Tea/SystemReset

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Removed: 27,52d26

Subterfuge




*Compress Streetfighter to give unnatural Single Through at level 5

Reasoning: Streetfighter sucks

:All of my points from where this exact issue was raised at last year's AGM and voted down still stand. --TimB

::*looks at last year's discussion* What I really hate about AGMs is that you have to wait another year to try Motion v2, so it's hard to respond to criticism and produce a patch that is a good compromise. It's pretty antithetical to good game design. Players are more worried about something ending up overpowered than remaining underpowered. As you have to wait a year or call an EGm to scrap a rules change, there's no opportunity to playtest or see how it goes as the game runs, everything has to run on predictions and assumptions. I'd agree that a major issue with THROUGH is that it's only good against things with more armour than body hits, and that a usual name for most of these is "PCs". However, unless you can finish off a target in its entirety with THROUGH, it's no better than normal damage. So IMO Subterfuge should be able to have enough THROUGH to kill something they backstabbed, but not to just demolish any target with THROUGH by 36" sword. Otherwise, Backstab becomes the thing you take when you have THROUGH by magical, archery or spiritual means as well. There is also I think an argument to be made that more monsters should have armour as opposed to simple body hits, because nobody ever uses THROUGH by bow when they could have STRIKEDOWN and often +1 degree on that. But that's not an AGM so much as a statting decision for what to send on linears. --Jim
:::If you have just implied that the hellish horror of AGM lead up and AGM should happen more often I have only one thing to say. "KILL THAT IDEA WITH FIRE". Getting a functional and complete motion before the AGM is the least painful route.
:::If you publicise your desire to experiment with things ahead of time many rules changes can be played with at Weapons Practices like how many of the proposed changes to the brawling rules were experimented with. (May contain high degrees of physiological trauma regarding AGMs and Rules Changes)--Malselene
::::I believe Jim is complaining about the convention that something which fails at an AGM is left alone for a year or so. --Tea
:::::Actually, I didn't know about the convention when I typed that, but the point's the same. I realise that you can test at Weapons Practice, yes. It's still hard to get a functional motion if you only get good feedback on opposition after it's too late to change the wording. This leads to several small motions in the hope that at least some pass, rather than an integrated plan. Streetfighter last year was a good example, because not passing a Streetfighter upgrade while also linking backstab to Streetfighter has slightly backfired. It's made Subterfuge combat a little worse as you are forced to buy the levels in weapons like 42" swords for a Backstabby knife PC. It's not a huge deal, just a few XP, but it does go to show.
:::::TT has been built on a lot of small incremental changes without any defining plan, because AGM format leads to polarisation over an idea, not consensus. You can't say "Yeah, you are right, this is broken" and put the idea in again with some suggested changes, unless you wait a year or more. I reckon this sort of discussion page is a step in the right direction though. --Jim
::::::This is not an AGM discussion page, it is nothing to do with the AGM. it is my personal wishlist. I reserve every right to just completely ignore any point someone makes on here if I think they're wrong. I started it as an aid to my memory, not somewhere to hold debates. :) --Tea
:::On the subject of archery, through by bow is jsut worse even when the opponents have armour. Unless it instadrops them it leaves them upright and active. --Tea
I think level 5 is too low. I'd put it at level 6. Streetfighter could also be made better by just doing something more interesting than the bastardsword use at levels 5 and 6. Streetfighter also isn't supposed to be as good as melee. If you want to be good in a straight up fight, probably play a warrior.

*Make backstab do non-through damage, and give streetfighter doubles.
::Personal feeling: bland and uninteresting, homogenises the system. Yes, it's easier to balance, but I don't think it's worth it. --MorkaisChosen
:::Mm, fair. the advantages are much easier to balance, makes the "subterfugers slaughter mages" problem more minimal, and also turns subterfuge into the straight up DPS class quite nicely --Tea
::::Notably more interesting combined with Warrior doing SINGLE at most and getting Disarm, as discussed above. --MC
:::::I wouldn't enjoy any of that speaking as a person who has extensively played subterfugers with backstab. It's boring, it's another 'streetfighters should be as good/better than warriors' thing which I'm not keen on and makes no sense to me, and the warriors stuck on single could dual class and buy streetfighter. As for the non-through damage, that could be ok as an option if you still get through but I think making through by daggers more accessible and keeping backstab as through is more interesting and hopefully fun without being utterly deadly if it's worth doing anything at all. --dp

*Or Tea/BackstabReset


Removed: 66,69d39
*Add "lines plus ears" to the elemental elf physrep options, so that full face snazz isn't required. Appropriately coloured lines/patterns on all visible skin is already in the elemental human physrep, and ears to distinguish is already how we do normal humans vs true elves.

*Stabsafes in


Changed: 111c81
*Fix camouflage entirely: hiding becomes quicker, hiding acceleration goes away, ability to sprint goes away, ability to move slowly becomes basic, ability to ambush becomes basic, skill determines how long you can camo for --Tea
*See /CamoReset

Added: 112a83


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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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


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Last edited July 2, 2013 8:00 pm by Tea (diff)
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