So, the TT system has various (percieved) flaws. Here are my *personal* opinions on what I want to change.
THIS PAGE IS NOT A SET OF EXPLICITLY PLANNED AGM MOTIONS OR A PLACE TO HOLD THE AGM DEBATE.
Warrior
- Nuke all natural damage increases in the Melee skill. High levels of melee give uses of Strikedown per encounter
- I believe your basic premise is flawed (possibly 'all the hits and all the damage were meant to be hyperbole'). The assertion that Warrior is overpowered is based on what we commonly see on linears, which is a succession of opponents who are sub-par warriors themselves (3-6 hits/loc and singles normally)- weak opponents that do not justify using resources to trivially defeat. What we have seen at weapon practices where we've used mixed teams of enemies is that the warrior power levels are much more balanced. This is particularly the case since the hits were rebalanced, making warriors and everyone else more vulnerable to direct damage (warriors still have more hits, but the differential is now 'one, maybe two more spells to put them down). Last practice, with the warriors v's mages fight, the mages won with no casualties. --TimB
- Mages and Smite Soul priests are excellent anyway. Where I feel warriors are overpowered is not so much based on linears or a straight battle, but that they have a capacity to be tremendously threatening compared to either of the other physical attack classes, especially in the bar. They can shrug off THROUGH damage via having heavy armour and all the hits, for example, and they don't have to burn any resources or take a particular opportunity to fight well. If L5 DOUBLE was replaced by something limited use, they'd have the same problem as other classes of getting drained in repeat fights.
- If there was a desire to remove damage bonuses from the melee tree, I would put a request in to not replace them entirely with strikedown, if only because the combination of crowded bar for interactives and squelchy Grantchester Meadows for linears makes me think we could use other calls which don't involve falling down in unpleasant or unsafe places. Repel 5 (powerful blow) and Disarm (ha-hah!) are both suitably heroic melee options. --TimB
- I think Disarm may be better yeah, because it's also not a chain-able thing like spamming Strikedown to lock someone in position without the downside on needing vocals between them. --Jim
- This is a good point. --Tea
If you wanted to reduce warrior damage, I'd actually just make level 5, 6 and 7 each give you +1 blow of +1 unnatural damage per encounter and have level 8 take you up to natural doubles. And keep 2-handed in because you're making a sacrifice to do more damage. If you wanted to reduce warrior damage, I'd actually be keen to give them an ability to take their armour hits up past 4/loc. It makes them more tanky and the intent of this appears to be warriors -> tanks and not pure DPS (which doesn't seem a bad idea). I dislike giving warriors status effects mostly because they've never had them and it muscles in on the other classes. --dp
- I disagree - if you want to buff weapon combinations that are less effective, I'd buff "single one-handed weapon with no off-hand" - I reckon that sword and board, long polearm and ambidex each have their advantages over that, and priority between those three is arguable and situational. --Jacob
- Two-hander, as distinct from Polearm. I agree that single one hander is generally less effective than any of the further options, but it's also a style basically only pursued by warlocks, paladins, and archers, all of whom have a good use for that off-hand which isn't "another melee weapon, re-use of the same melee-weapon, or shield". The other issue is that with "single weapon no offhand", people will use that buff and then draw a second weapon to get the ambidexing benefits, if it's a limited buff (the obvious would be "DISARM by blow once" or something like that). Possibly "you gain one point of dac, spent after all other regenerating dac"? Iunno. --Tea
- Nuke berserk in its current form, possibly making it unnatural
- Currently, the optimal way to use Berserk is to have an excuse to switch it on at the start of combat so you get the full 5 min+ of extra damage. I think that a combination of Unnatural damage and "You take +1 degree from all damage types" would make it more of a thing to be used sparingly, and for PCs to try and control their rage when it's a liability. If it was perhaps cheaper but had obvious and thematic downsides, it would be more of a roleplaying choice and less of "well I already have all the skills I want, there's no reason not to take and use Berserk". Vulnerability to all damage has the advantage of simplicity compared to things like "attack the closest person" which are always open to interpretation and confusion. It's also nasty but not too nasty when you are also playing a class with the potential for a lot of hits. --Jim
- As for nuking beserk, that approach seems fairly pointless. I have only once managed to stack beserk with a magical weapon buff, as beserk does not normally happen at opportune moments for tactical use. --TimB
- When I tried to bring that in last year (but forgot) the point was that the capability to stack exists, it allows for ridiculous damage calls and should therefore be closed off even if it's not being abused by something stupid like a berserk trigger of "my weapon is on fire". Remember Magic and Spirit direct damage tops off at QUAD, whereas hitting someone with a sword can go up to more damage than a L8 spell. Whereas your PC might have a very specific trigger, that isn't necessarily the case. What would you consider a way to make Berserk less of a straight buff? --Jim
Reasoning: Warrior is currently so powerful due to having both a) all the hits and b) all the damage. So we take away the second. Warrior becomes a tank-class, near indestructible but only calling singles
(or 2h doubles).
General
- Make Duelling a general skill in some way. Probably either cut it off after level 1, or forbid double buying it.
- The duelling skill at present does the opposite of what I think it's meant to do. I think the idea of duelling ought to be to enable people to fight using purely hard rather than soft skills; letting people ignore touches undercuts this. --Jacob
- Make Subdual one 10xp skill to add SUBDUE as an unnatural buff
- Hack the metagame to make refteams not bound to be consistent with material from five years ago.
- I think this one boils down to "start a new continuity every few years". You can't have a shared persistent reality unless either it's persistent, or all changes are widely publicised (which I suspect is probably even more work than keeping consistent, and gives away what the refs are planning). Regular resets is an entirely viable model - Oxford run (or used to run?) a year-long LARP every year, although with much less emphasis on costume - but "this is nominally the same world, some bits of it have changed, you may not know which bits have changed until you step on them" is something I'm skeptical about. --Jacob
- The aim is basically purely to make the refs no longer bound to consistency with stuff which rarely comes up. The number of people who actually remember say the details of how mummy rot worked last time is quite minimal, so stuff which has dropped out of the game for several years can be resurrected without newbie refs needing to know all the details of how it worked last time. I'd contend that most of the shared world is the stuff which comes up regularly, and so would be included as something the refs should keep in their continuity. --Tea
- A major reason that we redesigned the refwiki this year was to make searching for info a bit less horrible so that this sort of thing is easier to cope with. Since refs can make setting changes without outside approval, it's possible to respond to a question about "does this still cure X" etc with "No, it's changed" and to further poking with "you have no idea, maybe a demon did it". Unless the thing has come up in play recently, it can be assumed the rest of the TT universe that isn't Grantabrugge has been busy affecting things while no PC has gone anywhere near it in the last 3 years. I'm not sure this requires any AGM ruling, so much as advice to future refteams on when to quit looking. --Jim
Alchemy
- Shuffle the resistances in the alchemical immunity potions. The three two-ingredient potions to become as follows, and the three-ingredients to be the pairs of these.
- Blind, Silence, and Freeze
- Halt and Disarm
- Strikedown and Repel
Reasoning: Currently at the two-ingredient potions, there is never a good reason to take the immune Blind+Silence potion. And at three ingredient, the clear winner is the potion of "immune everything but blind and silence". This would make the choice of potion much more relevant.
- Rebalance the recreational alchemy (stimulant, sedative, etc) to make it affordable and hilarious.
- I like that recreational potions require Skill 3 to create, so it's not trivial to make as a 1 level splash. They could be made effectively cheaper by stating that the potion creates enough for 4 doses in the same way that utility potions make a gobletful of stuff that is active for 5 min. So if you make/buy elixirs of them it'll work out 5 sh/1 ingredient per dose. This also makes it more likely PCs will take multiple doses and develop a habit. --Jim
Spirit
- Adjust Cursing 3 to provide either REPEL 300 by touch, or a LOH for Inflict 3 REPEL.
Reasoning: It's just as good in combat (5 mins is basically full combat in most cases), and is infinitely less shit to hit other PCs with in the bar. The LOH variatn provides for the previous effect where that makes sense as an IC aim.
- Go for the former. The moment you choose the latter, Cursing 3 is utterly useless. Why? Because "INFLICT 2 you must stay at least 10 metres away from Justin du Mesne." --MorkaisChosen
- I am thinking "base miracle is REPEL 300 by touch, or you can cast this miracle as a LOH to call INFLICT 3 REPEL". Also 10ft for the level 2 one :) --Tea
- Oops. ;-) --MC
- That needs to be fixed as TT runs on metric for everything except weapon physrep lengths. Make it 3m --Jim
- Cursing is not a combat tree. I dislike Touch Range combat magic, as it leads to people running into combat with arms outstretched looking ridiculous and also somewhat unsafe (as well as the inherent safety issues of running into someone during a melee, there is the issue that you cannot easily parry a touch attack with a larp weapon in a safe manner- the onus is thus placed on the defender not to injure their attacker who is putting themselves at risk). If we want this spell to exist in system as a personal Restraining Order, I'd rather it was LOH range. --TimB
- I was under the impression you can't use touch range spells once combat has started anyway and that what Tea meant is that you can Repel someone into a wall and then beat up their mate. I'd say a simple fix is to make the REPEL 300 a constraint of "you must have the social attention of the target". So you can use it to kick off, but not to aid a fight in progress. --Jim
- REPEL 300 is just as good (in fact, technically better) for getting rid of one person while you kill a second. The problemw ith Inflict Repel is when PC A hits PC B with it ten minutes after time in, as then PC B has to spend the entire remainder of the interactive sitting in a corner. --Tea
- I've used it in two ways as far as managing to achieve the range goes - swift vocal that fits into the few moments' surprise you get when you stand behind someone and start chanting, and HALT or FREEZE first. The latter is slightly more viable for combat use. I kinda like Cursing having some minor combat utility, but it getting any more practical would probably be a bit too good and it's difficult to remove the touch issue without just saying 'not in combat'. 'Unresisting target' almost works (as it removes the combat-touch problems but retains the halt option), but is impractical to call; it'd work at DUTT, but here it'd be a Stealth Extra Call You May Need To Learn, as "If you are unresisting INFLICT 3 REPEL" (or REPEL 300) is a bit too long for the situations when you'd need it. --MorkaisChosen
- I would put the responsibility on the caller to only use it on either a target who is halted or outside a combat type situation. --Tea
- Yeah, likewise, but still a layer of complexity I'm not sure we need - e.g. someone getting hit to haltbreak at about the same time. May not be disastrous, I dunno. --MC
- Make it castable only by dagger/weapon of 18" or less?--Taxellor
- Interesting... Could work, makes fighting a bit of a bastard (put sword away, pull dagger, curse, sheathe dagger, pull sword) - that's comparably limiting, IMO. --MC
- Not precisely related, but in SWATT I'm trialling a maelstrom like system where the cursing tree allows you to call CURSE on your next blow and fill the target in when there's time (~5 mins). Get around the LoH? restriction while also not having cursing a directly combat tree. It's also not yet known whether just cursing somone would lead to combat kicking off. --Chevron
- LoH? isn't a problem - it essentially means consent or unconsciousness - and, more importantly, 30 SECONDS OF GRANDSTANDING! :-D --MC
- That sounds like you'll need to rebalance all the miracles to take into account that they're now hugely easier to deliver. --Tea
- Give all gods Smite Soul, or rework the miracle trees so that all gods get a status effect tree including l1 halt.
Reasoning: Smite soul is basically much like green magic, in that it's the status effect miracle tree, and thus basically wins at combat.
Wilderness
- Adjust targeteer to make all arrows do strikedown, some can do through and strikedown.
Reasoning: Makes it quicker and easier to take a shot, because you can first fall over and then start trying to find otu what the damage call was. Improves tactical use of archery because strikedowns will get taken *quicker* on being hit.
- That's not a bad idea and would make being an archer a bit easier. --dp
- Also, being able to shoot out of camouflage at at earlier level would be much more fun. --dp