Suggestions

[Kathy]

Re: Suggestions

I'm not terribly worried about it, most of your system has been very balanced (or at least you've been balancing it as it goes when we discover imbalances, like the problem with insane damage magic spells). It was just a general first reaction to the idea.

P.S. Is there going to be ways to reduce/undo the effects of corruption?

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Suggestions

Possibly. I'm not exactly sure yet how I would implement that.

 

[Kathy]

Re: Suggestions

Just a couple stray ideas:
How about a special potion concocted out of the more valuable demon parts? This way players wanting to remove corruption will need to choose, a new shiney item from Mr. Trenchcoat, or getting rid of corruption. It would make for interesting RP choices, though typically since we get to choose our corruption, most of us would simply take the shiny new item.

Or here's a totally on crack idea. Have alternate "backlash" portals open occasionally. They last only a short time into a dimension that's the polar opposite of the demons. The beings of this realm refuse to set foot outside of it, claiming even our realm is too corrupt for them, but perhaps offer a form of corruption healing by absorbing their energies. (Good luck getting them to accept it though )

A bizarre 3rd option that just came to mind is create a special limited-use form of magic that is fueled by corruption, thus draining it from the caster's body (And likely ripping a huge chunk of health and energy out at the same time). Possibly as single-use or limited uses rare items. For example a throwing dagger someone picks up, if they have no corruption, it's just a dagger. But if they have at least 50 points of corruption, it begins to suck in light and energy around it, becoming a magical attack item that burns itself out of existance after a single attack. It's power could even be variable by how much corruption one has. Example, it could drain 10% of your total corruption, and gain that much damage in its attack (add a limit, say 10? 20?). So it's very powerful, but one-shot, and not incredibly unbalanced. It would even make sense for a few of these to be around since the demons would want a way to benefit from their own dark powers.


Just tossing ideas out randomly XD I doubt any but my first idea would even be taken for consideration.

 

[thetwo]

Re: Suggestions

You could get us a lesser daemon who will remove corruption for a price (XP? dark hearts? information?). Or just have Mathias do it.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Suggestions

1 and 3 are both possible, as is thetwos suggestion, but the problem is that removing the corruption would be more like complex surgery on your soul than emptying a bucket. So, all of them would basically result in temporary unconsciousness.

 

[Kathy]

Re: Suggestions

Temporary unconciousness would be a good backlash effect.

For potions or spells that produce the effect, it would allow the area to heal after the effect. And we're more likely to use it only in safe areas, such as a guarded church, or outside of town. Or if players ever finally make a safe-zone. Matthias is unlikely to hang around and protect people long enough for this to function.

As for unconsciousness, the corruption-powered items I suggested having a high cost in damage to body and spirit which would risk knocking the character out. And, of course, if a character KOs while the enemy isn't dead, you can be sure there will be a LOT of corruption to follow

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Suggestions

After realizing that Conjurer, Evoker, and Transmuter are almost completely useless, I've decided to increase their effects.

I'm also toying with a further upgrade to them: They would now grant 4th Level spells of any Element, so long as it belonged to that school.

Also, I've decided that there will be some way of removing corruption, as well as certain items like those Kathy suggested, you just have to find it.

Spoiler

11/26/09 - Increased the power of Blessing, Battle Aura, Nightmarish Image, and Dark Armor
12/7/09 - Increased the power of Pressure and noted that Hard Hitter can be taken multiple times, as well as increasing the cost of Whirlwind. (All Talents.)
12/13/09 - Changed the armor system to include Durability. Also added Splint Mail to bridge between Chain and Plate.
12/14/09 - Rest is from henceforth required to increase stats or take new Talents.
12/30/09 - Added Easy to Hit and Poor Grappler to the Flaws list.
1/14/10 - Changed Evoker, Conjurer, and Transmuter to have more dramatic effects. IE: Not useless. Also, I changed a few spell descriptions a bit to be more specific.

 

[thetwo]

Re: Suggestions

I'm not usually one to complain about buffs to me, but... >.>

Woah. +8 to one school of magic is useless? I mean, I'll admit it wasn't *that* useful in itself - better to get one of the elemental focuses for +10 and do all your damage with that element - but its real use is in stacking bonuses... most elements are at least 80% in the same school. If you get the school and element bonus together... that +18 is enough to push the level four spell to 100% success and the level five spell to tolerable chance of failure, given a typical Mind level.

+16 to an entire school, plus access to level 4 spells in that school, though... feels like a bit much?

What about this instead:

"For casting spells of this school, treat your mind as X higher then it normally is", where X is 16-20 or a fraction (half?) of your Mind stat. This would boost base casting for that school by 8-10, but also boost damage, and any "mind vs stat" checks.

If you want to talk about underpowered, look at "concentration": +5 to base casting. This is compared to "+4 to HP, +4 to SP, +4 to PP, +4 to dodge, +4 to resistance, and +4 to base casting" from 8 XP on mind.

My suggestion for "concentration" would be this:

"Ignore 3/4 of penalties to casting checks". Right now we have -4 for taking damage, -4 for grapple, and -12 for penetration. I'm not actually sure if the grapple/penetration ones stack, but even if they don't this would effectively provide up to +12 when you need it most (penetration + damage last round).

Also, I didn't really like the idea of taking corruption damage from casting spells (even in limited areas), but it occurs to me that you could instead make the caster take pleasure damage. This would give them the usual -4 penalty (for taking damage the previous round) plus they fail the spell if they orgasm, and are helpless the next round. A pretty good incentive to avoid magic, without permanent character damage. Maybe make the pleasure damage equal to the casting DC for the spell (12/16/22/30/40)? And obviously only in limited areas.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Suggestions

I like your idea better.

The Evoker, Conjurer, and Transmuter Talents would effectively increase Mind by 12 for spells of those schools.

Any others in favor? Any against?

Concentration I was actually considering just increasing to +8, but I'm not quite as sold on your idea for changing it as for the above. I'd give you half off though.

Much simpler and easier to deal with from a gameplay standpoint, but it wouldn't make as much sense from an RP standpoint. I'd include both though, with the pleasure inducing ones being significantly more common, as a compromise though. The former corruption inducing areas would only be in specific places on the other side of the gate, and would be meant to force players to hurry along.

 

[thetwo]

Re: Suggestions

I like your idea better.

The Evoker, Conjurer, and Transmuter Talents would effectively increase Mind by 12 for spells of those schools.

I just want to verify this one: effectively increase mind by 12, and therefore base casting by 6? (As opposed to the current +8 base casting, no effective mind increase)

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Suggestions

*Whacks self on head.
16. Keeping the base casting increase at +8 and upping the damage.

 

[thetwo]

Re: Suggestions

Heh, just making sure. Sweet.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Suggestions

Officially changing the Talents basically as thetwo suggested.

Edit: Also, Energy blade is being changed so that you can use it to attack the turn you active it. It's been something I've been meaning to do for a while, I just never got around to it.

Edit 2: Also, I changed a bunch of stuff in the rules thread, hopefully making it simpler and easier to read.

Spoiler

11/26/09 - Increased the power of Blessing, Battle Aura, Nightmarish Image, and Dark Armor
12/7/09 - Increased the power of Pressure and noted that Hard Hitter can be taken multiple times, as well as increasing the cost of Whirlwind. (All Talents.)
12/13/09 - Changed the armor system to include Durability. Also added Splint Mail to bridge between Chain and Plate.
12/14/09 - Rest is from henceforth required to increase stats or take new Talents.
12/30/09 - Added Easy to Hit and Poor Grappler to the Flaws list.
1/14/10 - Changed Evoker, Conjurer, and Transmuter to have more dramatic effects. IE: Not useless. Also, I changed a few spell descriptions a bit to be more specific.
1/17/10 - Changed Evoker, Conjurer, and Trasmuter AGAIN. Also, quickened Energy Blade.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Suggestions

Notice: I put in some new hopefully not game-breaking mutations. 2 of them are mostly cosmetic, one of them is sort of like pheromones, and the other two are pleasure increases that go off based on specific circumstances.

 

[Unknown Squid]

Re: Suggestions

I apologise for not scouring through all of this suggestions thread first, but I was wondering whether anyone has brought up the weapon system yet? Mainly the bashing/slashing/piercing set up.

My thought's looking at it are that while reasonably balanced early in the game, the further a characters Body stat increases the less useful any form of bladed weaponry gets. The pointy variety suffers especially. It doesn't actually take long before the club or mace becomes the ultimate weapon. I find it strange that a legendary spear user would end up attacking everything with the butt of their spear because the sharp end does a quarter of the damage with a petty average of 4 extra damage from the weapon itself to make up for the lower body based damage. Even someone with talents spent on an impressive claymore or fine katana would eventually find that the broken table leg beside them could actually do more damage if they were to break character and go munchkin.

I'm not going to have my character drop her blades and run around with dual clubs because of it. But unless I've missed something, it seems quite severely flawed.

 

[DeMatt]

Re: Suggestions

I think we're not expected to get that high of a Body stat. Since it's only a moderate advantage at 48 Body (24 + d2 = 24-26 avg. 25, vs. 12 + d12 = 13-24 avg. 18.5), and you only get 50 points to spend at character creation.

Though if you think about it, Unarmed gets even better than that with the talent, at 24 + 2 + d8 = 27-34 avg. 30.5. So really, your legendary spear user would be better off dropping his spear entirely and getting good with his fists.

Either that, or there're more magic swords floating around out there than there are magic clubs.

 

[Kathy]

Re: Suggestions

Reading up on everyone else's threads a bit and I notice in particular "Fire and Shadow (Dreana/DeMatt)" are having problems because a high-level enemy is too much for them.

As a suggestion, keep her "final" stats as your predetermined 220, but for leading up encounters, let her treat the fight as a joke and roll lower accordingly. She's obviously just teasing and toying with the pair.

Instead of requiring a roll of 20 to succeed at anything, you could fudge her stats to as low as necessary for a limited time, give the characters a few chances to force their escape, and as they neglect their task or fail to match other required rolls (such as freeing Gab), the demon slowly feels bored with her game and puts more effort into defeating the pair.

For example, give her a 50 (instead of 70) rolls to hit (and appropriately low rolls to stop spells cast on her). It would treat her like a multi-form boss from a Final Fantasy game for example, each weaker form they beat makes her laugh it off and get slightly tougher, until they either force her into a final-form (her full 220) or they manage to escape her.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Suggestions

@Squid: The reasoning behind the system as it is: The amount of damage a very strong person can do increases faster when using a bludgeoning weapon than when using a slashing or piercing weapon. The piercing and slashing weapons generally have higher damage dice, which usually results in a higher damage potential but lower average. So far, the only problem I've seen is that piercing seems to need a little boost to even it out, and I've also been thinking of changing around the damage dice a little, but I have yet to actually get around to doing it.

The original numbers were actually X/3, X/4, and X/5, but I found that piercing weapons often did negligible damage under those.

@Kathy: That's basically what I'm doing, but there's only so far that I can make her sink. A full powered pissed off Natalie would have ko'ed both of them as soon as they broke free, rather than waiting a turn and only binding one of them. That, and I don't want to recalculate the HP/EP/Pleasures. Another part of the reason I put up the 20 rule was also due to laziness on my part, since I don't want to have to look up all the numbers and crunch 'em out for every action, and THEN come up with an arbitrary opposed number that they can beat. I will say that I should have made it 15 or something else easier to get at than 20 though.

And her original dodge was 220. Her stats total to 400. The thing is, it wouldn't be in character for her to just let them run away if they escaped, she'd go after them immediately, or at the very least make sure they didn't get out of hell (for lack of a better name for it.) As is, they only have to survive long enough for Geralt to show up with backup, which is another 5 rounds, including the next one.

Edit: also, I'm seriously considering getting rid of the +10 to pleasure for penetration, because it's been screwing quite a few people lately.

 

[DeMatt]

Re: Suggestions

And her original dodge was 220. Her stats total to 400. The thing is, it wouldn't be in character for her to just let them run away if they escaped, she'd go after them immediately, or at the very least make sure they didn't get out of hell (for lack of a better name for it.) As is, they only have to survive long enough for Geralt to show up with backup, which is another 5 rounds, including the next one.

Huh... Geralt fetched the cavalry, and even has a fair idea of where to take it? Now I feel better about having Alisa trying to run and abandon Shadowcat.

Though part of me is curious about what Natalie'll do about Alisa going through the wall... will she take the time to run around inside the building, teleport into the room, or simply smash through the weakened part? (It's only her Body versus 48-plus-dice, after all...)

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Suggestions

Geralt doesn't have any idea where he's going once he gets past the gate. Matthias does though.

I'm actually thinking on that one as well. She can shape the stone herself, blast a hole in it, or just shadow through it, but which one is a bit of a coin toss. That, and she'd be torn between playing with Shadowcat for a while before going after you or making sure that Alisa and Gab don't get away.