Berserker rage
Proposer: Jim
Seconder:
Motion:
Change the +1 degree of damage bonus from Berserker to be an unnatural bonus. Add the following text to berserker rage. “When a berserker rage wears off, the character suffers Weakness for 5 minutes or until the end of the next encounter, regardless of whether the character gained any benefit from the rage. You may not use DAC, Backstab, cast Spells or Miracles or use Alchemy while in a rage. Your PC may choose to end a rage at any time.”
- Discussion:
- The discussion around berserker mostly seems to be around how horrendous a damage bonus you can get by piling it on with other damage boosts. If it was an unnatural bonus, it would remain useful as a self-buff skill but not allow you to to stack it. This also would combine well with either of the Subdue changes that make Subdue unnatural, as it means you can't be careful with your blows mid-rampage. Stating you cannot use any active skills other than attacking makes the tactical downside more explicit than the current text of "fights madly without regard for safety". Adding a Weakness state gives a mechanical exhaustion effect. Sure you can wreck up Encounter 1, but you'll be knackered for Encounter 2. If your PC needs to snap out of their rage to cast a spell, they pay for it. This also makes it clear that trying to accurately backstab someone while you're in a frenzy doesn't work. There's probably a shorter way of wording it though along the lines of "you may make no system calls other than weapon damage or NEGATE/TAKEN while in a rage". --Jim
- I think you've identified a problem; I'm not totally convinced by the solution. This skill clearly isn't appropriate for all berserking PCs, but if there's a "berserker" skill in the system I think it tends to create an assumption that people who roleplay berserking but don't have it aren't Proper Berserkers (TM). I'd like to see the skill just removed, I think. --Jacob
- Getting doubles is an overriding concern for anyone who wants to be a serious threat in melee. After that, whatever. This doesn't really fix the first case, and the second case is mostly irrelevant. --I
- While my ideal motion would be just to remove berserk, this is a better rework of the skill than I have managed to think up so far. I will try and come up with a better wording, then second it. --Drac
- Please do go ahead and suggest removal. I thought patching it for now would be more likely to pass, so I went and had a go at that. --Jim
- One thing that has crossed my mind, and I haven't thought it through in depth, is what if Berserk was something like "for the next X-time, you call DOUBLES regardless of your weapon or skill." --Chevron
- Thereby making it no worse for Warrior splashes, and completely useles for a pure warrior after level 5. Not gonna work, as the archetypal berserker would, in the long run, be better off not buying berserk... --MorkaisChosen
- Yep, it's a tradeoff where once you reach a certain level of technical skill there's no point flying off the handle, as a means of avoiding the horrendous damage calls at higher levels but still being nice at low. Potentially (just as) broken (as currently) for warrior splashes, but whether any disparity of hits would make a difference to the feasibility of berserking another class remains to be seen. --Chevron
- For thematic reasons, I think flying off the handle should always be an option. I want people to be able to play, say, a Norscan Berserker and not feel like they're wasting XP. Current berserk may be too good, but a berserk that you'd buy early on and then get no use out of would be even worse than cutting it entirely. See also comments below about how cutting Berserk out makes Warrior too empty- this applies just as well if it turns into 15 points of background skills when you get Melee 5 (or two-handed). --MorkaisChosen
Berserking as damage reduction
Proposer: Andy
Seconder:
Reasoning - The current implementation of berserk seems to be overpowered, and to me kind of misses the point. I see the berserker as the guy who just can't be put down, no matter what you throw at them. I think that anything where you get a damage bonus is going to lead to worry about stacking it with other skills and nasty interactions. However at the end of the fight the berserker always collapses exhausted, because damnit tropes. I see this as when all those arrows catch up with them...
I'm thinking berserk giving PHYSICAL RESISTANCE and at the end of the fight, setting all locations to bleeding as the wounds catch up. I don't think that berserk should work against magic or spirit, because from a gamey perspective warrior is already so good. I'm sure that the metaphysics can be summoned too.
Motion:
Replace Berserk text with:
You may enter a berserk rage once a day. This grants you PHYSICAL RESISTANCE, that is you take one less degree of damage from mundane sources. At the end of the encounter you begin bleeding on all locations. [Roleplay effects as before].
- Discussion:
- What do you mean by 'bleeding on all locations'? We don't really have bleeding unless you're on 0 so would you drop to 0 on all locations? --dp
- Yeah, dropping to zero and bleeding. Probably with enough time before it kicks in to go "shit, sorry guys". If this seems too severe then chest only or something could be an option, but I think that the original is probably still worth it in many situations in that you get a ton of screentime for one fight. --andy
- To ramble nonsensically for a bit... I'm not sure this would work that well as warrior tends to have the highest survivability of all classes and so in a very close fight it will tend to be the warrior left standing and then needing to pick up the rest of the character party. Add this and you exaggerate the first half of it making it so that the warrior is going to outlast the rest of the party by an even larger margin but prevent the second half due to the warrior then falling over bleeding. I don't think that's going to lead to interesting stories however I may need to think about this some more. --Malslene
- Probably worth playtesting this, but I would have thought that giving someone (effectively) a pile more hits would mean that they could do silly things to stop their friends being downed like turning their back on an enemy or charging through a line --andy
- If you're outnumbered it's actually fairly hard to stop someone going down no matter how hard you are, and gets worse if any of the monsters have the hard skill - run very fast. I would however be happy to do experimental play testing. --Malselene
- I also don't particularly like it as beserking becomes a no benefit congratulations you will fall over at the end of this fight thing if you are fighting opponents doing magical damage and I can see lots of role-play reasons why a berserk might feel inclined to berserk at such targets anyway leading to roleplay and mechanics being in direct opposition. --Malselene
- In that case, would it be a bad plan for berserk to include "When berserking, you gain one status effect (could be limited to certain effects, I'm thinking not freeze) NEGATE which you can explicitly use eg if you start berserking while halted. if your enemy is doing magic or spirit damage against you they are probably a mage or priest, this would give you a bonus vs them (as IMO the best combat casting is status effects then finishing with melee) without making you invincible? --andy
- I think this would add complication and be confusing and hence I don't particularly like it.--Malselene
- I do like the "you get some kind of buff then fall over at the end" approach, though I'm concerned with granting resistance in that it is open to being used as a shield to eg. run past the monsters to grab the McGuffin? and run out or to enable a warrior to act as a big tough defenisve shield for the priest performing a rite, which obviously isn't your intention. In theory this should be handled by the roleplaying requirements, but people often have wildly different expectations of what is required from a roleplaying effect and how much personal characterisation impacts on this. --Chevron
- You are probably aware of how hard I love the fall over and bleeding from all locations. I would, however, consider adding the bleeding effect onto beserk as it is. The truely cruel alternative is you start your bleedcount by starting beserking (which I actually rather like as a Thing, 120 max of rage, savable if your mates or monsters put you down and plug healing into you, otherwise a goner) - Porange
- It needs pointing out here that a "bleed count" is really not something we have in TT in the same way as we do in Maelstrom- bleeding is a state that you can reach after a location has been zeroed... --Pufferfish
- I hate counting when fighting- it is hard enough already. The TT death count is shortish, so I don't think I could fight, count my hits and keep track of it accurately (enough). It would definitely stop me taking beserk, as too likely to lead to me feeling like I'm cheating outrageously by having no idea if I should be dead or not. -TimB
- One idea I had about this was to make it a hit count instead. Once you trigger Berzerk on, you gain a set number of NEGATEs that you must use to calls, or Global Armour Points. Once you run out of these, you fall over and start bleeding from everything as you can't keep ignoring the damage you're taking. So yes, you can use it to break through a line and bomb right for your hated enemy that caused you to flip out, but if you don't drop them quickly, you'll be in trouble from the over-exertion. This also makes it an optimal skill to use if you're in deep shit and need to buy time, as opposed to early on when the downside outweighs the buff. --Jim
Get Rid of Berserk
Proposer: Drac
Seconder:
Motion: Remove the Berserk and Extra Rage skills. Refund any character with them the appropriate amount of XP. This motion if passed will invalidate all other berserk change motions.
- Discussion:
It is my opinion that Berserk is broken: as it is written it is have an extra degree of natural damage for an encounter at level 2 so long as you word your triggers carefully.
There have been numerous attempts to fix it, it has caused numerous amounts of WAH! and acrimony in its different iterations.
It also lends the question that Jacob raised "is a berserker without the skill a proper berserker?".
The easiest fix is just to remove the skill, and it is a role-play style choice in your character and their fighting style. If you want to fly off the handle and kill everything then you don't need to spend 15xp to do so.
- I approve of this. However, this will officially make Warrior an overly-empty class. What do we want to fill it back up with, or is paladin going to become the absolutely default build for high level warriors? --Tea
- Well we could make armour cost something actually vaguely proportional to how utterly amazing it is... Or maybe make melee 5 and 8 cost 10 xp just because they're so much better than all the other levels (and obviously the world would be made so much better by having a tree with different xp costs at different levels and it would not be confusing at all). --BeingSillyselene?
- Personally I'd prefer that than berserk is default build for a high level warrior. Having just checked, I can happily get to warrior 5 where my only potentially "duff" buys are 1 level of subdual and "Two handed" (which may not fit the character). Warrior 5 required adding 2 levels of dueling to make it to warrior 6, where I'll admit things get tricky, but this is enforcing "nothing outside of warrior save health". --Drac
- Yeah, the explanation for Berzerk makes it sound like Berzerkers are rare individuals with specific reasons for why they go into rages, not what you expect to see from every soldier. As for making something more expensive, I do wonder why Warrior DAC is the same cost as other lines' DAC when you get to use it in heavy armour. --Jim
- And we could also make subdual 5xp while we're at it to solve the fact it sucks, and subterfuge cost 13 xp and warrior 16xp for close to no apparent reason other than one is widely renowned to be better than the other... --BeingEvenMoreSillyselene?
- I do not want a berserk skill which is mechanically optimal, so that warriors who have no particular reason to take it still do so just for the damage. I do not want a berserk skill that is mechanically suboptimal, so that warriors for whom it is appropriate have to choose whether to waste points or to be "not proper berserkers". I'm not convinced that making it precisely value-neutral is viable. So I think getting rid of the skill and making it a roleplaying thing is the way to go. We could put extra stuff into warrior, or we could just make skills that are generally viewed as overpowered more expensive. --Jacob
- How about drop berserk, up melee by a point or two? --Tea
- And possibly also armour. --Jacob
Beingextremelysillyselene's suggestion - Make Berserk a General Skill
As if we give everyone the broken thing it must.... somehow... become less broken. (May contain fallacy)
Mages may only have the berserk trigger 'being over their metal limit' and should berserk using the weapon with the most metal available. Priests may only have the berserk trigger 'religion' and must berserk when attempting or hearing any discussion that could possibly be connected to this concept, especially preaching by other faiths. Alchemists must have the trigger 'alchemical fumes', attempting to apply a potion counts. Warriors may only enter a berserk state by first ripping off all their armour and daubing themselves with woad. Any ideas for wilderness and subterfuge? Multiclassers must berserk for both class triggers.
- Wilderfugers must berserk on any suggestion that they should track people through the city, and subterness characters have the berserk trigger of "people saying you shouldn't be able to use any polearms other than staffs." --MorkaisChosen