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[Criptfeind]

Hum. My thought on boss battle: Pretty good. It's really good we went with the move set system, since that allowed so much more interesting attacks then just pounding on each other. Over all I feel like there's almost a... Disconnect between the move set system and the statistical system with evasion and +hit and everything. It feels weird that one can both evade an attack by sidestepping it, or if you get hit there's a chance you avoid damage anyway? I'm fairly sure that trying to change that would probably be a terrible idea though. (Did that sentence make sense? It's a bit late her so I'm not totally sure) It would solve evasion being weak but I'm kinda not thinking there's enough room in the game for such a thing.

On evasion being weak, yeah... Hum, well. Idk, it can't not be weak, unless you want people to be missing a lot even if they land hits on the right square. Maybe a bonus against heavy attacks of some sort?

[IronyOwl]

Now, what do people think about boss battles and about the combat system overall?

My main feeling is that:

*Combat rounds seem to consist of sudden bursts of ultraviolence interspersed between large blocks of positioning and whiffs.

Not too sure what to do about that, and it's probably exasperated by having an ultratank, gunslinger, and mage as the party. A team of better rounded members would probably have brawlier, somewhat more consistent fights.

*I'm not sure if I like or dislike the fact that Nhin functions like a siege tank.

I disliked it until you described it like that.

Things I'm thinking about Adding:
Enemy AI Descriptor: Describes how the monster selects targets. I.e: Targets nearest, targets toughest, targets unit that did the most damage in the last X rounds, etc.

This would be great. You could even go vaguer/more complicated with general descriptors, like "Malicious," "Plodding," or "Determined."

Hum. My thought on boss battle: Pretty good. It's really good we went with the move set system, since that allowed so much more interesting attacks then just pounding on each other. Over all I feel like there's almost a... Disconnect between the move set system and the statistical system with evasion and +hit and everything. It feels weird that one can both evade an attack by sidestepping it, or if you get hit there's a chance you avoid damage anyway? I'm fairly sure that trying to change that would probably be a terrible idea though. (Did that sentence make sense? It's a bit late her so I'm not totally sure) It would solve evasion being weak but I'm kinda not thinking there's enough room in the game for such a thing.

I mostly agree with this. Letting actual movement and numbers step on each other's toes is probably not great, but I'm not sure there's a better solution that doesn't break everything else.


Another thought I have is that get back to Small Mercies stats might benefit from being a little more choice-oriented, which sort of ties into the way combat works and the art of completely redesigning things only to discover they work even worse.

Suppose instead of increasing your raw numbers, stats acted as resources or cooldown modifiers for specific actions. So maybe instead of increasing hit rate, precision let you move a space as part of your attack, and the more precision/speed/hit you had, the lower the cooldown or the easier it was to regenerate Burst Points or what have you. This means it probably helps with its stated goal of hitting things easier, but also informs how a character acts much more strongly, since it's a conscious, noticeable choice to take advantage of it rather than a thing you always do.

In the case of Resistance and Evasion, this could mean Evasion lets you dodge aside more often or cover more ground in a dodge roll, while Resistance lets you block more often but blocking automatically eliminates all damage. This would similarly keep them as defensive stats, but emphasize their differing methods of play: Evasive characters tend to take evasive actions and resistant characters tend to take resistant actions.

[heydude6]

I think a simpler way to buff evasion is to simply give certain attacks an armour piercing property (and maybe give certain other attacks an accuracy property). Basically the armour piercing property would allow you to ignore X amount of resistance points if an attack hits (and the accuracy property would allow you to ignore X amount of evasion points), meaning that if shorn was attacked by say, a mail breaker with an armour piercing of 8, then he would only have 2 effective resistance. That is the equivalent of shorn losing 80% of his total stats to some horrible agony. Of course if shorn had invested those points into evasion instead he would have gained a smaller defensive boost, but it would have protected him from armour piercing attacks as well as regular ones.

I actually like this idea a lot since it forces tanks to be dependant on their teammates sometimes. To clarify my point, imagine if shorn encounters a powerful monster that also completely negated his resistance. He would be a sitting duck. His accuracy is minimal, his evasion is non-existant, if that monster were to try to fight shorn on his own, shorn would lose. It's up to Miles and Nhin to pick up the slack and kill that monster so shorn doesn't get terribly mauled.

Anyway, I feel like I may have gone on about this too long but I feel like this is probably the simplest solution to buff evasion. If you're worried about monsters dodging too often when the players went through all the effort to make sure their movements actually make contact with them, what I'll say is that a 1 in 4 chance to do 8 damage is very similar to hitting a monster 4 times for 2 damage (obviously the 1 in 4 chance is less likely but only slightly less likely)

[Draignean]

Well, it's certainly been a journey of discovery.

So, first off, I quite agree with the disconnect between the moveset system (where positioning and timing is everything and cleverness is allegedly rewarded) and the rolling systems (where blind luck and RNGesus is everything and the right stats can break the system). I really like the moveset system, I think it's probably the best thing that has come out of testing thus far, but it doesn't mesh terribly well. If you succeed in threatening a target, you should hit unless they're using some sort of special ability or dodge rolling.

I liked the idea of more special maneuvers, and I initially thought I could solve my problems by instituting a stamina pool (I.E: Rip off Dark Souls more) and letting stats modify the stamina costs of various abilities. During mental testing, however, I realized a couple things,

1. Passive regen is a bitch to keep track of by hand.
2. Adding Stamina will just make players be more cautious and attack when they have stamina, then retreat when they get a little low and spend the rest of the time dodge rolling away until it comes back.

Basically, everyone would play like Nhin. For one character to fight like that is not awful, but it's tedious and silly to make 'please wait to recharge biceps' be a main combat mechanic. Which meant that I needed something that was actively recharged, not passively recharged, but the active recharge didn't interfere with the flow of the game.

Which is how we got to the Hope and Despair system.


Hope: Hope is gained by striking and killing foes, defending allies, and sometimes from buffing allies/debuffing enemies. Successfully hitting an enemy grants 1 hope, killing an enemy grants between 1 and 5 additional hope and 1 Hope to every other member of the party. Fully intercepting an attack meant for an ally grants 1 Hope. Hope can be spent on the resurgence ability. A character can carry a max of 10 charges of Hope. Being hit causes a character to lose 1 hope if they take damage. A companion who gains an agony will cause everyone to lose 3 hope. Gaining an agony removes all hope.

Resurgence (Minor): Spend 3 hope to gain 1d3 charges in any one attribute. Swift Action.
Resurgence (Major): Spend 6 hope to gain 1d6+2 charges in any one attribute. Costs 1 frame
Resurgence (Grand): Spend 10 hope to gain 1d10+4 charges in any one attribute. Costs 3 Frames.

Desperation: Characters gain Desperation when in dire situations. A character can have a maximum number of desperation charges equal to their total number of agonies. 1 desperation charge per encounter can be gained when the character has 2 or few remaining attribute charges, no hope, and is hit for 50% or more of their remaining HP. Gaining an agony will completely refill a character’s desperation charges. Desperation charges are valuable, and will be given as warranted for other situations.

Desperate Attack: Spend 1 charge to make an attack that has swift strike and maximized damage.

Desperate Roll: Spend 1 charge to make a quick movement and make a standard roll with two frames of full invincibility.

Desperate Resurgence: Spend 1 charge to gain 1d4+1 charges in all attributes. Swift.


Now, Hope and Despair are both keyed pretty heavily into the new attribute system. The points you invest in each attribute now represent the maximum number of charges you can have in that attribute. These attributes start filled at the beginning of the game, but at every point thereafter must be recharged through the use of the resurgence abilities.

The below are the special abilities that you can spend your points on:


Potency
Accelerated Strike: Removes 1 frame from the heavy or light frame cost of a weapon.  Costs 1 potency charge. Cannot reduce costs to 0.
Staggering Blow: Gives light attack s this round a +25% chance to stagger and heavy attacks a +75% chance to stagger. Costs 2 potency charges.

Precision
Critical Strikes: All yellow spaces of a single attack are treated as red.  Costs 1 Precision Charge.
Twisting Blow: Simultaneously make an attack from any adjacent tile. This attack does not have to have the same name or the same direction. Whichever attack threatens more enemy targets is used. Costs 2 precision charges.

Will
Poise: Remove 1 frame of stagger. Costs 1 will charge.
Reinforce: Gain 5-10 damage resistance this round. Timed Blocks gain an additional 5-10 damage resistance. Costs 2 will charges.

Vigor
Endure: Spend 1 vigor charge to reduce all debuff durations by 1.
Second Wind: Spend 2 vitality charges to gain one charge in any other attribute.

Agility
Swift Strike: Spend 1 agility charge to make an attack that is evaluated before all movement except swift movement.
Swift Move: Spend 2 agility charges to move once as a swift action.


It'll require further testing, and a revamp of the original rules, but what do you (testers and lurkers both) think?

[heydude6]

My only complaint so far is that it feels like level ups become less important. If I'm not mistaken, level ups simply allow you spam those abilities you listed more often. Also, how are some stats that are going to remain passive going to be covered? I'm talking Hp, damage resistance (if you're going to let characters have any inherent damage resistance), and damage. Are you going to let those stats be completely out of the player's control (other than through vaguely defined items)? I worry that characters will loose some of their uniqueness (we won't have Shorn the megatank anymore for example).

[Draignean]

My only complaint so far is that it feels like level ups become less important. If I'm not mistaken, level ups simply allow you spam those abilities you listed more often. Also, how are some stats that are going to remain passive going to be covered? I'm talking Hp, damage resistance (if you're going to let characters have any inherent damage resistance), and damage. Are you going to let those stats be completely out of the player's control (other than through vaguely defined items)? I worry that characters will loose some of their uniqueness (we won't have Shorn the megatank anymore for example).

They let you spam those abilities and make higher level resurgence abilities more economical to use. (At start, there's no reason to use the grand form)

Attributes will no longer give +Damage, +Resistance, +Whatever. You'll instead likely have the option to increase health directly instead of it being tied to a stat.

So, items are probably going to have attribute requirements attached these days. So bulking up attributes doesn't just give you deeper pools, it gives you better weapons/armor/rings/etc that are keyed to those same pools.

In fact, here's the patchy update I've been writing on armor.

Armor

Armor has a damage reduction value indicated by

DR:X|Y

X is the amount of damage an incoming attack has to deal, and functions as the minimum amount of damage that an incoming attack can be reduced to. Y is the die size that the reduction dice uses.  So, for example, a set of armor with DR:5|10 would reduce the damage of any incoming attack by 1d10, down to a minimum value of 5. A set of Armor with DR:2|5 has less damage absorption per attack, but triggers more often. DR:2|5 and DR:10|20 are both useful, but for very different types of engagement.

Like all items, armors grant abilities depending on their attribute focus and requirement. Armors that require agility boast evasive abilities to simply dodge high power attacks, armors that need Will offer new methods to tank damage and and benefit from taking hits, armors that require vigor protect the user from various status effects or can be used to buff themselves.

So, let's take Shorn's Writhing plate.

Currently, it's a pretty awful piece of work. It gives decent resistance in exchange for tanking his ability to hit. Worse, it interferes with itself by also killing his evasion.

Let's assume this is the best armor he can get at start, so it's going to require 5 will to use. Will is the stat of damage tanking, so lets play with that.

Writhing Plate (Req: 5 Will, DR: 3|8, Grants ability: Unstoppable Horror)

Unstoppable Horror: Spend 5 will charges. For one round, Shorn's DR minimum is reduced to 0 and all damage absorbed by Shorn is accumulated in a damage pool. The round after that, the damage can be parceled out to increase weapon max damage 1:1, or to add a flat bonus to damage reduction rolls made that round at a rate of 2:1.

So, any time Shorn takes more than 3 damage, it's reduced by a d8, which is pretty damn good and ensures that, for the most part, he takes scratch damage.  He can then blow his will charges out to get a chance to remove even scratch damage, as well as get the ability to become even more resistant the next round or convert his charges over to boost damage.

Now Shorn is as unimpeded to hit as anyone, can do some serious tank work, (Not even counting any ability granted by his shield!) and can still hit like a truck when he needs to! Unspeakable revelation becomes an even better ability if I change it to: 'can spend Will charges as Potency charges for one round' since it lets him periodically make extra fast/powerful attacks.


On the subject of vaguely defined items, now I'll want you to specify what attributes the object requires. There's a big difference between "Longsword (Potency)" and "Longsword (Agility+Precision)"

Admittedly, on the subject of taking control away from the players, it's either this or coming up with boring starting gear. After that I'm going to be taking control away anyway by giving you loot drops, so it's going to happen regardless in this system.

[OceanSoul]

Will there be any way to upgrade armor? Can a light or heavy attack require a certain amount of a stat? And is there anything we can do with armor we don't use anymore, other than merely sell it?

[Draignean]

Will there be any way to upgrade armor? Can a light or heavy attack require a certain amount of a stat? And is there anything we can do with armor we don't use anymore, other than merely sell it?

Upgrade items are definitely a go.

Light and heavy attacks will not require different stat values. If you don't meet stat requirements... well, I haven't decided yet, but one of the potential penalties is that light attacks cost as much as heavy, and heavy attacks are unavailable.

Scrapping old armor... In general, probably no. Selling it might not even work that well. Maybe you can vault it to distribute to adventurers in other games. I don't really know.

[heydude6]

Considering that in the "source material" old armour was simply replaced with better armour and kept as a souvenir, I don't see any problem with doing that in this game.

[Criptfeind]

Looks interesting, what role would dodge rolling and blocking serve in this new system? Also will npcs have stats they can use charges for now? They are gunna be pretty tricky to keep track of. Specially without high stats on a tank as a fall back to examine their patterns, when a new enemies is found it's going to be a bitch out find out their patterns without loosing a lot of health.

Edit: An on the recharge rate, does "game" mean literally just. You get them at the start and then from then on the only way to get them back is hope?

[Draignean]

Looks interesting, what role would dodge rolling and blocking serve in this new system? Also will npcs have stats they can use charges for now? They are gunna be pretty tricky to keep track of. Specially without high stats on a tank as a fall back to examine their patterns, when a new enemies is found it's going to be a bitch out find out their patterns without loosing a lot of health.

Edit: An on the recharge rate, does "game" mean literally just. You get them at the start and then from then on the only way to get them back is hope?

Literally Just. Hope is the only weapon you have.
(I might let you buy them back with essence as well, but that's a pretty bad use of essence. )

Dodge Rolling: You get complete immunity on the first phase of the roll. On the second phase, you're immune to yellow attack tiles and red tiles are treated as yellow. You still get to move one tile as part of this action.

Blocking: Shields, like Armor, get their own damage resistance. Timed blocks are great at completely stopping light attacks, (A timed block always has the potential to reduce an attack to 0 damage) and they'll still keep you decently protected from a heavy at the cost of potentially staggering you. Normal block actions let you block a chunk of extra damage, but are easily baited out by lighter attacks.

NPCs will have a much smaller selection of abilities that rely on cooldowns. I don't think they'll use a charge system except in the more extraordinary circumstances where you're fighting invaders other people mostly like you.

[IronyOwl]

Interesting. I see you continue your crusade to make everything good come from the same paltry sources.

I mostly like it, but I'm a little concerned Vitality looks weak (still). I haven't seen any debuffs yet, so maybe they'll be worth it, but 2:1 trading strikes me as unlikely to be worth it.

I also really like the idea that gear is somewhat heavily focused on special abilities rather than raw stats. +1 Swords of Cleaving are far more interesting than +2 Swords.

[Draignean]

Interesting. I see you continue your crusade to make everything good come from the same paltry sources.

Oh? How so?

(Legitimately, I'm not sure what you mean here.)

I mostly like it, but I'm a little concerned Vitality looks weak (still). I haven't seen any debuffs yet, so maybe they'll be worth it, but 2:1 trading strikes me as unlikely to be worth it.

I know... :/ Vigor is sort of my red-headed stepchild. If the trading is 1:1, you have no reason to level ANYTHING else except to get special equipment. As for status effects, 1 point for 1 frame of duration also strikes me as terrible. I'm probably going to change that to 1 point to ignore the status effect for one frame. So not only do you effectively decrease the duration, you can force grace periods where you can act freely.

Originally, vigor was going to effect the power of resurgence, but then it seemed to be too good. Honestly, I'm open to suggestions on buffing it.

I also really like the idea that gear is somewhat heavily focused on special abilities rather than raw stats. +1 Swords of Cleaving are far more interesting than +2 Swords.

Me too. It's a recipe to give people a range of weapons from absolutely useless to god-killingly OP, but it keeps me far more interested than "Oh good, you've find the Blue Steel Longsword, that's better than your old Steel Longsword by two points of minimum AND maximum damage. Aren't you thrilled?".

Anyone who has played my D&D games will know well my fetish for making up fun magical items that get people killed on a semi-regular basis when they try to use them properly...

Ah... the translocating jewelry of the twin duelists... Such fun times.

[OceanSoul]

What if Vigor also applied some buff to health regeneration? That is, it's cheaper to recover health. Technically, it already does it to a small degree, with increased health meaning that the intervals that recovery price is based on also increase, making it cheaper on average to get X health points, but more expensive to get Y% of your health points. Maybe add resistance to stagger based on health in some way? Could be based on % health remaining/lost, maybe based on health lost by the attack that could cause the stagger.

[Draignean]

What if Vigor also applied some buff to health regeneration? That is, it's cheaper to recover health. Technically, it already does it to a small degree, with increased health meaning that the intervals that recovery price is based on also increase, making it cheaper on average to get X health points, but more expensive to get Y% of your health points. Maybe add resistance to stagger based on health in some way? Could be based on % health remaining/lost, maybe based on health lost by the attack that could cause the stagger.

I'm trying to avoid abilities that mess with essence too much. That always skirts the line between being far too valuable and totally underpowered.

Stagger, again, I don't want to base off remaining health. Stagger is a tool to get an opening on an otherwise tough beasty, and I don't want to dull that tool by making ineffective until you're already mostly done wailing on said beasty.

I'd like it to be in same format as the other abilities (Not passive, straight up GOOD for most all situations, and a general extension of existing mechanics), I'm just having trouble shoehorning something useful in.