Queries and opinions

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Peace420
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Queries and opinions

Post by Peace420 »

I'll start with opinions

1: Don't really like the assasin changes, very rarely would I ever be for taking out unique flavor skills for another melee damage skill. And it forces anyone that wants to play a "normal" assasin to be a master rogue as well just to open doors.

2: Magic should be consistent in it's effects, either you can parry\dodge it or you can't. Maybe change the channel call to channel or boom or something if you don't want people to be able to "parry" it. The argument of theres no concrete description could work both ways, who says the monk is not dodging out of the way of whatever is being hurled at him.

3: Perhaps some of the skills that have duplicates in different disciplines in the same lifestyle should be looked at to see if there is a way to up them if you have 2 or more. It doesn't make any sense that you can stack all sorts of melee damage skills from different places on top of each other without adding additional time and sometimes getting a time bonus in the case of healing skills but if you have disguise or resists twice you get bupkus for it.

4:Sleep should have it's armor restriction reduced to med or it's time reduced, there are just way too many things in the game that are either immune or ways to resist it for the longest charge time skill in the game.

5: Being an arcane should reduce a magic items research time and what about potion reverese engineering? I know it's been sorta worked out with the GM's on a one on one basis but there should be something like this for potions as well.

Queries

1: Is there a list of known languages somewhere to choose from?

2: Armor repair, I'm assuming theres no more jerry rigging it's either all or nothing.

3: Is there a way to track the stability change?

4: Confuzzled, does the beauracrat get an extra %50 If the total is 400 sp's does the 200 that they can reinvest come off the 400 or additional?

5: Still not clear on whether fists and claws can be enchated as weapons can be and if they get any bonuses that may apply to a weapon. Can you use poison with claws? Crush or vorpal? Critical Strike? Confinement? Etc...
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Post by GM-Mike »

I'll answer Query number 4 while I have a moment. It's extra. In your example there would be 400 points to use normally and then an additional 200 to reuse for anything they want.
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Post by GM_Chris »

1: Don't really like the assasin changes, very rarely would I ever be for taking out unique flavor skills for another melee damage skill. And it forces anyone that wants to play a "normal" assasin to be a master rogue as well just to open doors.
We didnt like the skill because it forced people to run around with a hand over their head in the middle of a scene. If we have that we should have invisibility. (No we wont have invisibility). Assassin is a discipline which means there are many different types of assassins. You have the mystical assassin (empath) the brute (warrior) the researcher (sage), the ninja (rogue)
2: Magic should be consistent in it's effects, either you can parry\dodge it or you can't. Maybe change the channel call to channel or boom or something if you don't want people to be able to "parry" it. The argument of theres no concrete description could work both ways, who says the monk is not dodging out of the way of whatever is being hurled at him.
I think this bothers everyone. Hvae not thought of a good way of doing it though. Adding a damage call bothers us. Allowing monks to dodge everything is too much. Maybe we should allow immunity up to a certain point value and then full damage after that. (no we will not have AC)
3: Perhaps some of the skills that have duplicates in different disciplines in the same lifestyle should be looked at to see if there is a way to up them if you have 2 or more. It doesn't make any sense that you can stack all sorts of melee damage skills from different places on top of each other without adding additional time and sometimes getting a time bonus in the case of healing skills but if you have disguise or resists twice you get bupkus for it.
This one we are working on. We deciding stacking is the only fair way to go.
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Post by Kalphoenix »

4:Sleep should have it's armor restriction reduced to med or it's time reduced, there are just way too many things in the game that are either immune or ways to resist it for the longest charge time skill in the game.
My opinion: I disagree. While it having a long charge time might be kind of a bummer, sleep can essentially mean instant death for anyone who doesn't have the means to resist it and that includes a lot of people. The only way I can see making it easier to use would be to penalize it somehow, like damaging the person/creature in any way after they are slept wakes them, thus eliminating the ability to slit their throat while they are "slept."

I don't think I've had anything like this happen to a character, but I have it happen to NPC characters/monsters pretty frequently.
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Re: Queries and opinions

Post by dier_cire »

Peace420 wrote:1: Don't really like the assasin changes, very rarely would I ever be for taking out unique flavor skills for another melee damage skill. And it forces anyone that wants to play a "normal" assasin to be a master rogue as well just to open doors.
Chris already pointed out this one. Even in a group of assassins, there are different roles. And Passwall was a horrid skill. People set traps on doors, assassin walks in "oh, I'm OOG." then you are suppposed to ignore him/her.
Peace420 wrote:2: Magic should be consistent in it's effects, either you can parry\dodge it or you can't. Maybe change the channel call to channel or boom or something if you don't want people to be able to "parry" it. The argument of theres no concrete description could work both ways, who says the monk is not dodging out of the way of whatever is being hurled at him.
You can't parry Channel last I checked. Nor can you Dodge it. How is that tough? Sure if someone touch casts one, you can parry but at that point it's melee damage. And why is it hard to understand that a monk can't dodge Magic or Crush? The skills are clear.
Peace420 wrote:4:Sleep should have it's armor restriction reduced to med or it's time reduced, there are just way too many things in the game that are either immune or ways to resist it for the longest charge time skill in the game.
Sleep is only counterable by one discipline and it's a 4th level skill. Too many ways to resist? Last I checked that makes Sleep extremely powerful. Magic Sleep has 3 skills all 4th level. Again, still really powerful.
Peace420 wrote:5: Being an arcane should reduce a magic items research time and what about potion reverese engineering? I know it's been sorta worked out with the GM's on a one on one basis but there should be something like this for potions as well.
Why? Other than it would be cool? Is there any problem with the current system? If the GMs want to do it occasionally, that's one thing, but making a sweeping rule change for something that isn't broken (feasiably breaking things later) is unecessary.
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Post by Wyrmwrath »

And Passwall was a horrid skill. People set traps on doors, assassin walks in "oh, I'm OOG." then you are suppposed to ignore him/her.
There are so many times in an event where things have to be "ignored" that I dont see that as a valid point. How manytimes have we had a game stop where Chris(chosen for this just because he is the most animated) ran around with flailing arms describing the effects of a new arcane spell or special plot occurance? Its part of larping. Its Going to happen, no reason to dump a skill (not that I care if passwall is dumped) just because you have to pretend (AKA Role Play) a bit more with it.
You can't parry Channel last I checked. Nor can you Dodge it. How is that tough? Sure if someone touch casts one, you can parry but at that point it's melee damage. And why is it hard to understand that a monk can't dodge Magic or Crush? The skills are clear.
Erik is reffering to the change that makes adding magic to thrown weapon nullifies the monks dodge/deflect skill, not the channelers booms.

Sleep is only counterable by one discipline and it's a 4th level skill
Actualy two htat I can think of. Resist magic and stand ground.
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Post by dier_cire »

Wyrmwrath wrote:How manytimes have we had a game stop where Chris(chosen for this just because he is the most animated) ran around with flailing arms describing the effects of a new arcane spell or special plot occurance?

Erik is reffering to the change that makes adding magic to thrown weapon nullifies the monks dodge/deflect skill, not the channelers booms.

Actualy two htat I can think of. Resist magic and stand ground.
When Chris calls a gamestop, that's as a GM. How many player based gamestops do we have though? Especially when they are directly linked to PvP. Arcane spells can be but they are few and usually occur with GMs right there (aka mass combat).

Ah... Course, I still think 2 magic is of such low consequence that it makes little difference. As Chris said, maybe add a anything below 3 ranged is 'evadable'.

Hold Ground isn't a resist. You can't activate it after the hit. Therefore, it is not a counter. Yes, once active, it does prevent it, but the Assassin should be able to see this before hand and not waste the skill. Plus, what is the recipient going to do after wards if the assassin runs?
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Post by GM_Chris »

I should add the assassin more geered toward the killing of PC's. Alot of monsters are resistant to knockout and sleep. Alot of the humanoid NPC's are not.

The assassin does not use magic sleep so resist magic cannot be used to resist it.

Game stop in the games happen a few different ways,

1) Arcanes, and they have a minimum of 10 minutes.
2) GM's to explain a scene
3) Injury and the like.

Game stopps and ignoring things are part of the game, but you have a choice to on how polific you want these in the game. Our philosophy is we would like to limit them as much as possible. We are always looking for ways to remove things like game stops and the like and this was one of those situations were the passwall should have never made it into the game.

What is really neat now is that if you want to be an assassin that breaks into places you are either forced to be a rogue or to hire one. I think this is better than being a warrior assassin knowing you dont need the skill to open locks since you can passwall through it.
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Post by Peace420 »

What is really neat now is that if you want to be an assassin that breaks into places you are either forced to be a rogue or to hire one. I think this is better than being a warrior assassin knowing you dont need the skill to open locks since you can passwall through it.

It was a completely differet type of strategy because you had the no armor restriction. Now it becomes, open the door and beat them down with multiple people. Which could be done by any group with a rogue. And the passwall came in handy in more than one occasion that did not involve a locked door. In fact I think in the entire time I've played I've used it to enter a room with a visible engaged lock 2x. And maybe I'm completely off on this but I don't think I've ever heard a player or a GM complain about how a passwall was done IG, a couple of seconds of OOG really was nothing when balanced against a unique skill vs another damage dealing skill.

Assasin and the mage hunter have always been the most PVP of the disciplines, yet it's ok that an entire paths offensive abilities is nerfed by 1 skill? But because it's percieved as a defensive skill it's ok. When it's one of the most powerful offensive skills in the game. If you can stand there taking whatever special ability an entire path can dish out thats offensive as much as it is defensive.

Lower level skills like disarm have NO counters outside of magic items.

For sleep resists and immunities yes it is definitely more NPC than PC where the ineffectiveness comes in but quite a few of the potions and atleast one of the spells outside of the duplicate a skill spell made you immune or atleast give you the resist ability. And trust me, the charge time nerfs ALOT of it's possible uses, it has laways been a "damn, I actually got to use it" skill.

And it was less the "Passwall" and more the unique skill giving way to another damage dealing\soaking skill, the unique skills are what make this game cooler than getting a bunch of people together, dressing up and sparring.
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Post by GM_Chris »

If you can come up with an unique skill that does not cause a person to run around OOG we will listen. We love unique skills!

I agree that unique skills are cool, but at the same time it is not our strategy to create unique skills. We focus our effors on unique plots, RP opportunity, and story. I think when we started making the book we said that we only need rules for combat so we have tried to stay very close to that. It is a game philosophy, and I know it is not shared by everyone.
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Post by Peace420 »

Yeah but it became very apparent very quickly that there needed to be more than just combat rules. The people that still hold to that must just have suspension of disbelief on the entire political system and the fact that as many of the noncombat skills get tweaked as strictly combat skills do.

Haven causes you to have to believe that you can't see a tent in the woods or see or hear the people in it and things in it. So you do have invisibility you just don't call it that.

The portal once you step through you are OOG.

Blubber bears and other things that envelope you cause OOG. And those are the ones right off the top of my head without even thinking about it.

All I'm saying is yes, try and keep OOG to a minimum and if a skill or spell is causing an OOG problem then fix it. I just don't think this 2 second(maybe 5 to get through a door) OOG skill has ever caused much of a problem or gotten complaints from players about it.
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Post by Donovan Thynedar »

Thinking on it, I'd have to agree with Erik on this one. A system needs to be robust, anticipatory, and flexible to provide players with a good roleplaying experience - but even the best systems call for a suspension of disbelief.

There will always be calls to reduce the amount of out-of-game content present at an event, and those calls are good things. The question comes when you consider the exchange. What sorts of things (skills, abilities, effects, etc.) are worth going "out of game" to achieve.

I'd say that passwall was worth the OOG "expense".
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Post by Kalphoenix »

I thought I made a post about this, but I must have already gotten logged out or something:

I understand the desire to make the game more immersive for everyone, but OOG happens and I don't think anyone has a big problem with it as long as it doesn't take 20 minutes to resolve. It's a fantasy game and I can think of a ton of things that make a difference that require a bit of minor OOG to express properly.

I also thought passwall was an interesting and unique skill that was pretty well balanced and added a lot of flavor. Removing it takes a lot of color away from the discipline.

Erik makes a good point with the Haven skill, although I'll also add that it's different having someone in a specific place or using a skill that lets them walk quickly through a wall as opposed to a skill where someone is walking around for an extended period of time, spying on people. That specifically creates a meta gaming problem, because probably even the most well-meaning roleplayer isn't going to let vital information slip when they know (OOG) that someone is there, but invisible. True invisibly would probably be game-breaking and really hard to manage, but passwall wasn't one of those things, so it's not really a good comparison.
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Post by GM-Mike »

I consider myself to be a pretty good role player. When someone passes through a wall with their hands over their head and stands about 20 feet behind me and I know I'm the target, here's what's going through my head:

Well crap, I guess i don't know he's there. I'm probably going to die. I can hear him a little bit, but would I really have heard him if I didn't know he was there, I mean he is trying to be quiet, maybe hearing him would be cheesy so I'll just sit here reading my book waiting for him to kill me...

It's simply impossible to stay in the moment under these circumstances. With the tent in the woods example, you don't have the whole death is coming at you scenario. It's much easier to walk by a tent and ignore it without breaking the moment; it's quite another when an obvious threat is coming at you.

I think all of us like the idea of the skill. It just creates complicated scenarios by its very essence.
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Unique skill

Post by Trevor Owen »

I would love to see another unique non combat skill for the assassin, that does not require out of game(or a way to use a passwall type skill without going out of game), none of us is against that, and we have spent the last 8 months or so looking for one. If anyone has a suggestion (and this was posted previously) please make it.
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