@Egan's reskilling idea: this would require me to actively keep track of mana pools. the magic stamina skill would translate to hard numbers.
No it wouldn't, "magic stamina" would work identically to will. Will doesn't give hard numbers, why would an identical skill do the same?
Beyond that point, I would drop magical stamina, though the system would be more balanced even with it. MS is already covered by will, and more importantly, it can freely be dumped by those who don't cast magic, thus letting them start with +2/+2 and no meaningful flaw. It also isn't an interesting choice like that between precision/power; it just dictates how much you can cast, which is something everyone wants.
I wold also rework the stats, including a stat for body size to govern melee effectiveness, since, as sy mentioned, I let Dar (and maybe others) get a little carried away in effectiveness, especially on that one mission.
I... have several issues with this statement. Firstly, you say that you would definitely do something that nobody mentioned being a good thing, as if it's a choice between doing nothing or completely rewriting things. Secondly, your justification for that is incoherent; I trust that Dar would not have been able to do that if he were mundane with good physical stats, but even if he had a physical size penalty, would that have stopped him? He killed people due to a powerful spell, which happened to take the form of a melee attack. Finally, this would actually be exactly counter to the problem we've been talking about, as "a stat for body size to govern melee effectiveness" means that there would be two melee stats governing melee, at all times. Multiple redundant stats is exactly the flaw with the current system.
I'd probably also include a stat to govern uniqueness of type of being, so that the player would have to carefully consider whether he or she really wanted that particular special snowflake as opposed to a more mundane, but effective character. That is, the more unique the character, the more stat points it would cost to unlock.
This also makes no sense, and is completely unrelated to everything we've been discussing. A human that had all the same spells as Noir would be almost exactly as powerful as her, despite needing far less "uniqueness". It would only act as a penalty to creative characters, which are one of the best points of OL--and again,
nobody has complained about them!
(Except for Dev, but he should just be ignored)
Let me restate what we've been discussing, as you seem to not really have understood. Magic as a stat is capable of literally anything and everything. Magic, without any other stats, can be a reliable attack that is more powerful than mundane forms of attack. The exact same stat, with just a spec, can allow a variety of utility abilities, such as flight, scrying, mind control, invisibility, telepathy, teleportation, psychokinesis, and cheap buffs far more powerful than mundane stats. With a spec and another skill, it offers healing that is
leagues better than any type of mundane healing, being capable of fixing severe problems that would be 100% lethal even in a modern day hospital.
Again, the primary problem with this is that you only require points in a single stat; healing is actually pretty well balanced as-is, due to its necessity. Compare to mundane stats, like "sharp weapons". A person with +2 sharp weapons and a longsword spec is far less dangerous than a person with +2 magic and a lightning spec, with the further flaws that they're useless if disarmed of a longsword, and can never decide to multiclass into utility or healing abilities. Furthermore, there's a whopping
FOUR mundane "attack" stats, which all perform essentially the same role, with essentially the same flaws, and therefore act as free penalty stats to give more bonuses elsewhere. Before you say that "at least one is needed for attack magic", I'll point out that there's tons of ways to avoid that restriction; Mind Control is the first and most powerful that jumps to mind, but there are others if you need me to describe them.
Now that the problems have been defined, I'll go back and illustrate the solution. Fuse unarmed/sharp/blunt into a single "melee" stat. Split "magic" into two or three (I prefer to drop Stamina) magical stats, being "precision", "power", and "stamina". Done!
This does three things. Firstly, it buffs mundane fighters, who now are capable of using most any weapon effectively, with preferences like "edged weapons" being handled purely by specialization. Secondly, it nerfs mages, who now can choose between either reliable and controlled magic, or very powerful magic, but cannot get both without more levelups. Finally, it gets rid of the mundane dump stats exploit, making it impossible to start with +2/+2 skills without actually having some sort of penalty somewhere. Simple, and effective.
Now, after writing what amounts to an essay on the subject, you'd probably think I'm in favor of the change. I'm actually not! It might be a decent idea, but it has several flaws which might make it a bad plan.
- It requires everyone to restat their characters, which is both annoying to do for most, and likely to make some character ideas unviable, due to being built around the exploits that this change fixes. *CoughDarcough*
- It notably nerfs the average amount of power a magic character possesses, which significantly weakens Omega Legion as a whole. Considering how ridiculously lethal this game already is, making players even weaker seems like a bad idea.
- It fixes a problem which, to my knowledge,
nobody who is still capable of being legitimately happy has actually complained about. I don't want to name names, but said individual plays a dragon and should just be ignored whenever he complains about such things. (Edit: Egan told me he really would like the change. Might want to get players to vote on the change, to see if there's more interest.) To be sure, the system would be more balanced, but balance isn't particularly necessary for a cooperative game.
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Topic: Omega Legion: Omega Base (Read 292061 times)