is that flurry and direct damage buffs like battle aura and smite do an insane amount of damage with multiple attack skills due to the way they're handled for multi-attacks. It was only a secondary point that slay and shattering blow should probably only effect a single damage roll, or maybe shattering blow/unarmed skills shouldn't work in combination with other skills.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

If the only thing you said was, "You can use fists as duel weapons," versus everything you just said, I think the idea you're getting across would have been received the same.

Definitely using fists. Other options seem lame now.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

You can't use fists as two-handed weapons. I'm not even sure where I said that. You can use them as one-handed weapons and duel wield them though.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

-Fists are one handed weapons. They cannot, at any time, be treated as a two handed weapon. You cannot wield your hand in your other hand. I'm not sure if that was actually implied at any point, but RJ seems to think that it was, so there's the answer to that.
-As unarmed counts as a one handed weapon, they can technically be used to dual wield. However, I think that I'll now add the caveat that you can only use one unarmed attack per round prior to skills and whatnot. In other words, Unarmed can only be used for the off hand. And I'd rule that they don't work with Dueling skills either, so there
-Switching weapons shall now take a round.
-That's something to add maiko. And I was wondering who thought up the original succubus powers.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

You didn't, I made the mistake of calling duel wield as two-handed, it's fixed now.

 

[xgkf]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

You cannot wield your hand in your other hand.

Technically you could...

Say an enemy is on his/her knees in front of you, you could clasp your hands together, raise them above your head, and bring them down on your target in the same way you would a two-handed sword or hammer, you would just be hitting them with your clasped hands instead of a weapon since you wouldn't be holding anything.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

Hawk Eye(Activate) Increases the range of your range weapons by X yards.
Wing Clip(Activated) Maims the enemy, reducing the target's movement speed by 50% for 1 or 2 rounds.
Improved Wing Clip(Activated) Gives your Wing Clip ability a X% chance to immobilize the target for 5 sec.
Wyvern Sting(Activated) A stinging shot that stuns the target for 2 rounds. Any damage will cancel the effect. When the target wakes up, the Sting causes 3d12 damage over 3 rounds .
Viper Sting (Activated) Stings the target, draining 15 EP over 3 rounds, and energizing the character equal to 300% of the amount drained. Only one Sting per character can be active on any one target.
Chimera Shot (activated) You deal 125% weapon damage, refreshing the current Sting on your target and triggering an effect:
Serpent Sting - Instantly deals 8 EP of the damage done by your Serpent Sting.
Viper Sting - Instantly restores EP to you equal to 60% of the total amount drained by your Viper Sting.
Scorpid Sting - Attempts to Disarm the target for 3 rounds. This effect cannot occur more than once per 6 rounds.

There's already a skill for increasing the ranged of ranged weapons, and I'm uncertain as to what the rest of them are. To me, they mostly look like things desired for characters with mutations, which would bar most characters from them outright. If that's the case, then most of these would be more likely to get implemented in mutations than skills. And percentages are confusing to work with when they aren't 50%, which is identical to division by 2.

Two-Handed Blunt Skill Tree

Whirlwind (Activated) – The character attacks all enemies within range of them, but take a -10 penalty to attack rolls, damage, and Dodge until their next turn. They attack with both weapons, if they have two. Requires Two Weapon Fighter OR Heavy Weapon Specialist.

Supreme Might (Activated) – The character can trade points from their attack roll for additional damage. These points are traded at a 1 to 1 rate, and the character cannot trade more than 20 points per round. Requires Heavy Weapons Specialist.

Golf Swing (Activated) - The character attacks with an upwards swing at a single opponent, suffering a penalty to his/her attack roll and dodge until their next turn. If successful, the target is knocked back and makes a resistance check against the damage dealt. If failed, they are knocked prone. (I'm thinking damage dealt for the chance to be knocked prone, since tougher, heavier enemies shouldn't be pushed around so easily, while a squishy enemy is lightweight and can easily have this happen to them.)

Ground Slam (Activated) - Forsaking damage, the character strikes the ground with all their might, sending a shockwave that knocks anyone close by prone unless they pass a resistance check. (I'm thinking the range on this one to be 5-10 Feet, so targets need to be fairly much in melee range. Mainly for situations when a large cluster of enemies are around you.)

Stunning Blow (Activated) - (Akin to the unarmed fighter's ability, which forsakes damage and to-hit in order to inflict the stunned status to an enemy. Perhaps it's penalties will vary due to using two-handed blunt instead of unarmed.)

If they're skills dedicated purely to 2 handed blunt weapons, why not just take Whirlwind and Supreme Might from the Heavy Weapons skill list? Unless you intend to redesign the entire skill system for me, of course.

Golf Swing works, likely at a -20 to attack, or a -10 to attack and dodge, in exchange for knockback of 10 feet and a Resistance Check against the enemy or get proned.

Ground Slam works more or less as displayed. I'd say a 10 foot radius, but a small penalty, say -4, on the Resistance check for the character.

Stunning Blow: Well, I could just take the unarmed fighter's skill, and use that, but Two Handed tends to do a bit more damage, so perhaps a -12 or -20 penalty to damage would be the only penalty, and you'd get the Resistance check or stunned.

Warrior skill ideas! Rough ones but they've been floating around my head for a while and if I waited until I was entirely happy with them then I'd never post. >.>

Uneven Trade (Activated) - The character lets an attack hit them in order to get a better striking position on their opponent. Character chooses a single target. If the target attacks the character that round then it's an automatic success and ignores armor. The character makes a resistance check vs target after being attacked. If successful, the character's attack automatically succeeds, ignores armor, and deals double damage to that target. On failure, it acts as a normal attack.

Terrify (Activated) - The character frightens nearby enemies enough to make them rethink attacking. The character gives up their attack on the current round in order to intimidate the enemies within 30 feet of them. After being terrified, enemies must pass a resistance check vs character or be unable to attack the character. There is no penalty for them attacking others, however. +10 to check if the character has foul aura.

Challenge (Activated) - The character taunts and moves to intervene with an opponent's attempts to attack others. Character makes a resistance check vs target/s. On success, the target/s attacks the character instead of an ally that round. The character takes -10 dodge until your next round for every target challenged.

Unrelenting Fury (Activated) - When in a rage and hit by a blow that would knock the character unconscious or kill them, they may make a resistance check against the creature that struck the blow. On a success, the character may remain conscious and gain their body score as temporary hitpoints. If the character's temporary hitpoints are depleted to 0 then they are killed. The character may deactivate Unrelenting Fury prematurely and fall unconscious immediately instead of dying. Requires Rage.

A bit more grapple-centric stuff below. Damage might do with some tinkering.

Powerful Embrace (Passive) - The character is well versed in the art of the bear-hug. The character automatically deals 1d10 damage per round when in grapples when they're the dominant grappler (i.e. they've won the grapple check that round). Requires Grapple Expert.

Fling (Activated) - The character throws a grappled opponent, or perhaps ally, a short distance at another target. When the character has something in a submission hold where they're the dominant grappler (i.e. it's the character that put the opponent into the submission hold), they may throw them at another enemy for 1d6+Body/3 damage to both targets and knocks the thrown one prone. 10 foot range. Requires Grapple Expert.

Stranglehold (Activated) - The character chokes a bitch. When the character has something in a submission hold where they're the dominant grappler, they may make a resistance check vs the target. If the character succeeds (and they have lungs), they deal the difference of the check in damage to the target's resistance. When their resistance hits 0, they are knocked unconscious. Requires Grapple Expert.

Slam (Activated) - The character SUPLEXES THEIR TARGET'S FACE IN. Or some other type of slam. When the character has something in a submission hold where they're the dominant grappler, they may make another grapple check against their opponent. On success, deals 1d12 + Body/3 damage, drops the submission hold, but knocks the enemy prone. Requires Grapple Expert.

Uneven Trade is... Uneven. Almost like a counterspell for melee, only not as good. I don't necessarily like it... But I suppose that I could allow it in.

@Terrify: I'd probably make it a passive skill instead, and require that you kill an enemy in order to do so. There's only so scary that a person can look, and you are dealing with demons, monsters, mutants and such here. Possibly with bonuses to the Resistance check depending on just how badly they killed whatever it was that they killed.

Challenge... doesn't seem to have enough of a bonus, to me. Maybe add something more to it, like added damage against your challenge target or something.

Unrelenting Fury is not the greatest idea given the potential for a GO, though I do understand the idea behind it. *Puts on Ref shirt* I'll allow it!

@Grapple Skills: Powerful embrace needs a little more damage, and Fling should knock both of them prone barring a Resistance check. Stranglehold I like. Slam: There isn't actually a benefit to knocking someone prone while they are in grapple. Perhaps change it to something like Supreme Might, IE: trading grapple for more damage?

Summon Fey/Demon (Spirit Power) Suggestions:

To balance the ability fairly, I feel that the EP cost for summoning the chosen creature(s) should be determined by the rank of the creature in question, and by the number of the creature(s) being summoned. You would then pay the “additional” payment required by the summoned creature before it departs, as already outlined by the iteration of this power already implemented.

Example:
The EP cost for summoning a demon should be based on this formula ((Rank * 4) * X), where Rank is the rank of the demon (listed below) and X is the number of that demon being summoned.

Demon Ranks:
Rank 1 = Goblin/Solder/Stalker
Rank 2 = Sorcerer(ess)/Succubus
Rank 3 = Hellhound/Nightmare/Tentacle Horrer
Rank 4 = Demon Lord

For example, say I want to summon 4 Goblins to assist me in combat. The Rank of a Goblin is 1, so plugging “1” and “4” into the formula ((1 * 4) * 4) would result in an EP cost of 16 to perform the summoning. Or, let’s say I wanted to summon 2 Hellhounds, their Rank is 3, so plugging that into the formula ((3 * 4) * 2) would result in an EP cost of 24 to perform the summoning.

This method I believe balances out the cost/reward of the creature(s) being summoned, allowing for multiples of lesser ranked creatures to be summoned at a fair cost without breaking or encouraging abuse of the ability for higher ranked creatures. This could also work or be slightly modified to work with Fey creature summonings as well, nerfing the current iterations of the Summon Fey/Demon Spirit Powers without robbing them of their usefulness with a blanket cost increase and/or summoning cap.

That's one way of doing it, though the new Summon Demon has more than 4 sets. I'd probably arrange it by Tier, but otherwise, yeah that works. Though, some monsters you simply can't summon more than 1 of without taking several days off for your character. The ones that require that you make babies for them, for instance. Speaking of, that also brings up the intriguing problem of what the prices for male characters are going to be. Some of the monsters can just get rule 63'ed, but for Hellhounds and such, I'd have to change the added prices.

There are skills to resist Mages and Spirit users, but there are no skills to resist Succubus powers. For characters who so choose to resist temptation, perhaps a skill that resists succubus powers is proper?

Yes.

 

[thetwo]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

The ones that require that you make babies for them, for instance. Speaking of, that also brings up the intriguing problem of what the prices for male characters are going to be.

In the general spirit of a deal with the devil, substitutions should probably be allowed. Not that there shouldn't be an alternative prices, necessarily, but "you have puppies" could be "someone has puppies".

 

[Hafnium]

Re: PbP Interest Check(And OOC Thread)

Uneven Trade: I would make the argument that it gives similar benefits to Sudden Strike, only it ignores armor, and your target has to smack you in the face to activate it. >.>
Would having neither hit ignore armor (or just the player hit not ignoring armor) and subtracting it pre-multiplication (as normal, I believe) make it seem better? The original intention was something of a "hit me harder" version of Sudden Strike for warrior characters that weren't inclined to sneaking as much as hitting things, with a worse trade-off. Ignoring armor does kind of make them less equal though, I imagine.

I actually like that version of Terrify better!

Challenge was mainly intended as a "hit me, not my companion" skill for characters who have companions that they're attached to. >.> Maybe it could include a small penalty to attack for the challenged target? If that's too much of a pain to keep track of then maybe a -6, 8, or 10 attack penalty to the target. Of course, for maximum tracking simplicity I'm sure most warriors wouldn't mind trading that dodge for a +6, 8, or 10 attack boost against the challenged target, even if they didn't have a companion to protect.

Unrelenting Fury might be a bit silly for a skill, yeah. I'll be the first to admit that it was one of my least fleshed out ideas (and none of them were particularly well thought out, so that puts it in a league of its own). I blame frenzied berserkers. >.> Maybe remove the Game Over possibility and just have it as a passive skill in combination with rage that automatically grants temporary HP equal to your body score? Or, I suppose it could be rewritten entirely into a skill that uses the warrior's EP as temporary HP. If their EP hits 0 then they fall unconscious normally if their rage ends, otherwise they fight through until they hit 0 HP and fall unconscious then.

Have Powerful Embrace deal 1d10 that ignores armor and 2d10 that ignores armor in a Submission Hold? The idea was that it was passive so that the grappler could take other actions while doing chip damage. A bump up to 1d12 or maybe just a straight body/4 (and maybe double damage in a submission hold) might work too, though!

I was originally going to suggest that for Fling but thought it might be OP. If it gets your stamp of approval then it makes sense!

Slam: my logic was that it would break the submission hold and prone the target so that the character could get another attack in before it was able to hit them. Since I kind of figured that most people going for a KO on an enemy would probably go for a stranglehold against anything without massive resistance. An alternative, though, could be...

Something like this, maybe?
Slam (Activated) - SUPLEX THAT RAPIST. When the character has the target in a submission hold, they may choose to make an attack at 1d12 + Body/2 damage. In addition, they may trade grapple modifier to damage at a 1:1 ratio with a 20 cap.