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RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)


Tassadar

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Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

The way that MAF described is actually how DG normally works, where Perception is concerned.

A group gets ambushed, one member spots it, they get to react (get a turn) while the rest get caught flat footed. As for jumping in front of things, you can already move to take an attack for people under the rules, or use Full Defense or Defensive Fighting to try and defend them. There is a Teamwork skill that makes a person better at doing such already.
 
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Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

Indeed how DG normally works, but in TotE, that rule now applies globally. There's no moment where someone can spot ahead and have his bonus apply to his friends in a given scenario that is meant to test a single player's perception and punish them for loss. If 2/3rds of the PC's have low perception, then they shall suffer 2/3rds of the punishment as a whole. The one prepared PC obviously managing to avoid the danger.

Unfair for a group, but fair for someone solo. Tis tough balancing all that out while making a temple for both solo and multiple players at the same time.
 
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Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)



Link above will direct you to a read-only version of what I've done so far. It also goes to show that when I said that the events would be the meat of the game, I wasn't kidding. It's even taking longer than I expected, mostly because I've at least got to try and make everything interesting. I'm not sure if I'm doing more than I need to, or if I'm using all of my brain power and making nothing interesting. I'm mostly just making stuff that I want to at this point.

Also, pondering about how the Classes should perform in TotE

  • Who is Your Class, and What Does he Do?
Classes of DG really complicate things. I mean, they REALLY complicate things. I mean, THEY COMPLICATE EVERYTHING. With the exception of Warrior, I suppose. Though that's obvious.

But let me go over my thoughts of each class.

Warrior

The cool thing about warriors is that they're pretty simple. Easy to play, easy to use in almost any setting or game type. The general rule is to wear lots of armor, and hit things with very sharp, very heavy things until they die. In TotE, the same rule applies. But where TotE allows them to really shine is during Enemy encounters. When a standard bunch of dudes show up to fight, most Warriors will be able to flip them over without too much trouble, as their impressive amount of skills should aid with almost any situation. They crush mooks without much worry, but where they might start having some problems is with single, really tough enemies and bosses. Basically, the real threat to a Warrior's life is another, bigger Warrior. Or a giant nuke to the face from a spirit caster, provided they didn't invest in dodge.

So, the concept behind Warriors is that they thrive during Enemy encounters.

Spirit Wielders

These guys are in a strange spot, but nowhere near as strange as Mages. We'll get to that in a moment. For now, let's discuss the issues the Spirit Wielder has. For one, they tend to be very squishy. Enemy encounters tend to rock one way or the other in terms of which party gets the first attack. For Spirit Wielders, it really sucks not to go first, but so long as they do go first, everything tends to die without much fuss. They also don't lose much EP for their troubles often enough. Though the issue is if they get the chance to land their super powers. It's hard to determine a method of how to treat these guys.

Generally, Spirit Wielders are Boss Bombers, from what I can tell. But while they share weaknesses with their strengths, are they too strong outside of an RP setting? I'm having difficulty answering this question as I go on. There doesn't seem to be a consistent formula for Spirit Wielder weaknesses either. I'm not sure how to handle this so that they're a valid choice, not a MUST or a trash choice. My goal is to make Spirit Wielders a playstyle choice alone. Your chances of winning should hardly be affected.

Mages

Mages, I thought were going to be my greatest concern. They seemed to have all the weaknesses but none of the strengths, untilTassI realized their true potential. They're problem solvers! Indeed, much like Warriors who have many solutions for Enemy encounters, Mages are granted the ability to handle Events with far less risk. Their spells allow for low cost solutions and ensured better results. Mages manipulate the dice of events to make them fall where they like. Mages can usually acquire Followers this way, which greatly aid with Enemy encounters. It's best they don't get ganked from behind by Weight Lifters with Oiled Abs though.

Succubi

A class that's decent all-around, and always benefits from meeting enemies that want to stick their penises into them. For now, I'll say that playing a succubus in TotE is easy mode. Their only drawback is being charged more exp for non-succubus talents, a drawback that's lessened by their natural reduction to such costs. I won't bother trying to work around these guys, I've got enough on my plate with Spirits and Mages. This class is entirely for fun until future notice.
 
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Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

  • Doshnarii, Grab it While ya can Lads
I've been dancing around the issue for a while, as to what I want the denarii rewards to be. There doesn't seem a sweet spot for me to find, so I'm going with an experimental value for now. We'll see if I have to adjust it or something in the future.

Low Denarii: 5 dosh + 5*current level (Meaning 10 doshnarii at level 1)

Moderate Denarii: 10 + 10*level (20@level 2)

High Denarii: 15 + 15*level (30)

The rewards will be randomized so you won't always get boring static amounts.
 
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Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

  • Bosses and Poor Design Choices
Bosses and their fluff are easy enough to design and think of. They may not be interesting and possibly are pretty hit-or-miss, but that's just reading about them. What I'm thinking about are stats. I need to make Bosses follow a certain formula, and unfortunately, Bosses in DG have the same problem I've encountered with PC's. They die too fast. A proper PC can explode a Boss without breaking a sweat. Their HP values are often within a threshold that allows them to be incinerated unless the PC is incapable of doing so. One argument against this is that Bosses can buff themselves. Well, at that point they're close to invulnerable against your attacks, and it's hard to determine the sweet spot of where a boss should be in terms of toughness using Buffs and the like. I'm already planning to make Boss Fights be against multiple enemies who act as the Boss, which solves a few problems. But here I'm talking about a single character fighting against a trio of PC's. Despite being outnumbered, he's gotta be scary.

  • Solution 1: Just Give Them More Health
I find a lot of developers do this with their bosses. They make a moderately challenging fight against a single foe and give them lots of health to try and make this stretched out, epic fight. This is a bad design choice because it's lazy, to put it simply. Does it work? Kinda. Are players happy about it? Sometimes not, although personally I've sometimes enjoyed a boss who was very meaty, because there was a strange thrill about using my most powerful methods of damage to GRIND their massive HP bars away. Something thrilling about turning something really tough into massive meat chunks. Though just because I've enjoyed it, doesn't mean others will. I've heard plenty of complaints about bosses that are only hard because they have lots of HP.

  • Solution 2: Give them Buffs
The Bosses will have much lower HP, but higher defensive values that give them more abilities to survive beyond just taking Five Meteors to the face in order to die because they have a thousand HP. This kind of boss requires way more thought, because it's so easy to make a boss that's either too weak or too strong. A boss with high AV can be dealt with if you have the tools to punch through that armor, but what about the PC who didn't do well enough, or isn't equipped good enough to deal with Armor? They're pretty screwed, and it can be frustrating. No boss should be so tough that you can't deal with them just because of your build. Otherwise, the roll for which boss you get would likely be a 25% chance that you straight up lose against. You should lose because you were silly, or because you were overall unlucky, not because of a single roll that amounts to the insta-death that was discussed much earlier and decided was a terrible design plan.

That's all I can think of for now.
 

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Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

  • Bosses and Poor Design Choices
Bosses and their fluff are easy enough to design and think of. They may not be interesting and possibly are pretty hit-or-miss, but that's just reading about them. What I'm thinking about are stats. I need to make Bosses follow a certain formula, and unfortunately, Bosses in DG have the same problem I've encountered with PC's. They die too fast. A proper PC can explode a Boss without breaking a sweat. Their HP values are often within a threshold that allows them to be incinerated unless the PC is incapable of doing so. One argument against this is that Bosses can buff themselves. Well, at that point they're close to invulnerable against your attacks, and it's hard to determine the sweet spot of where a boss should be in terms of toughness using Buffs and the like. I'm already planning to make Boss Fights be against multiple enemies who act as the Boss, which solves a few problems. But here I'm talking about a single character fighting against a trio of PC's. Despite being outnumbered, he's gotta be scary.

  • Solution 1: Just Give Them More Health
I find a lot of developers do this with their bosses. They make a moderately challenging fight against a single foe and give them lots of health to try and make this stretched out, epic fight. This is a bad design choice because it's lazy, to put it simply. Does it work? Kinda. Are players happy about it? Sometimes not, although personally I've sometimes enjoyed a boss who was very meaty, because there was a strange thrill about using my most powerful methods of damage to GRIND their massive HP bars away. Something thrilling about turning something really tough into massive meat chunks. Though just because I've enjoyed it, doesn't mean others will. I've heard plenty of complaints about bosses that are only hard because they have lots of HP.

  • Solution 2: Give them Buffs
The Bosses will have much lower HP, but higher defensive values that give them more abilities to survive beyond just taking Five Meteors to the face in order to die because they have a thousand HP. This kind of boss requires way more thought, because it's so easy to make a boss that's either too weak or too strong. A boss with high AV can be dealt with if you have the tools to punch through that armor, but what about the PC who didn't do well enough, or isn't equipped good enough to deal with Armor? They're pretty screwed, and it can be frustrating. No boss should be so tough that you can't deal with them just because of your build. Otherwise, the roll for which boss you get would likely be a 25% chance that you straight up lose against. You should lose because you were silly, or because you were overall unlucky, not because of a single roll that amounts to the insta-death that was discussed much earlier and decided was a terrible design plan.

That's all I can think of for now.
While this is certainly a problem, though one that I have worked around before, but the problems with fighting against high power enemies were the reason I switched from static values to dice for DG4. It most likely won't be as big a problem as it is if you were running this in the current mechanics. Even with buffs, bosses won't be invulnerable like they easily could be in current DG. Also, with minimum hit damage and the ability to attack armor to get rid of it, anyone can chip down a high AV boss eventually, though such is obviously not optimal. Generally, a boss could justifiably have some gimmick by which the characters could defeat or weaken them, but that is also more work and potentially invites metagaming.
 
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Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

Metagaming in the role play sense, given TotE's nature, can be forgiven on a much larger scale due to how the narration works often enough for enemies and bosses. In their descriptions, their strengths and weaknesses will be revealed in order to justify characters making the decisions the players want them to. The enemies will be fairly tailored to be obvious about who they are and what they do.

Can also be forgiven in light of how simple TotE is. As well, the fluff behind TotE suggests that Elder Hunters are knowledgeable enough to identify threats instead of being confused a bunch. So, I give the players a lot of knowledge and they can do with that what they will, without worry of the common Metagaming issue in RolePlaying.
 

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Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

This is why so many bosses in various games do more than simply make them more powerful versions of regular monsters. Totally new mechanics can make each boss feel unique, but thats probably more work than you want. Instead, you could try simpler things like HP shielding.

For example, perhaps a demon knight is wearing some extremely thick armor. This armor is so thick that it can block any attack made, but certain actions can strip the armor off. A powerful enough attack (physical, magical, or spiritual) can simply knock the armor off, while a sneaky character might have to do some rolls to get close enough to unhook the armor's latches, letting it fall off. The boss' strength could then be modified by how many levels of armor it has, i.e. how many successful armor stripping attacks need to be made for it's HP to vulnerable.

That's a pretty straightforward example, and depending on the players strength it can still suffer from the same issues. It also requires you to effectively spell out how the character has to "solve" the fight, though the fights themselves are fairly simple right now anyway.
 

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Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

  • Solution 1: Just Give Them More Health
  • Solution 2: Give them Buffs
  • Solution 3: Give them more brains

This one is the most difficult, but potentially the most rewarding. Maybe the mooks with bows will stand there and shoot you until you close to melee, then switch to a sword... while a boss will use his own move actions and abilities to stop you closing with him, or even switch to sword and charge you if you're especially strong at range. They'll lay traps and use the terrain to their advantage where a normal mob would stand around looking stupid. They'll make full use of a wide range of abilities, or have allies on hand that compliment their lacks, in the same way that you've proposed complimentary companion NPCs for the PC's. They'll attack the healer/DPS first, instead of the tank.
 
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Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

Roughly, I plan to make four bosses to represent each of the classes. The mage would fall into this catagory of puzzle fights, as often enough, they'll be fairly squishy and will have traps and such set up in order to defeat you, while likely also summoning help as well. Victory conditions for such a fight could include making them run out of EP (if you're totally lost and dunno how to win), or making it past their gauntlet to personally slap their face.

Warrior boss battles will be fairly straight forward, though sometimes with boss gimmicks and the like, likely depending on if they're gonna be a stealth warrior or not.

Succubi battles, might make them more RP inclined. One Succubus boss might make you a deal, give something to get something. They'll take something of yours (XP for example), and offer you something (passage + a beneficial promise). Then, trusting ye succubus would be a risk. They could live up to their end of the bargain, or cheat you. Or drain you since you're willing and then fight you after weakening you considerably.

So, I aim to have a bit of variance. Some straight forward fights, some gimmick fights. For Floor 1, I have planned:

Warrior: A Meathead, tall giant dude who wants to punch and slam you around.

Mage: Puzzle fight, gotta get around traps.

Spirit User: Doesn't actually fight you, instead summons minions you need to beat up while she remains protected. Can try to bust through the protection or fight her minions until she runs out of juice. Either way, you gain access to her glorious chambers and can enact sexy/brutal justice upon her.

Succubus: She acts like she's in the same boat as you, but is desperate for Energy in order to escape, and asks for your energy. Refusing her results in a normal fight. Accepting, you may offer her various amounts of energy, the higher you give her, the higher chance she'll let you pass without trouble. But if she turns on you, you'll be without that much energy, and with status effects depending on how much you gave her.
 
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Re: RJ's DG4-Temple of the Elders (Ponderings and plans)

  • Solution 3: Give them more brains
The problem with that solution is that because the dice determine what enemies do, it'd be like programming AI for the bosses to account for lots of stuff potentially. TotE is simple at heart, it cannot compete with the likes of standard DG in terms of how in depth things can get as far as enemies, role play, and plot. I don't expect TotE to feel like playing DG. It has it's own tempo, and it's not as large or grand as DG, where a human decides the story, not dice (mostly, excluding those times Tass flips a coin to determine whether your NPC's die).
 
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