Suggestions

[TentanariX]

Re: Suggestions

I like it. As going straight to horny alot of times has been known to derail a thread or cause hang ups due to instant or sudden smut. I think slowing it down a bit would be beneficial to writing and story purposes.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Suggestions

This might seem like a heretical suggestion but...I think the Strong Of line should be changed to give +4 instead of +8, especially if there's a switch to allowing 5 flaws for 5 talents (for 10 total talents) in mind.

I know it's balanced against 2 exp for 2 stats but I don't think it actually needs to be, considering that it's a boon for character creation only. Its current incarnation is powerful enough that many of the secondary stat boosting talents have had to be balanced to compete with it, allowing for some other ridiculous specializations by stacking them.

As of current, if you take one talent in Strong Of in your main stat, you immediately gain:
+8 to HP/PP/EP
+4 to HP and/or PP and/or EP
+4 Resistance
+4 Attack
+4 Dodge
(In the case of Body) +8 Stealth, Perception, Grapple. +4 Damage. Small bonus to speed.
(In the case of Mind) +8 to Trap and Item finding. +4 Base Casting. Varying bonus to spell damage.
(In the case of Spirit) Not as much benefit here. +8 to Perception if you're a spirit wielder. 1.6 increase to your spirit ceiling though, I suppose.

A change to 4 would halve all of that.

8 to a stat is a pretty huge gain compared to the monsters as well. A person with 30 in their main stat isn't nearly as capable as a person with 40 when it comes to taking on beasties, another 10 and you might be fighting knights on pretty even ground. Plus, as alluded to earlier, because of the power of Strong Of talents, talents like Stealth, Perceptive, Resistance, etc. have been changed to make them more competitive with Strong Of, which means that people can go the opposite way and do ridiculous stuff like dump 5 talents into Resistant and have a 50:50 or better chance of charming an angel. Maybe they could be toned down just a little bit without making them unpalatable selections if such a change were implemented.

I know that even with this nerf, people could still dump 2 xp into stats for the exact same gains as Strong Of offers now. At least 2 xp at a time or doing so during rest periods only seems a little more...I don't know, earned, I guess? Not insanely powerful off the bat.

Just a thought, anyway, after comparing the general power level of characters with ten talents (and those that make good use of the strong of talents) against enemies like knights and even some of the boss tier creatures. I guess creatures might be getting stronger too, though, which would make this something of a moot point.

Edit: Also, maybe mutated should be a talent instead of a flaw now? Most of the stuff gained from it seems to be beneficial, if sometimes a trade-off, currently.

 

[Hentaispider]

Re: Suggestions

Well, the talents are supposed to reflect XP costs. 2 XP= 2 points to ability 8 XP = one talent. Better idea would be to restrict the number of a single talent one can stack at character creation. Perhaps so that one can only take any talent or flaw three times, max. That would also stop people from making a character with 15 mutations and 0 corruption.

 

[Unknown Squid]

Re: Suggestions

Whilst the premise of being handed some extra potential talents is at first alluring, I am wondering if the balance of the game can handle this? It's a rather big change really. The new rules allow for some very powerful characters out of the box now. If it's simply a case of allowing a way to pick up extra flaws, then I've had a suggestion in my head for a while now that I never got round to voicing before.

I had the idea that it could be allowed to pick up extra flaws, beyond the (previous) there flaw limit, but without receiving any extra talents for it.

With the exception of Mutated, which can most often be used to very beneficial ends, this would allow some extra character flair without shifting the balance too much. I also like Spiders sugestion regarding flaw capping. Three seems a good number, and solves the 'Mutated' issue in my suggestion there.

Like Haffnium says, if the balance of all the friends, foes and creatures are getting rebalanced too, then this is less of an issue. Though I would still have the concern in that case that the 1d20 quickly starts to look like a rather feeble dice that way.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Suggestions

@The general response to more Flaws: That's more or less what I was hoping to hear, really. I do like Squid's idea of letting people take the 2 Flaws without getting more Talents though, so I suppose I can allow that.

@Hafnium's idea: In DG1, the Strong of Talents gave 6 of whichever stat. That was insufficient, hence the jump up to 8, and all of the other Talents got something of a power boost from that as you pointed out. I'm on the fence about lowering it again, but I suppose some more input might be good.

 

[AshPrince]

Re: Suggestions

I wanted to if I could, suggest a few things along player-diet.

First a status effect to tie it all together:

Sickened: Basically a smaller version of Weakened a -1d4 penalty to all non-damaged rolls. A character cannot have multiple instances of this status. When the penalty exceeds the character's Body stat, they cannot move. When the penalty exceeds the character's Mind stat, they cannot speak. When the penalty exceeds the character's Spirit stat, they cannot use Powers or Cast spells.

Normally inflicted when the character eats non-good for you food, raw or uncooked meat, the flesh of aliens stuff like that, but it could also be inflicted by creature auras like Stench or stuff like that. Probably subject to a Resistance Check.

Then a flaw

Discerning Pallet: The character is use to the finer things in life, when not eating refined, or at very least cooked food, they become Sickened for 1d6 turns.

A talent

Iron Gut: The character is capable of eating things which would normally upset their digestion without become sick. This does not excuse the penalties from Herbivorous or Carnivorous, but does provide a +5 bonus to those checks.

and a couple of mutations

Gluttonous: (possibly might make a better flaw) The character is afflicted with a ravenous appetite and must eat something ever # turns or make a Resistance Check to become Sickened, the character incurs a -1 penalty to their Resistance Check for every turn after # they go without eating.

Carnivorous: The character is incapable of gaining sustenance from herbs or plants, whenever they eat such food (anything other than meat) they must roll a Resistance Check or become Sickened.

Herbivorous: The character is incapable of gaining sustenance from meat or flesh, whenever they eat such food (anything other than plants) they must roll a Resistance Check or become Sickened.

 

[Unknown Squid]

Re: Suggestions

It's some interesting input but, personally, I can't see those making much of an impact on any character or thread. Food has never been a strong element of the game, nor had any other mechanical effects. It always been allowed to assume a starting character starts with enough assorted rations to last them through the course of the game, or even had food glossed over altogether unless a specific encounter involving it crops up. A warrior with 60 or 80 modifier to hit would hardly much miss an average of 2.5 off their rolls, and that dice would have to be rolled each time, adding extra dice work for very little effect.

There's the small RP element to it, but unless it was something genuinely significant and worth enough to encourage players to spend a talent on, most of that stuff can already be handled via pure RP and back story.

Also, "become Sickened for 1d6 turns" would mean about 5 to 30 seconds. Unless it's a food fight, running into battle that soon after dinner seems unlikely. '-'

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Suggestions

@The aroused status idea:

Having a status like this idea is good. Though, I would reduce it to just a -10 penalty to all non-damage, non-Resistance rolls for simplicities sake. Also, effects that damage Resistance could be forced to go through the Resistance twice, but only after the character was already aroused would the effects actually cause their effective Resistance for Resistance checks be decreased.

So, it would look like:
Aroused: The character takes a -10 penalty on non-damage, non-Resistance rolls, as they are distracted by their lust.

The change to Pheromones is interesting, but also complicated and potentially crippling to a character's allies, so I'm not quite sure about that just yet.


@The lack of secondary stats not reliant on Body:

I'd like to change this.
Right now, my idea is to change Perception to just rely on Mind instead of Body.
Any other suggestions on this front might be good.


@AshPrince's idea:

I don't want to include food in DG mostly because, while it is realistic and deep, that's not likely to come up extremely often, and generally not particularly important or interesting. So far, I've been handling it from an RP perspective, and I think that's how I'll keep it. Thanks for the input though!

 

[xgkf]

Re: Suggestions

I'm fine with whatever you need to do with my Aroused Status idea to make it work, if you want to use it. You'd know how to balance of the numbers and mechanics of your own game better than I would, after all.

For the Pheromones alteration, maybe adding a "Characters that are already Aroused are not affected by Pheromones." stipend would make it less crippling, that way it wouldn't allow the condition to progress all the way to Horny by itself, or prevent it from wearing off after the 3 turns due to continued Resistance damage.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Suggestions

Two quick suggestions.

1) Allow foreplay through clothing. Reduce the PP damage taken by the character by DU*2 or DU or even Armor.

Reasoning: Eh, there's not really any hard reasoning on this one and the game would surely survive with or without it. It's just a thought so that more rape-oriented characters and creatures have an option available to start draining EP or whatever before they get to the task of removing any hindering clothing.

2) Cap the amount of EP that Drain through Pain can grant. A few possible options include setting a hard cap on the drain amount (i.e. no more than 5 drained each round), a cap on the overall amount that it can restore (i.e. Drain through Pain won't grant any EP above 1/4th a character's EP total, or something similar), a mixture of both, or maybe reducing it to something like damage dealt/10 instead of /4.

Reasoning: Most characters seem to be more than capable of dealing *at least* 50 damage. With Drain through Pain 50 damage becomes 13 EP, which is more than capable of sustaining a non succubi's needs. Given that some of the characters more focused on dealing damage will be reaching numbers like 300 damage and draining 75 EP, it seems a bit intense as is, even given the rapid nature of combat. /10 would dampen those numbers significantly, at least, but it would only really hinder the lower damage characters' ability to sustain spirit buffs and the like indefinitely, which is why I thought that a hard cap on the amount that could be regained might be in order (also because of certain slime characters >.>).