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[NJW2000]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=160708.0

All this talk of exploits and munchkinnes has reminded me of something I've been planning to test. Anyone fancy being a conniving tinkerer and trying to eliminate all risks?

[spazyak]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=160708.0

All this talk of exploits and munchkinnes has reminded me of something I've been planning to test. Anyone fancy being a conniving tinkerer and trying to eliminate all risks?

Sure, gimme a couple hours (in school currently) and several cups of tea, green or white preferably, have had plenty of black and decided to go bacl

[piecewise]

Yeah, I think it's OP as is.  The best fix would probably be to simply lower the amount you regen from human parts; right now, you regen 75% of your max every turn, assuming you have all your original parts.  That means humanity is less of a stat and more of a very quickly regenerating mana or stamina bar.

As for spd weapons, if they have the same base damage as str weapons, they're OP.  You pretty much can't make multiple str attacks, because that requires branching into speed on the same limb that's focused on str, and spending more stat points on spd.  If I have +139 spd, I get four guaranteed attacks, quadrupling damage, regardless of who I'm hitting.  With Str, I get one attack, and have to rely on my foe having low dodge to do massive damage.  Also, if they only have one dodge roll, my success is more luck based, and easier for them to use special abilities to mitigate (note that my char can make two dodges at 169, while forcing three dodges).  Multiple attacks are also more useful for many weaker opponents, or for sandpapering through many weak limbs, or for applying status effects that aren't damage based.

Not to mention that having high spd means you also have high dodge.  I've been avoiding bringing that up (and building a str char) because you haven't given rules on how armor works.  Maybe str-builds are much more viable due to armor, if it's objectively superior to dodging.

...Damn ninja.

Yeah...Hmm. The question is how to handle the "tick", how to determine the speed. We could do it so that every 10 points in heart decreases the tick by 1 turn. So 1-10 is a ten turn tick and 100 is once a turn. Or we could do it so that speed never changes and that you just regen higher points per regen. Either way, the current humanity regen is far too high.

Doesn't that assume that you're going full strength or full speed instead of some mix? Like, couldn't I put a fair amount of points in strength and some in speed and get 2 or 3 strikes in? I have 230 points or so to dump in, that's 50 in each if spread evenly, more if uneven. Getting 60-70 in both speed and str would be pretty easy, and thats before part bonuses. So you wouldn't get 100 in either, but you can get pretty high. This is honestly just making me want to give you less points.

[syvarris]

Maybe just divide the number of humanity points you get by ten, and keep track of fractional points?  I think that would be easier than incrementing a tick every turn.

It does assume you're going full strength or full speed, because in general that's smartest.  Dodging gets more useful the better you are at it (+10% chance to dodge is more meaningful stacking with 80% chance than 0% chance), as does attacking with either stat.  To ensure even one multiattack, you need 99 spd minus the speed bonus on your attacking limb; since part stacking is so heavily penalized, it's harder to justify trading a strength part for a speed part.  Multi-attacking comes as a costless bonus to a spd build, but is very expensive for a str build.  We aren't being given too many points, because there's also int and heart, and you can only really make two stats have a high level.  Make yourself into a combat juggernaut?  Great, good luck attaching limbs with your low heart and int.


Hmm.  I am assuming it's best to ensure you can land all your multiattacks.  For a speed build, that's true, as you're only increasing damage by 15% if you get a seventh, but a str build getting a second multiattack is doubling their damage.  Against another strength user, it's a bad idea if there's any significant chance of failure, because they deal their normal damage plus fifty if you fail, but against a speed user they're just getting one more scratch in.  Hmm.  That might tip the favor a bit more towards strength, as it's essentially passive defense against people taking a risk against you.  I still think spd is better though, for the utility of multiple attacks and dodging.  I'm not gonna actually do any math before you finish the system, at least, because there could be compounding mechanics which completely change things.

[piecewise]

So problems that are coming up in this so far:

1. Starting levels seem like they might be too high, which could make evolution of characters difficult. Could change this by dropping starting points and lowering target numbers to match.

2. Speed is op. Common problem in lots of games, really. Multi-attacks and dodging on one stat, not to mention making it an attack stat, means it just does too much and is too good. We might fix this by removing Speed weapons  and just running everything off strength for attack. We could constrain attacks, but then small, quick weapons suffer. We could split dex and speed into two, having speed handle attacks and dex handle dodge and attack.

3. Humanity regens far too fast as is and it's difficult to make it regen slower without getting into strange stuff. We could make it so that humanity regens on a tick. We could make it so that humanity only regens by killing monsters, that could be a good one.

[Egan_BW]

Split Speed into Speed and Dex. Dex handles multiattacks and Dex weapons, Speed handles dodging and mobility.
Also, maybe make it so you can't just shit your human parts around and keep the humanity regen? syv's human-beasts don't seem very human to me. Makes more sense to me if you only regen off of things being in their right places.

[piecewise]

Looking at it again, 1 isn't so big of an issue if we follow the level up system in the d100 system as it says (basically you get d5 points into one stat at a level up. so the process is pretty gradual). Though it still strikes me as odd that people could 100% a stat from spawn. Especially because they'll keep getting bonuses via new parts, which could make them potentially very op. I'm thinking that maybe leveling in the standard way shouldn't be a thing. That or bonuses from parts need to be pretty tightly constrained. a guy with +180 effective strength might kind of break the game in half for normal checks. Vs monsters I can just keep adding more stat points to them, so it's not really a problem for combat.

I'm thinking that yeah, splitting stats up a bit might help more; though it does make it a bit hard to get all those parts into a normal human body without making the human parts super good or having functional parts pull double duty. Hands giving dex bonuses, for instance. Maybe the normal human body parts should actually give NO bonuses besides regen. Otherwise human parts are already pretty powerful and you'd need really powerful demon bits to make getting rid of them worth while. Human parts are unique in that they regen humanity, you want to keep them because otherwise you become the demons, john. And it would give people good reason to ditch some of their bits while also making it so that no one could sy it up and just break the game on spawn.

Hmm. Break up stats to make the individual stats less powerful...Human parts have no bonus....That just leaves the question of limiting humanity regen. Keeping track of fractions or turn counters would be annoying so lets not do that....Oh, what about having it be a fraction of your total rounded up? Like you regened 10% of your max humanity per turn, rounded up? And have your total be related to your total human parts combined with the heart stat? Ie Humanity max equals human parts in normal slots x 1/10 heart? So at 40 heart and 15 parts you'd have 60 humanity max and regen 6 humanity a turn? I'm sure you can probably find ways to cheat it to regen in 9 turns instead of 10 via some combination of body parts and fractional heart scores but whatever.

Opinions, resident munchkins?

[AoshimaMichio]

I tried slither.io today and got up to rank two. Used name Eater of Stars.

Spread that quality ER propaganda

United Worlds of Men made it today to fifth rank after being crushed so many times by others.

[spazyak]

I tried slither.io today and got up to rank two. Used name Eater of Stars.

Spread that quality ER propaganda

United Worlds of Men made it today to fifth rank after being crushed so many times by others.

Through atrition as always.

[piecewise]

I've added Dex to handle ranged weapons and dodging. Ranged weapons have no bonus from their rolls and have lower damage as a rule. Speed basically handles nothing but number of attacks per round.  Certain parts, like hulk arms, will most likely have maluses to speed in addition to their strength bonuses.

Humanity max and regen rules are now changed to be related to the heart x body parts with a fixed 10% regen per turn.

Human parts no longer have bonuses

Starting points raised to 340 to accommodate new stat and loss of starting bonuses.

Rules for out of norm parts changed to have their cost be multiplicative based on range rather than exponential.

[spazyak]

420 for memes pls? 0 0, 420 heart, 0

Str 60
Dex 40
Int 60
Heart 100
Speed:80

[renegadelobster]

Str 80
Spd 30
Dex 80
Int 70
Hrt 80

[spazyak]

Average is 68
Highest while still having 1 in everythingelse is 335

[piecewise]

420 for memes pls? 0 0, 420 heart, 0

Str 60
Dex 40
Int 60
Heart 100
Speed:80

So you would have 150 humanity max and regen 15 each turn, at the start.

Str 80
Spd 30
Dex 80
Int 70
Hrt 80

You would  have 120 humanity max and recover 12 humanity each turn, at start.


I'm waiting to hear from sy about how he'd break this but so far it seems a bit more balanced. If so, I'll start putting stats to parts.

[syvarris]

Spoiler: Idle wondering about stats (click to show/hide)

Hmm.  Strength attacking is now objectively superior to dex attacking, due to the significantly higher damage, but that fact automatically buffs dex, because if you're attacked by a str weapon dex provides direct damage resistance.  Armor would have to give very large amount of HP to overcome that, and since you still haven't said anything about armor, I'm guessing you're deliberately waiting for me to munchkin things.  So, str is better, but dex isn't a dump stat.

Speed synergizes very powerfully with strength once you get multiattacks, but is very expensive to get so high, especially since there doesn't appear to be any real penalty for low speed if you don't multiattack.  Since the stat cap is 100, you'll need to have speedy limb parts to guarantee more than one multiattack, which makes the limb weaker.  But, if you're already strong enough to hit, that is virtually always going to mean a significant damage increase.


Grappling is... interesting.  I want to say it's underpowered because it only forces a -30 to combat rolls, but if it can be done multiple times then that's actually pretty powerful.  Due to stat caps, and the nature of limb stat bonuses, it might be possible to  make very reliable; if I grapple an unstatted part with a high dex & str limb, I have a good chance to succeed.  From there, I can grapple more parts to completely cripple an enemy, which allows safe precision dismemberment as a bonus.  However, grappling exclusively favors the side with more units and time, so it might be a horrible strategy if players will frequently be outnumbered and hurrying.  Grapple builds also wouldn't benefit as much from speed as other builds, so they're free to put points elsewhere.

Of course, if grappling can't be stacked, or if an opponent can choose which limb to use stats from, it's completely terrible.  Most people will have a high str or dex limb which will usually beat you in one of the two rolls, and such limbs are also the only ones which are helpful to specifically target--which gives -30 to your roll, making success even less likely.

...Speaking as a person with RL grappling training, I would like it to be a powerful debuffing ability.  Just FYI.


Intelligence can just be lowered to 49 minus whatever int bonuses you get, since out of combat humanity spending isn't really a penalty.  Maybe having it high is a good idea if mindfuck or something is a serious worry.  Maybe having it lower is acceptable if the penalty for failed limb attachments isn't severe.  Dunno.

Heart should be at least 34, as that allows a maximum humanity buff; any lower, and you need to pump int more to guarantee basic limb attachments.  Higher heart mostly just has value for attaching parts, but generally stats from parts are less valuable than innate stats, because limbs only apply bonuses when they're used.  Also, presumably you won't get lots of good limbs quickly, so one would have time to level up heart as they get better stuff.


...Something important is exactly how levels interact with the stat cap.  Once you have 100 str, is it completely impossible to level it any higher?  More importantly, do you lose those points, or can you spend them on heart instead?  If so, that means you want to start with relatively low stats aside from heart, so you have more room to grow.

Spoiler: Here's a build (click to show/hide)

Str 100
Dex 64
Spd 93
Int 49
Hrt 34


34 heart grants 51 humanity, allowing max humanity buffs, and granting 6 regen per turn, which spent on a multiattack guarantees two attacks.

I spent awhile wondering about the best distribution between dex and str, but ended up deciding to go full str.  Str is applied twice per turn, regardless of your enemies, but dex is applied once for each attack dodged; Dex is worse if you're only being attacked once or not at all, and if initiative exists, it's possible, even likely, that you'll kill your foe before they can touch you.  Also, str grants improved defense in the form of armor, so dodging isn't strictly necessary--it's just here for DR.