Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

The present build (Continuance Effect based)

BMM42's build (page 38)

A different build (Submit in thread)

[Blade Master Model 42]

How does everyone feel about me setting up a thread for discussion of the new build, and only the new build over at the MSPA forums? I'd planned to only do so when we got some things done, but, well, so far we haven't gotten past a discussion point, for one reason or another.

[applesauce machine]

You could get more ideas that way. And you'd have more people who actually understand everything you're discussing, as opposed to the probably small group of people who check this thread regularly. It could be beneficial, though you may have a lot of good ideas you'll have to scrap because of the sheer volume of them. This is hypothetical though, as I have never been a part of that community so I don't know what you could expect.

Basically, I say go for it. Might be a good idea to link back to this thread too, particularly here so people reading can skip our non-RPG-build OOC shenanigans.

[SirAaronIII]

Really, it's your choice. Do what you think is best. If you do make a thread there, be sure to link it here so we can have a double thread linkage reacharound. Or something.

[Org]

Glad that's working for you so far.

I've started taking a look at things that need to be changed in the basic rules already listed in the PDF. I'm not going to talk much about the  additions posted on the last page of this thread, other than to say that aside from the Cosmos Aspect, we'll probably use most of that. I need to go over it with a more critical eye at a later time.

There was also a recent changelog for a lot of the aggrievements, right here, which will take precedent over what's shown in the class list in the previous link. Also, Mage and Prince crap.

Anyway, general 'Problem Areas' that I see with the PDF as is. If anyone has any differing view-points, of course, let me hear them.

Basic Equipment:

Precision Melee-kind - Should most likely be reworked, maybe taking the smaller of it's two damage types, and getting a ridiculous +4 precision bonus. As it stands, it's just like Bladed Melee kind, only more unpredictable, and more time-consuming to resolve.

Crushing Melee-Kind - A little too powerful as is. Perhaps restrict the precision bonus to +1 instead of +2. I believe this was planned originally by the first team for 1.2, but only for 2 handed mode, which doesn't make much sense to me. To close the gap a bit for 1 handed mode versus two handed, I'd say bring that up to d12 instead of d10. That also keeps it useful compared to Reaching Melee, which would otherwise be straight up superior to Crushing. As far as I remember, 1H Reaching/1H Crushing are the same? I don't think !H Reaching actually gets Reach, but I may be forgetting.

Light and Heavy Ranged Kind - I think these should have the same ranges; 10 for 1 handed mode, and 15 for 2 handed. Once you change that, its only a light trade for power or accuracy, rather than be forced to go in close to use Light versus Heavy.

Armors: Possibly might be worth Nerfing Light Armor ever so slightly. I think for almost all of us, Heavy Armor's speed penalty just isn't worth a 1 point increase to AC, which doesn't even happen for most of us. In fact, in Mimi's case, Heavy Armor is WORSE for her. Giving Light Armor only 2+Img Or Acu Modifiers might be more... balanced, particularly for players who draw Mgt and Plc mains. Light Armor users usually have much lower Hit Points overall than Heavy. I wouldn't change it.

Alchemized Item Traits: Most of these are pretty well thought out, but some don't look worthwhile, at least to me. some things could be changed.

Weapon Traits:

Elemental Infusion: This looks like a really weak set-up to me. It just doesn't seem like a worthwhile way to add damage, one point at a time, especially compared to hardened edge. Alternatively, we might consider changing it to a two tier trait, buyable at 2 and 3 points, and granting half level to full level damage. That might be slightly over-powered though. We might want to run the numbers on that. Elemental Infusion is actually usually better to get than Hardened Edge. Hardened Edge needs to be changed to cost more on how it changes the damage, not just what it is now.

Weapon Power Traits:

Multi-Attack: There are two of these. One attacks additional targets, and the other adds extra individual attack rolls. One needs to be renamed.

Esoteric Attack: Pretty vague. This one might be worth just removing.

I also propose a new Power Trait to be added.

Reliable: At a two point cost (maybe higher, up to 3 maximum, I'd think,) missing with the power would recharge it, allowing you to attack with it again. Of course, you wouldn't be able to use this with the Inescapable trait. Depends on what you mean by Inescapable. Inescapable wouldn't deal damage since it doesn't work cumulatively with Miss effects anyway.

Armor Traits:

Shield: The cost of this is too low to for the potential benefits, considering it functions as an additional set of armor for a measly .5 alchemy points, with the only downside being locking you in one handed abstratus mode. Frankly, I'm surprised no one took it. Or maybe I shouldn't be, since, in the case of characters who would grab it (i.e., Mimi) they are basically untouchable anyway. I say we either add some restrictions, like, say, the Shield item does not gain base armor benefits, and is merely a place to sack extra armor traits you couldn't drop on your armor proper. Alternatively, we could allow the base armor type benefits at half value, i.e +1 AC plus half you Acu or Img modifiers for a light shield. Last possibility would be to just throw the price through the roof, at like, 3 or 4 points. Not really sure by what you mean here; it is only a place to put some extra armor traits.

Tough: 3 points for +1 armor class? Seems expensive to me. Probably a little.

Elemental Aura: Should be updated to not affect Minions: Otherwise it toasts them easily. Which is one of the reasons to get it. I don't see any problem with this; Minions are meant to be toasted.

Armor Power Traits:

Soaring: Should require a duration purchase. It does for Item types that do this, and does so cheaper. NO. There are enough problems with Durationed Flying, Armor traits should only be until end of next turn.

Item Traits:

Miscellaneous: Needs some examples, and probably some guidelines for associated point costs.

________________________________________


Moving on. The Character Death section. It doesn't specify where character death occurs, or anything of that nature. The PDF is pretty stand-alone in a lot of other areas, so this is something worth mentioning there. 0 hit points is when a character is dying, and they must not fail more than 2 death saves to survive. If they reach the equivalent of negative their bloodied value hit points, they are dead, saving throws or not.

Also, the Entering the Medium section is very vague. It should mention skill challenge benchmarks that players should meet before going in, or suggestions for puzzles, or similar.

The section regarding the gates should be updated to more closely reflect canon. I'm willing to bet that most of you remember that discussion.

Underlings:

Aside from the inclusion of the enemies statted out since the release of 1.1, there needs to be a wider variety, and the inclusion of some enemies that have been seen, but are as yet unincluded. freeform statted out an enemy seen in the comic some time ago, and after some combat testing, I feel it'd make a good addition. The enemies John wipes out in Cascade are also probably worth adding, to give some late-game combatants, as the ones in there right now are only challenging up to level 8 or so, judging by their stats. Something to get in your way at 9th and even 10th level are worth having, but we won't need too many in those cases.

Another pressing matter is the inclusion of enemies with ranged option. The reason that that Restraining trait Org mentioned is such a game-breaker is that only the Basilisk underling has a ranged option before prototyping. Any character with Flight and a ranged-weapon is invulnerable very quickly. Giving Ogre's a fairly inaccurate boulder tossing ability could be a good start, for lower levels. An underling with dedicated range as it's base behavior would be a solid idea also, but it might need to be created from whole-cloth, and I don't know how I feel about that particularly.  REally, I think the main problem is the Restraining thing itself. More below.
In any case, more ranged options for the enemy would probably cut down on the bottleneck battles, and diversify how other battles are fought. All of the fights we have had so far mostly consist of both sides running up at each other and hitting the opponent as hard as they can possibly hit them until one side is dead. This is definitely at least partially my fault, but we haven't had much or any opportunity to really use the terrain in the game, and ridiculous ideas that turn battles on their head rely on that sort of thing, and are at the heart of any good TTRPG story you'd care to tell anyone.

Prototyping: Might be worth it to add some of the ones we created specifically for this game, just for the sake of completeness.

Well, that ended up being spectacularly long winded.

EDIT: Also, I now have a Steam, because of reasons.

All of my answers in bold.

In one of the last few rules talks we had, we thought of having a new Sylladex system, which you might find useful for ideas. The Card-getting thing is random; to draw alchemies, you have to make a roll. However, depending on whether you do or don't get alchemies, this can be a fight winner/breaker. If you draw like four Healing alchemies, you win. It is almost impossible to kill someone with that. Healing needs to be priced upwards, like 2.5(5) or something. Healing IS REALLY GOOD. Encounter Durations should either not be a thing, or should be priced super high. Resist should be priced higher, and maybe defense too. All these things are too good in combo, same with Flying.

On the underling thing, maybe. I'd probably just make an artillery based Ogre, or something. Or just make sure to have an artillery Prototyping. It isn't really an issue to me.

Sort of scattered

[SirAaronIII]

Spoiler: My thoughts: (click to show/hide)

- Precision meleekind should be changed. I think I said something about this before.
- Reaching is always 2-handed, but the user can decide to wield it treated as 1-handed for the defense boost or 2-handed for the reach. At least, that's what I thought.
- I feel like light armor is a bit too strong, but I don't want it to be changed because I'm a noob and I use it.
- All traits that have you make up an effect are really vague or useless. Most of what can be thought up can be replicated by other traits.
- Elemental Infusion is pretty weird to me in that it doesn't actually make an element, it just adds a bit of damage. Elements would be cool, but they'd also be too much work, so ignore that.
- Wait, does the shield add AC? I don't think so, but you can't be too sure. But yeah, if you stack up the abilities right, shields can be OP.
- Tough seems too expensive <== I agree with this statement
- Encounter-length powers are really strong for the cost <== I agree with this too

Basically, I agree with everything. Wow, what a productive post.

[Blade Master Model 42]

The Reliable trait discussion: The Inescapable trait added damage on a miss. If you can throw the attack over and over, and still do free damage on a miss, it's not viable.

Well, maybe it is. Together, they're fairly expensive.

Crushing Kind: If we change crushing kind's precision bonus down to one, it wouldn't be the same as reaching melee-kind anymore, just more inaccurate. Hence, my suggestion to change that. Also, yeah, 1 handed style Reaching Melee does not actually provide reach.

 Incidentally, yes, you do always use Reaching-kind with two hands, but one handed mode is more or less the same as defensive haft mode, so I don't see why another term is necessary. One handed is more or less a defensive method of wielding, and while you could imagine that as using one hand for balance or bare-handed parries, one could just as easily envision simply using a more defense than offense focused fighting style.

Though that's all flavor text.

Shield Trait: Really? I could have sworn it was treated as a straight up extra set of armor. I'll check that later.

Tough Trait: So, since we're in agreement that it is too expensive as is, do we reduce it to 1.5 points? 2?

Elemental Aura: I respectfully disagree. Minions are meant to be toasted, but, there is also meant to be effort involved. That's why minions have above average defenses for monsters of their level. They drop at a single hit, but they're slightly tougher to hit than other monsters. You shouldn't be able to kill them by standing next to them.

Soaring: Limiting Duration until the end of turn is also an option, and is nice and simple. I support that.

Encounter Duration costs: That's an excellent point, they are pretty cheap, considering you get flight, for example, for the remainder of the encounter, no matter how long that is, for little more than you pay to get that until the end of the round you activated it in. The problem with removing encounter durations altogether though, is how do you let characters have rocket-items? Everyone and their mom gets them in the comic. I suppose an out-of-encounter duration would also be an option but... That seems kind of gamey to me.

Healing Cost: Never ran into that issue myself, but it is on the cheap side, I guess. I don't have the PDF on the computer I'm on, but I'll way that against activation costs. I don't want to make it impossible for low level characters to have healing, since death seems to creep up on lower level characters faster.

Underlings: An Ogre variety dedicated to the artillery role had not occurred to me. I like it. I still like the idea of giving other Ogre's an at-will ranged attack. Basilisks could use one as well, though obviously absent of the immobilizing effect of the ranged attack they currently possess.

The problem with relying on additional artillery prototypings to give the GM ranged options, is there is no guarantee that players will choose to use the prototyping in question. Also, the only artillery prototyping we have now (from my memory), is the elemental prototyping, and that adds only an encounter ranged attack.

I think that's everything at the moment, but I'm really, REALLY tired as I type this.

[Johnfalcon99977]

I can try and think up some new prototypings. There are not enough as there should be, and some of them are too vauge as it is. I can't.promise effective balancing though.

[Blade Master Model 42]

I can try and think up some new prototypings. There are not enough as there should be, and some of them are too vauge as it is. I can't.promise effective balancing though.

Please do. Don't worry yourself too much about balance to start. Balancing and tier classification can be dealt with once the idea is hammered out.

[Johnfalcon99977]

Quick question, should I stick to things that would only work in canon (Dead/Doomed people and/or Humanoid), or should we just forgo Canon?

[Org]

The Reliable trait discussion: The Inescapable trait added damage on a miss. If you can throw the attack over and over, and still do free damage on a miss, it's not viable.

Well, maybe it is. Together, they're fairly expensive. Inescapable: "...unless the attack already has a Miss Effect. Doesn't work together.

Crushing Kind: If we change crushing kind's precision bonus down to one, it wouldn't be the same as reaching melee-kind anymore, just more inaccurate. Hence, my suggestion to change that. Also, yeah, 1 handed style Reaching Melee does not actually provide reach. Oh durr. I meant just leaving it at +2.

 Incidentally, yes, you do always use Reaching-kind with two hands, but one handed mode is more or less the same as defensive haft mode, so I don't see why another term is necessary. One handed is more or less a defensive method of wielding, and while you could imagine that as using one hand for balance or bare-handed parries, one could just as easily envision simply using a more defense than offense focused fighting style.

Though that's all flavor text.

Shield Trait: Really? I could have sworn it was treated as a straight up extra set of armor. I'll check that later. Not too my knowledge.

Tough Trait: So, since we're in agreement that it is too expensive as is, do we reduce it to 1.5 points? 2? Nah, too low. 2.5 is my guess. AC is targeted way too much to be just the same as one of the other Non-AC Defs.

Elemental Aura: I respectfully disagree. Minions are meant to be toasted, but, there is also meant to be effort involved. That's why minions have above average defenses for monsters of their level. They drop at a single hit, but they're slightly tougher to hit than other monsters. You shouldn't be able to kill them by standing next to them. I don't actually think Minions get above average defenses. *Checks Imp Minions* Doesn't look like it.

Soaring: Limiting Duration until the end of turn is also an option, and is nice and simple. I support that.

Encounter Duration costs: That's an excellent point, they are pretty cheap, considering you get flight, for example, for the remainder of the encounter, no matter how long that is, for little more than you pay to get that until the end of the round you activated it in. The problem with removing encounter durations altogether though, is how do you let characters have rocket-items? Everyone and their mom gets them in the comic. I suppose an out-of-encounter duration would also be an option but... That seems kind of gamey to me. No, you don't need one for out of encounter. You just have it out of encounter, you don't need a duration for it.

Healing Cost: Never ran into that issue myself, but it is on the cheap side, I guess. I don't have the PDF on the computer I'm on, but I'll way that against activation costs. I don't want to make it impossible for low level characters to have healing, since death seems to creep up on lower level characters faster. Temp health would be my guess than. Having Healing Surges/Second Winds for pretty cheap is a little OP, regardless of level.

Underlings: An Ogre variety dedicated to the artillery role had not occurred to me. I like it. I still like the idea of giving other Ogre's an at-will ranged attack. Basilisks could use one as well, though obviously absent of the immobilizing effect of the ranged attack they currently possess.

The problem with relying on additional artillery prototypings to give the GM ranged options, is there is no guarantee that players will choose to use the prototyping in question. Also, the only artillery prototyping we have now (from my memory), is the elemental prototyping, and that adds only an encounter ranged attack. Might want to reread those then/ There are a few more, and the Elemental has an at-will ranged. The thing with prototypings is you can sort of fluff them a little differently if you need to.

I think that's everything at the moment, but I'm really, REALLY tired as I type this.

[The Fool]

Shield doesn't add AC to my knowledge. What it does is it allows you to put more traits onto an item when you hold it at the cost of parry AC.

So why bother?

The way it's worded you can wear light armor and carry a heavy armor shield without taking the penalty to movement. I think it was intended as something to add to your armor without creating an entirely new set of armor, but the wording allowed you to abuse the armor-specific traits.

Personally I think a shield should SHIELD you, not just have traits. In D&D 3.5 (not really perfect balance, but still) you can use shields for AC at the cost of your ability to deal weapon damage. I think something similar would be nice.

[Org]

Shield doesn't add AC to my knowledge. What it does is it allows you to put more traits onto an item when you hold it at the cost of parry AC.

So why bother?

The way it's worded you can wear light armor and carry a heavy armor shield without taking the penalty to movement. I think it was intended as something to add to your armor without creating an entirely new set of armor, but the wording allowed you to abuse the armor-specific traits.

Personally I think a shield should SHIELD you, not just have traits. In D&D 3.5 (not really perfect balance, but still) you can use shields for AC at the cost of your ability to deal weapon damage. I think something similar would be nice.

No, I think you still have Auto-Parry. At least, I can't see anything which says you ca- Oh wait, it even mentions Shield in the Auto-Parry paragraph. Anyway, deciding on having a Heavy or Light Shield is only for the purposes of the traits you can take for it; it does not grant armor or speed penalties either way. Not too sure on what you mean by 'abuse' armor specific traits; you have to pay more for it, so I wouldn't really say it is abusing them. The only thing I really see is the initiative thing, and maybe the defense boosts.

So it does SHIELD you, and has traits. And by having to be 'locked' in 1H mode, you do trade damage for shielding.

Oh and I should correct myself on Soaring; I would just keep it the way it is. It is only meant for like a quick burst of speed to chase/charge/escape, just until the end of your turn.

[TherosPherae]

So nobody's posted in this thread for a bit.

I haven't done art in a bit.

I think you may see the correlation. By which I mean I'm doing both fairly poorly, but WHAT THE HEY

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Odds that this will become canon: rising....

[Blade Master Model 42]

Do people need a reminder of what they can do?

Emily and Mimi: You can continue in the direction you were already headed before ducking into the factory, or back, and head up that hill to the gate you spotted several pages ago.

But I think freeform mentioned being gone this weekend over at Weegee quest. Or something. I definitely remember a trip being mentioned.

Alex et all: Proceed to the 2nd gate at any time.

Troy: Finish battle in any way you choose.

Mikhael: Wait for Troy. Or join the battle, and risk death to speed it up.

[freeformschooler]

I am indeed going to be gone this weekend, for I am graduating high school. New York City, here I come!~