Heroica RPG General Discussion

[Kintobor]

24 minutes ago, UsernameMDM said:

Like feats and abilities?

A bit. I'd even go so far as allow during character generation players to pick a Combat ability and an Out of Comat ability, sort of like being able to play a rogue in combat with the knight's diplomacy ability, or even being able to at first level pick up the black knight's intimidation ability.

I haven't given it too much thought, and it probably has it's own set of problems, but the intention is to give players access to abilities that help them create a niche they want to fit into without creating a nightmare where combat turns into a slog.

[Zepher]

Yeah I’ve been toying with different fixes to this system as far as leveling goes and sketching out a system a new that still employs just d6 but (Sandy and WBD forgive me for giving a post-mordem before we’re done) the choice of with each level up you can give +1 to either power, health, defense, or ether. That way people could customize any class they chose to umptimize different paths with each class, but there would still be advantages to each class. Also would allow new players to plug in without people being wildly overpowered, just longer players being slightly more powerful.

Mostly just making up a new class system based on my experience with what this incredible game has taught me. Wondering if anyone has played the Banner Saga?

[Lind Whisperer]

6 minutes ago, Zepher said:

Yeah I’ve been toying with different fixes to this system as far as leveling goes and sketching out a system a new that still employs just d6 but (Sandy and WBD forgive me for giving a post-mordem before we’re done) the choice of with each level up you can give +1 to either power, health, defense, or ether. That way people could customize any class they chose to umptimize different paths with each class, but there would still be advantages to each class. Also would allow new players to plug in without people being wildly overpowered, just longer players being slightly more powerful.

Maybe only do this after a certain level? Someone new to the game might freeze up a bit, trying to figure out which statistics they're supposed to prioritize. Perhaps at level 5? Or 10?

(Some people hit 5 very quickly - but by 10, you should have at least a general idea where you might be headed.)

[Flipz]

18 hours ago, UsernameMDM said:

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

I'm really not bothered at all with the d6 system.  In fact, I think it's genius simple.  I understand and see it as a balancing mechanism.  But, as I've said before, and others have echoed it, I think what really 'ruined' the game was the artefacts and immunities. 

Maybe, if there is a 2.0, immunities can be treated similar to artefacts: the amount you can have is affected by your level.

Also, perhaps weapons can have a fixed amount of 'slots' to insert gems.   

12 hours ago, Palathadric said:

Limited size of inventory could actually be a pretty big help. No more weapon-for-each-enemy-type, artifact-for-every-situation, endless amounts of consumables, etc. However, I don't think any of those things really address the things Flipz is talking about.

I do agree that there is a simple sort of beauty in the "d6" system, but there is a side to it which just doesn't really work. Hard for me to say what the real issue is, but definitely the TPKO one is quite a problem in that people will be extremely cautious about how they do things if the battle is difficult and therefore players who are not as tactically-inclined will be, sort of, automatically sidelined...

I'm just wondering how much a part the leveling system plays in all of this? I mean, I think people's desire to level up sort of forced QMs into making battles where there didn't necessarily need to be one and where there often wasn't a strong roleplaying prerogative for fighting...but maybe that was just the fault of the quest I ran.

But if we're talking about what broke Heroica, I, Palathadric - Vote: JimB (Hybros) and Scubacarrot (Guts)

In the name of Mizuki, I cry: Nerf rogues!  

I definitely agree that Artifacts broke the system in a big way, but I honestly lay the blame more on the arms race to make new Artifacts relevant more than on players upgrading existing Artifacts.  Honestly, I'm mostly fine with the way players can get immunities, considering how devastating negative effects are--on both PCs and enemies, really.  (Hashtag nerf effects, maybe?)  Pala definitely has a huge point with the leveling system also working to play its part; either you win the battle without being taken out, or you get jack diddly squat, which just utterly sucks--not to mention, it's another way that strong (read: wealthy) characters get stronger (and wealthier), while newer and weaker characters have to struggle and take massive risks of getting massacred just because one or two other characters in the party are utter juggernauts.  (It's one reason I really like the Skirmisher and Weather Mage classes, since they focus on supporting weaker allies with Defend and Phalanx from Skirmisher boosting allied defenses and Weather Mage increasing weaker allies' elemental spells, and in retrospect I really regret not being able to use it more--the later stages of the game might have been a lot different if we'd had a bunch of Skirmishers and Weather Mages running around instead of Dragoons and Assassins and Raiders and Marauders.  Heck, the Veteran Classes got shafted too, even if they're not quite as good at supporting weaker allies as Skirmisher and Weather Mage in my opinion.)

(Side note, yes, Minstrel is also an excellent support class but it's also broken as all hell in literally every incarnation it's ever had so I have mixed feelings about it, I'll rant about it at some later time. )

I do sort-of agree on the elemental immunities, though?  Looking at the system, it would have made way more sense for an imbued gem in an Artifact to give the character a corresponding enemy typing (i.e. a Ruby makes the character Fiery, meaning they're immune to Fire but weak to Water and Earth).  Would have been an interesting way to make elemental immunities more of a strategic choice while also encouraging more elements from enemy attacks as well.

Disagree on inventory slots, though.  I've played enough Earthbound to utterly hate inventory limits no matter what form they take.

Again, though, the wealth inequality really did mess up a lot of things, beyond even what the rest of the base game's flaws were; in a system where wealth can upgrade equipment, any mechanic that can directly generate wealth automatically becomes one of the most powerful in the system.  In retrospect, the Overkill Gloves definitely should have put the gold into the enemy's drops once they were killed instead of putting it into the individual PC's purse, and possibly the other gold-gaining rolls should have worked collectively as well.

9 hours ago, Kintobor said:

Palathadric Shakes Fist at Cloud

 

I actually thought about a perk system, wherein instead of directly gaining classes that dictate what you do, you instead take "perks" which dictate what a character can do. The base classes stay the same, but instead of slapping on a new template, you gain a new perk every some on levels. I didn't think too much into it, but it's a thought I had. Perhaps each perk costs a certain amount of "levels", and your level dictates which perks open up to you?

Food for thought, nonetheless.

8 hours ago, Kintobor said:

A bit. I'd even go so far as allow during character generation players to pick a Combat ability and an Out of Comat ability, sort of like being able to play a rogue in combat with the knight's diplomacy ability, or even being able to at first level pick up the black knight's intimidation ability.

I haven't given it too much thought, and it probably has it's own set of problems, but the intention is to give players access to abilities that help them create a niche they want to fit into without creating a nightmare where combat turns into a slog.

I mean, a system like that would have 100% solved the issue behind Pet Dragon logic for sure.  I actually had an NPC class worked up for a planned Quest that worked along those lines for Syndicate Elites, based on a newer Syndicate member getting to pick and choose elements from the Syndicate members we'd already seen, so that kind of concept can definitely work.

Thinking about it, having to actually spend levels on new rolls/traits/Artifact slots could be a good balancing mechanism as well; sure, you can pick out a really powerful trait like Pet Dragon when you hit Level 30/31, but that immediately drops you back down to Level 10 (or even Level 1 for that one in particular) when you do due to the intense and specialized training you have to undergo to be able to handle that trait.  Sure, you now have a second unit in battle, but your damage output has been severely reduced, and you now have to watch out for two units rather than one.

...actually, doesn't Final Fantasy XIV have something like this?  Like, you pick a class and gain a certain set of abilities to match, but then after reaching a certain number of levels within that class you can take some of the perks with you into other classes?  (Forgive me if I'm wrong, I'm not terribly familiar with the game myself, just have watched a few friends play it from time to time.)  Could be an interesting way to handle things.

[Palathadric]

I actually really like Kintobor's idea. Unfortunately, there are some abilities that are just better than others, obviously, but I think with time they could be made to be more equal. It would certainly add a diversity at the lower levels that would make each hero's role much more unique instead of forcing them into a mesh of sorts.

17 hours ago, Zepher said:

Yeah I’ve been toying with different fixes to this system as far as leveling goes and sketching out a system a new that still employs just d6 but (Sandy and WBD forgive me for giving a post-mordem before we’re done) the choice of with each level up you can give +1 to either power, health, defense, or ether. That way people could customize any class they chose to umptimize different paths with each class, but there would still be advantages to each class. Also would allow new players to plug in without people being wildly overpowered, just longer players being slightly more powerful.

I don't think defense should be included there, but it is an interesting idea. Not sure how such a thing would actually play out though. It may end up frustrating people and causing them to desire more battles faster.

Actually, if you look at the simplicity of the early came and the first quests, then it makes me wonder whether the biggest thing any game would need is just the ability to overhaul and make even large adjustments in the middle of the game. This obviously will frustrate people, but it seems that complicating things, creating crazy builds, etc., will always be things that will come up, no matter how much you change the core game.

But I think I disagree with myself here. It will end up becoming too frustrating for people to constantly be having their brilliant builds ruined...

[CMP]

20 hours ago, Zepher said:

Yeah I’ve been toying with different fixes to this system as far as leveling goes and sketching out a system a new that still employs just d6 but (Sandy and WBD forgive me for giving a post-mordem before we’re done) the choice of with each level up you can give +1 to either power, health, defense, or ether. That way people could customize any class they chose to umptimize different paths with each class, but there would still be advantages to each class. Also would allow new players to plug in without people being wildly overpowered, just longer players being slightly more powerful.

When I was messing around with system stuff a few years ago that was my thought as well. 

On 8/16/2018 at 6:59 PM, Kintobor said:

A bit. I'd even go so far as allow during character generation players to pick a Combat ability and an Out of Comat ability, sort of like being able to play a rogue in combat with the knight's diplomacy ability, or even being able to at first level pick up the black knight's intimidation ability.

I haven't given it too much thought, and it probably has it's own set of problems, but the intention is to give players access to abilities that help them create a niche they want to fit into without creating a nightmare where combat turns into a slog.

This is the way I envisioned killing Heroica's magical item bloat problem, too. Instead of tying all the interesting mechanics into magical weapons and artifacts (which has become a serious problem for a lot of reasons) they're tied into trees of abilities based on class. Everyone has access to the same trees, but within them there's a lot of room for customization or whatnot.

As far as initiative/battle order stuff goes...it's a symptom of a play-by-post system. But this conditional action thing has bothered me ever since I first hosted a quest. And truthfully, the only way I see out of it would require a huge but also somewhat simple alteration to how the system operates. Instead of having enemies attack based on a hero's roll or free hits, give them their own turns. All the heroes go, then all the enemies go. (Or vice versa in the case of sneak attacks or whatever.) Crowd control/effects in general also need to be overhauled for this to work. It's either no effort at all to pin down an entire army or literally impossible because they're immune. This 1/2 negative effect thing is as much of a fix as you can get without changing up how all effects work. And a lot of them are just too powerful.

[Palathadric]

If we were to give the enemies a turn, I assume that would mean that on the heroes' turn, there would only be the chance to hit or miss and on the enemies' turn it would mean the same for them.

Actually, that would make the Berserker's role interesting, because while they can't change targets, the enemy they are fighting wouldn't be able to either, presumably.

[samurai-turtle]

Well I had a half baked idea for artifacts. Maybe put a class system on them, based on level. So you would start on "Class D", then when you get to a certain level you can equip "Class C", and it would keep going, "Class B", "Class A" and finally "Class S". As you can equip better "Classes" the items get better. I do imagine this system could be used for weapons and other items. 

[Endgame]

I didn't dare suggest this at the time, but part of me has always wondered if some of the higher level classes should come with some more drawbacks, or at least be nerfed a bit. My memory of mechanics and classes are too fuzzy for me to name too many examples (hey, I haven't hosted a quest in a while, cut me some slack :tongue: ) but one of my fears as a QM is that by the time everyone had Master classes, the party would basically be untouchable. If memory serves, the Prophet's Shield is a full party revive, full party max heal, and a heavy amount of damage to the enemy party? Paragon's wasn't much better in that regard.

 

I'd like to see a system where characters' classes moreso grow sideways, in the sense they gain new abilities that can be swapped out (and not necessarily stronger than any other classes' ability!) to keep gameplay fresh, instead of just growing out of control.

[UsernameMDM]

17 minutes ago, Endgame said:

I didn't dare suggest this at the time, I'd like to see a system where characters' classes moreso grow sideways, in the sense they gain new abilities that can be swapped out (and not necessarily stronger than any other classes' ability!) to keep gameplay fresh, instead of just growing out of control.

I've thought about this too. Maybe a PC can earn and swap out abilities for Shields and 4s. 

6 hours ago, Palathadric said:

If we were to give the enemies a turn, I assume that would mean that on the heroes' turn, there would only be the chance to hit or miss and on the enemies' turn it would mean the same for them.

I like the idea of the 1d6 battle system as is because it's 'realistic': when a PC attacks an enemy, there's a chance to be counter-attacked, like a real fight. If anything, I think the 4 roll should be swapped to something like countered-damage where both parties take 1/2 damage.  So 3 rolls would benefit the PC, and 3 would be detrimental.

[samurai-turtle]

Their is a spammer attack here! What is going on? 

[Kintobor]

38 minutes ago, samurai-turtle said:

Their is a spammer attack here! What is going on? 

Report it if you haven't already. We tend to get this on occasion, but the Heroica thread tends to not get hit. They've posted in a few other threads if their post count is to go by.

[samurai-turtle]

27 minutes ago, Kintobor said:

Report it if you haven't already. 

I usually do, if I look in the thread.

One of spam threads have a picture of Asian lady in a pinkish swimsuit, standing in front of the ocean. Which I find unusual itself, but I haven't looked in that many spam threads. (I kinda don't want them thinking their tactics work.) 

[UsernameMDM]

1 more thing about Heroica 2.0 - Free Hits.  I think they should be re-evaluated.  Maybe something where the enemy has to roll as well: Hit, Critical Hit, and Countered Hit (or something like that).  If the heroes have a chance of dealing a receiving damage on their turn, so should the enemies.

[Flipz]

5 hours ago, UsernameMDM said:

1 more thing about Heroica 2.0 - Free Hits.  I think they should be re-evaluated.  Maybe something where the enemy has to roll as well: Hit, Critical Hit, and Countered Hit (or something like that).  If the heroes have a chance of dealing a receiving damage on their turn, so should the enemies.

Agreed, that very much ties back in to the whole enemy responsiveness problem and the thought of "enemy turns" I mentioned before.  If an enemy can't deal more damage than a Hero's SP on a Free Hit, then barring some kind of passive skill and/or immunities to damage over time (i.e. Poisoned, Bleeding, etc.), that enemy realistically doesn't pose a threat to the party because their most reliable means of dealing damage is nullified.  If a QM wants to "offer a challenge" to the party, that means that their only option to reliably do that is to raise the enemy's Level, which just feeds into the cycle of constant number inflation, which also means that less tanky Heroes end up getting utterly obliterated by common mooks because the QM is constantly balancing around the party tank.  While I feel that balancing everything around the tank is not a good method of QMing, enemies having a baked-in chance of a Crit lets QMs of that mindset have a chance of actually damaging the tank without having to make their enemies utterly unsurvivable for non-tank party members.

On 8/17/2018 at 4:34 PM, CMP said:

When I was messing around with system stuff a few years ago that was my thought as well. 

This is the way I envisioned killing Heroica's magical item bloat problem, too. Instead of tying all the interesting mechanics into magical weapons and artifacts (which has become a serious problem for a lot of reasons) they're tied into trees of abilities based on class. Everyone has access to the same trees, but within them there's a lot of room for customization or whatnot.

As far as initiative/battle order stuff goes...it's a symptom of a play-by-post system. But this conditional action thing has bothered me ever since I first hosted a quest. And truthfully, the only way I see out of it would require a huge but also somewhat simple alteration to how the system operates. Instead of having enemies attack based on a hero's roll or free hits, give them their own turns. All the heroes go, then all the enemies go. (Or vice versa in the case of sneak attacks or whatever.) Crowd control/effects in general also need to be overhauled for this to work. It's either no effort at all to pin down an entire army or literally impossible because they're immune. This 1/2 negative effect thing is as much of a fix as you can get without changing up how all effects work. And a lot of them are just too powerful.

Yes to all of the above.

I mean, the core issue with the magical item problem is that magic items are fundamentally...well, items, which means they can be bought with gold.  Gold gain is either massive or miniscule, and largely out of the player's control unless they go Rogue, meaning it's up to QM whim and RNG whether or not a character can effectively gain power and reach a state where they can participate meaningfully in endgame content with the existing high-end characters like Arthur and Hoke and Atramor and Althior (side note, why do so many top-tier Heroes stats-wise have names starting with A? ); compare characters like Vindsval and Throlar, or Pretzel and Nerwen, both cases where the newer character far, far outstripped the older one despite similar levels of activity and participation.  Levels, on the other hand, are for the most part constant (barring the broken 2x and 3x experience Artifacts that I don't think should return in a future game; Endgame's Trial Brew is by far the most fair means of a character getting bonus experience from a fight I've seen, with Level-Up Mushrooms being less fair but not outright broken due to them being consumables rather than permanent Artifacts), and by the nature of the game experience is generally handed out fairly evenly, making it a much fairer way to give out new abilities and skills than Artifacts.

Yeah, effects definitely need a huge rework.  In theory, they're great for adding variety to combat; in practice, they're just an outright death sentence to whoever they're applied to, which in turn makes immunities run way too rampant.  On the one hand, what's the point of being able to deal negative effects if all the enemies are immune to them; on the other hand, what's the point of having enemies if effects just render them useless?  On both ends, effects are just too, too much at the moment.

EDIT:

Just now, Flipz said:

participate meaningfully in endgame content

On 8/20/2018 at 6:31 PM, Endgame said:

 

...pun not intended. xD

 

Edited August 27, 2018 by Flipz

[Palathadric]

I think Pretzel's main source of power has been from his class and from side dealings. As far as quests are concerned none of the artifacts he currently has equipped he got in a quest and up until fairly recently he hadn't gotten too powerful weapons from quests either.

Pretzel's secret source of power has been abusing the Artisan's discount, I think, which has provided him with a rogue-like flow of money. Maybe that was the point you were making though.

[Flipz]

8 minutes ago, Palathadric said:

I think Pretzel's main source of power has been from his class and from side dealings. As far as quests are concerned none of the artifacts he currently has equipped he got in a quest and up until fairly recently he hadn't gotten too powerful weapons from quests either.

Pretzel's secret source of power has been abusing the Artisan's discount, I think, which has provided him with a rogue-like flow of money. Maybe that was the point you were making though.

He still got Artisan through the whim of getting selected for the Quest that gave it, rather than it being something anyone could strive to achieve with enough time and dedication, and as you pointed out, he still got as powerful as he did because of uneven gold flow rather than by the much more even and controllable experience gain.

[Palathadric]

Quite right. And while I have to say that I was horribly disappointed to miss the Dastan series, the Marketplace Quest was a hilariously fun one, though I know that the party had mixed and very differing opinions on it.

Interesting that Nerwen and Pretzel joined only around three months apart. While it was almost a year between Throlar and Vindsval's joining.

I think Chromeknight did go on a few hiatuses in the time. Counting Fields of Glory runs, Pretzel went on quite a few more quests than her, but still the power factor is largely due to the artisan class.

One big issue I have found is how quickly it became useless to upgrade weapons and shields at the marketplace. Pretzel hardly ever upgraded his weapons (but I guess he always did have more of a tanky build) because it just never seemed worth it to spend gold on that, at least for a non-rogue class.

[Waterbrick Down]

7 hours ago, UsernameMDM said:

1 more thing about Heroica 2.0 - Free Hits.  I think they should be re-evaluated.  Maybe something where the enemy has to roll as well: Hit, Critical Hit, and Countered Hit (or something like that).  If the heroes have a chance of dealing a receiving damage on their turn, so should the enemies.

Flipz is right, Free hits are made to help with enemy responsiveness. Since enemies only have in some cases 1/6 chance to do damage to a hero, 1/9 if the hero is lucky, 1/27 if the enemy is also Jinxed or if a Minstrel is using the Lucky Chant, QM's either need to make their enemies hit like a truck for that one time they actually hit, or allow them to do guaranteed damage/effects with free hits in certain circumstances through Free Hits. Free hits can still be mitigated through proper battle order, but I don't think they should change without a serious overhaul to the way targeting works.

[Waterbrick Down]

31 minutes ago, Palathadric said:

Ouch! That is painful.

 I've seriously got to figure out a way to copy what I've currently got to another document that can keep the same format. Holding something on the clip-board unfortunately doesn't work when I'm copying and pasting stats. Typically it'll kick me out in the first 30 minutes or so, but I was just about to post the round this time. 

[Flipz]

28 minutes ago, Palathadric said:

Quite right. And while I have to say that I was horribly disappointed to miss the Dastan series, the Marketplace Quest was a hilariously fun one, though I know that the party had mixed and very differing opinions on it.

Interesting that Nerwen and Pretzel joined only around three months apart. While it was almost a year between Throlar and Vindsval's joining.

I think Chromeknight did go on a few hiatuses in the time. Counting Fields of Glory runs, Pretzel went on quite a few more quests than her, but still the power factor is largely due to the artisan class.

One big issue I have found is how quickly it became useless to upgrade weapons and shields at the marketplace. Pretzel hardly ever upgraded his weapons (but I guess he always did have more of a tanky build) because it just never seemed worth it to spend gold on that, at least for a non-rogue class.

Honestly, upgrading weapons and shields seems kinda useless in general unless you're specifically going for the Fields, where enemy stats are set and thus can be planned around; no matter how much Gold you pump into your own stats, the QM is most likely just going to tweak the enemies to counter it in the name of "challenge".  Obviously that's not true of all QMs, of course, but it does seem to match the general tone of the complaints we've all heard and made about battle balancing, and honestly at that point, what's the point in upgrades outside of posturing/bragging about how big your numbers are/insert your own punchline here?

33 minutes ago, Waterbrick Down said:

Flipz is right, Free hits are made to help with enemy responsiveness. Since enemies only have in some cases 1/6 chance to do damage to a hero, 1/9 if the hero is lucky, 1/27 if the enemy is also Jinxed or if a Minstrel is using the Lucky Chant, QM's either need to make their enemies hit like a truck for that one time they actually hit, or allow them to do guaranteed damage/effects with free hits in certain circumstances through Free Hits. Free hits can still be mitigated through proper battle order, but I don't think they should change without a serious overhaul to the way targeting works.

See, that's my whole problem here; the whole "just make them hit like a truck to get past the SP" solution is frankly boring, and punishes all of the players because some of them like playing tanks; what's the point in upping your SP from SP:9 to SP:10 if the QM is just going to up the enemy levels from Level 10 to Level 11 in response?  Having enemies get a roll instead of a Free Hit makes the situation more dynamic and interesting, because now the QM doesn't have to inflate enemy levels to make enemies threatening, they can say "okay, so my Knight just buffed his SP and now my enemies' default Free Hit isn't enough to get past it, but that's okay because there's a chance of a Crit that will, or if I get really lucky the enemy will roll their Special just like a Hero can roll a SHIELD," and now all of a sudden there's more variety in what enemies are doing and the numbers don't necessarily have to be inflated to match the strongest player all the time.  (And, as an added bonus, now there's another chance for the enemy to roll their Special, meaning once again the "hit like a truck" strategy isn't as necessary.)

I mean, real talk here, if the goal is to make it so that a party of Level 1-10 characters have an equally challenging battle twelve quests on when they're Level 31-40, then why have level advancement at all?  Part of the fun of making a powerful character is getting to actually be powerful, and it bothers me that so much of the conversation around high-level play tends to come down to complaining about how difficult it is to threaten powerful characters compared to threatening low-level characters.  Is it important to offer powerful characters challenge from time to time?  Yes.  Is it important to also give those powerful characters opportunities to actually benefit from being powerful?  Also yes.  There's always a bigger fish, true, but that doesn't mean all the little goldfish have gone extinct, y'know?

28 minutes ago, Waterbrick Down said:

 I've seriously got to figure out a way to copy what I've currently got to another document that can keep the same format. Holding something on the clip-board unfortunately doesn't work when I'm copying and pasting stats. Typically it'll kick me out in the first 30 minutes or so, but I was just about to post the round this time. 

Ugh, honestly the forum update to this "modern" post editor is what finally pushed Heroica over the brink, IMO.  The way this post editor handles formatting is insane and stupid and inconsistent, and makes it damn near impossible to write up and roll battles and stat blocks.  If Heroica is ever revived, I honestly don't think it can be on EB proper, just because the software the site is on has made it frankly impossible to run it.

 

[Zepher]

3 hours ago, Waterbrick Down said:

 I've seriously got to figure out a way to copy what I've currently got to another document that can keep the same format. Holding something on the clip-board unfortunately doesn't work when I'm copying and pasting stats. Typically it'll kick me out in the first 30 minutes or so, but I was just about to post the round this time. 

Now that we're in different areas, you can also run the "battles" separately. Just run harbor and then post. Then run inner wall and post. Then outer wall and post. I used to do that with big battles back in the day.

2 hours ago, Flipz said:

I mean, real talk here, if the goal is to make it so that a party of Level 1-10 characters have an equally challenging battle twelve quests on when they're Level 31-40, then why have level advancement at all?  Part of the fun of making a powerful character is getting to actually be powerful, and it bothers me that so much of the conversation around high-level play tends to come down to complaining about how difficult it is to threaten powerful characters compared to threatening low-level characters.  Is it important to offer powerful characters challenge from time to time?  Yes.  Is it important to also give those powerful characters opportunities to actually benefit from being powerful?  Also yes.  There's always a bigger fish, true, but that doesn't mean all the little goldfish have gone extinct, y'know?

 

This is a good point, and is something that I also have thought of a remedy to in my noodling about a different system. Since battles are the way we gain experience, easy battles seem like free experience. My suggestion would be to leave it up to the QM to divide the Quest into "chapters", and for successfully completing a chapter to be what grants someone experience. Allows for easy battles and also for quests that have stretches of role-play with no battles what-so-ever. Also again stops power creep by potentially slowing down the speed at which people gain xp.

[UsernameMDM]

4 hours ago, Waterbrick Down said:

Free hits can still be mitigated through proper battle order, but I don't think they should change without a serious overhaul to the way targeting works.

So what if SP is converted into % chance of not taking damage? No matter what the level or SP, the PC can still take damage.

[Flipz]

20 minutes ago, UsernameMDM said:

So what if SP is converted into % chance of not taking damage? No matter what the level or SP, the PC can still take damage.

...I actually instinctively like that concept and think it needs further investigation (even if it ends up not working out), but at the same time given current circumstances in the battle I feel compelled to mock it:

So if the player's SP is greater than 100, what, they have a chance to take negative damage and get healed by the attack?

...actually, having said that, it does seem like it might end up negating even more damage than the current system, especially once players inevitably break SP:50 and deflections become more common than failures to deflect.  Interesting concept, but it ultimately doesn't scale, unfortunately.

1 hour ago, Zepher said:

Now that we're in different areas, you can also run the "battles" separately. Just run harbor and then post. Then run inner wall and post. Then outer wall and post. I used to do that with big battles back in the day.

This is a good point, and is something that I also have thought of a remedy to in my noodling about a different system. Since battles are the way we gain experience, easy battles seem like free experience. My suggestion would be to leave it up to the QM to divide the Quest into "chapters", and for successfully completing a chapter to be what grants someone experience. Allows for easy battles and also for quests that have stretches of role-play with no battles what-so-ever. Also again stops power creep by potentially slowing down the speed at which people gain xp.

This is how D&D Adventurer's League handles experience (or at least, did at the time I played several years ago), and I definitely like the concept a lot.  Maybe leave the exact amount of experience gain to QM discretion (so that QMs can reward players who participate actively and/or who achieve individual goals when others didn't), but still definitely a better way than stopping a player's entire progression just because another party member rolled a 6 or two.

[Waterbrick Down]

3 hours ago, Flipz said:

Honestly, upgrading weapons and shields seems kinda useless in general unless you're specifically going for the Fields, where enemy stats are set and thus can be planned around; no matter how much Gold you pump into your own stats, the QM is most likely just going to tweak the enemies to counter it in the name of "challenge".  Obviously that's not true of all QMs, of course, but it does seem to match the general tone of the complaints we've all heard and made about battle balancing, and honestly at that point, what's the point in upgrades outside of posturing/bragging about how big your numbers are/insert your own punchline here?

Agreed, without consistent enemies, one quest will feature rats at level 2 and another at level 20, you never really get better at killing rats.  Granted some classes have more of an advantage for pumping up WP (hunters, vindicators, rangers, etc), but for the most part the main thing that separates high DPS characters from others are usually effects and elemental advantages.

3 hours ago, Flipz said:

See, that's my whole problem here; the whole "just make them hit like a truck to get past the SP" solution is frankly boring, and punishes all of the players because some of them like playing tanks; what's the point in upping your SP from SP:9 to SP:10 if the QM is just going to up the enemy levels from Level 10 to Level 11 in response?  Having enemies get a roll instead of a Free Hit makes the situation more dynamic and interesting, because now the QM doesn't have to inflate enemy levels to make enemies threatening, they can say "okay, so my Knight just buffed his SP and now my enemies' default Free Hit isn't enough to get past it, but that's okay because there's a chance of a Crit that will, or if I get really lucky the enemy will roll their Special just like a Hero can roll a SHIELD," and now all of a sudden there's more variety in what enemies are doing and the numbers don't necessarily have to be inflated to match the strongest player all the time.  (And, as an added bonus, now there's another chance for the enemy to roll their Special, meaning once again the "hit like a truck" strategy isn't as necessary.)

I'm not claiming the Free Hits system is the best, I'm claiming it's needed for the given roll system we utilize today.  Your logic holds true, but it requires an overhaul to our current mechanics.

3 hours ago, Flipz said:

I mean, real talk here, if the goal is to make it so that a party of Level 1-10 characters have an equally challenging battle twelve quests on when they're Level 31-40, then why have level advancement at all?  Part of the fun of making a powerful character is getting to actually be powerful, and it bothers me that so much of the conversation around high-level play tends to come down to complaining about how difficult it is to threaten powerful characters compared to threatening low-level characters.  Is it important to offer powerful characters challenge from time to time?  Yes.  Is it important to also give those powerful characters opportunities to actually benefit from being powerful?  Also yes.  There's always a bigger fish, true, but that doesn't mean all the little goldfish have gone extinct, y'know?

Do people want to spend time going after little goildfish? In a live session, destroying a bunch of mooks can be done quickly and easily, in a play-by-post format.however, days/weeks spent on fodder battles can take time away from higher stake battles. 

14 minutes ago, UsernameMDM said:

So what if SP is converted into % chance of not taking damage? No matter what the level or SP, the PC can still take damage.

This moves us toward a THACO or AC system (not saying that's a bad idea), right now aside from class features, all heroes have the same probability to be hit. The only thing that differentiates the tanks from the squishies is damage reduction. The down side to that is that overcoming damage reduction has the downside of doing massive damage to those without it and there in lies the problem. 

Just now, Flipz said:

...I actually instinctively like that concept and think it needs further investigation (even if it ends up not working out), but at the same time given current circumstances in the battle I feel compelled to mock it:

So if the player's SP is greater than 100, what, they have a chance to take negative damage and get healed by the attack?

...actually, having said that, it does seem like it might end up negating even more damage than the current system, especially once players inevitably break SP:50 and deflections become more common than failures to deflect.  Interesting concept, but it ultimately doesn't scale, unfortunately.

I'd suggest capping SP at somepoint then and reinforcing artifacts such that only certain "tank" classes can be capable of hitting that cap.