Reach Forever Higher [A SAO Quest]

[Expert Teaser]

[X][Trust] Tell her about the promise you made to Sayaka.
-[X] Stress that we made that promise entirely of our own will and Sayaka never asked for or pressured us into making it. The fault for this situation is entirely ours.

 

[Star]

[X][Trust] Tell her about the promise you made to Sayaka.

 

[Hellarion]

[X][Trust] Tell her about the promise you made to Sayaka.
-[X] Stress that we made that promise entirely of our own will and Sayaka never asked for or pressured us into making it. The fault for this situation is entirely ours.

Edit: Actually, since the mechanics are still being discussed, shouldn't the block action be able to block a lot of more damage, or at least enough to not be negligible and pretty much useless at the current state?

 

[Blonddude42]

now firmly wedged into the pavement.

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Wasn't the ground an immortal object in SAO

A hand shoots out to wrap around your collar, pulling you down and close to the blue-haired girl. "Did I?"

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You missed your chance to avoid a beating for this! Anime shenanigans by accidentally kissing her would have been hilarious.

fist-sized crater in the pavement.

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More damage to an immortal object?

Edit: Actually, since the mechanics are still being discussed, shouldn't the block action be able to block a lot of more damage, or at least enough to not be negligible and pretty much useless at the current state?

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Definitely second this. Blocking is entirely pointless in the current state. If you give up an action for blocking then it needs to give better results than negligible damage reduction.

Unless you want defense tanking to not be viable, or if you just want it to not work well at low levels. Different level bands having a wildly different gameplay meta isn't too outlandish and could actually be interesting

 

[Dark as Silver]

Wasn't the ground an immortal object in SAO

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Terrain usually isn't an object the same way that players or doors or chests might be.

 

[Blonddude42]

1d100 + 1d6(STR)

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Another point is that the roll for the attribute is basically negligible compared to the 1D100.

If this is by design then that's fine, but it is worth mentioning just in case it isn't

Kishi uses her bonus action to activate <Flurry of Blows>! Three unarmed attacks can be made this turn!

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Also, why does she have access to an unarmed combat art already? That was locked behind a really stupid quest on the second* floor.

If I recall correctly, s player had to punch a boulder unarmed until they finally broke it. Took Kirito days worth of mindless grinding to do it.


*Might have been a different one, but it definitely wasn't the first.

Terrain usually isn't an object the same way that players or doors or chests might be.

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Yeah, but it definitely wasn't something you could leave craters in canonically. Although it was an inconsistent mess, so I could see progressive changing it's tune on that

 

[nkd1325]

[X][Trust] Tell her about the promise you made to Sayaka.
-[X] Stress that we made that promise entirely of our own will and Sayaka never asked for or pressured us into making it. The fault for this situation is entirely ours.

 

[Saturday]

will not telling her about the promise still explain our reasoning, just leaving out Sayaka? Or is it a 'I can't tell you option'?

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You have been put on the spot and are basically being forced to spit something out. It's more of a gut reaction 'I can't/won't tell you'.

Actually, now that I think of it, how does the current system handle situations where the previous system would have given advantage/disadvantage? Is there a flat bonus or something?

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It's almost always a flat bonus.

Why was our AC 62? Shouldn't it be 85? 25(base)+50(chainmail)+10(forewarn)=85

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Ah man did I not update the character sheet? I'm almost 100% sure that I had everything formatted and saved already...

It doesn't matter though. The base AC has been moved from 25 -> 10. I'm... actually not sure where the 2 came from though, maybe I accidentally added DEX even though Honda's wearing heavy armor? I dunno. Thanks for letting me know about this though!

Edit: Actually, since the mechanics are still being discussed, shouldn't the block action be able to block a lot of more damage, or at least enough to not be negligible and pretty much useless at the current state?

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Definitely second this. Blocking is entirely pointless in the current state. If you give up an action for blocking then it needs to give better results than negligible damage reduction.

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Should it be a multiple of the strength roll then? Like instead of just being an extra 1dwhatever added to DR, should it be (1dwhatever)x2 or x3 or something? I'm honestly kind of at a loss here.

Wasn't the ground an immortal object in SAO

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AU remember? The things that happened in canon can't exactly be held as 100% true anymore, and this is one of them, though the reasoning for this thing won't be explained for a long time.

You missed your chance to avoid a beating for this! Anime shenanigans by accidentally kissing her would have been hilarious.

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Honda would probably get his shit kicked in even more than before if something like that happened. Though as a side note, I find it somewhat hilarious that at this point in time Kishi hasn't moved off of Honda. I mean, sure there are more important things at hand, but it doesn't change the fact that she is currently straddling Honda in the middle of the street. That, along with the screaming and the almost attempted murder not two seconds previous, paints a very 'What the hell is going on' picture for any passerby.

Also, why does she have access to an unarmed combat art already? That was locked behind a really stupid quest on the second* floor.

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Once again, AU. I am deliberately messing with things to make sure that people can't metagame too hard.

 

[NeonLights]

At this point, Honda would probably get his shit kicked in even more if something like that happened. Though as I side note, I find it really hilarious that at this point in time Kishi hasn't moved off of Honda. Though there are more important things that need to be discussed, it doesn't change the fact that she is currently straddling Honda in the middle of Tolbana.

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While that is awkward, there probably already was a crowd of people present to watch the fighting and the absolute beat down Honda received. The prevailing thought is probably going to be much less about how indecent the situation is, and more releasing a breath she wasn't taking a moment to hear his last words.

I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been heckling so far, or were they too absorbed in the moment?

 

[Joshua]

[X][Trust] Tell her about the promise you made to Sayaka.
-[X] Stress that we made that promise entirely of our own will and Sayaka never asked for or pressured us into making it. The fault for this situation is entirely ours.

 

[Blonddude42]

Should it be a multiple of the strength roll then? Like instead of just being an extra 1dwhatever added to DR, should it be (1dwhatever)x2 or x3 or something? I'm honestly kind of at a loss here.

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Hard to say with the multiplier. You could play with it enough so that a standard attack does very little damage if someone is blocking.

An alternative is if someone is blocking there's an extra DC that needs to be passed with the attack roll. Fail the second higher one and there's a significant reduction to the damage you do. Could also implement it in a percentile system where the strength roll of the defender corresponds to some value over the hit DC that must be exceeded to do the damage.

As far as things seem to be working right now, blocking is only giving about 10% damage reduction if a normal attack lands. That should probably get raised to at least 20%, but probably even higher. A compromise of something like halving damage received but increasing the chance of being hit could be an option.

Could also be made to be a function of the shield used. Something like, using a shield gives a significant boost to DR when blocking, but otherwise doesn't give much (if any) DR since the player wouldn't be focusing on taking the hit with the shield.

Could even allow for some interesting skills down the line that allow for boosts of things like DR buffs that decay over multiple rounds from blocking, or even special bullshit like Heathcliff's canonical unique skill*


Kayaba could probably start working through various playstyles to see where there are notable performance issues he doesn't like and release patches as he goes. Might make for an interesting arc where something that worked for someone a few days ago gets patched and people get fucked by it. Could even mess with the playerbase by Kayaba giving helpful patches while Cardinal ruthlessly eliminating some cheese strats if people ever try to duplicate them.

*probably could model that as him being able to surpass the 90% limit for DR

Edit: posted too soon, lol
Edit 2: think I added what I wanted to add

 

[me.me.here]

Should it be a multiple of the strength roll then? Like instead of just being an extra 1dwhatever added to DR, should it be (1dwhatever)x2 or x3 or something? I'm honestly kind of at a loss here.

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I would say instead of it being a 1d(Stat), it should be (stat)dwhatevers. Probably d4's to start (so a 6 Str Honda would probably block ~10-12 damage on average, which would be about half of the incoming damage in the latest fight and a relevant factor), but advanced skills or equipment could boost it to d6's or d10's.

It makes stats a more equal consideration to luck (the rolls themselves) or skill (which could let you add more 1d100's).

 

[veekie]

Honda would probably get his shit kicked in even more than before if something like that happened. Though as a side note, I find it somewhat hilarious that at this point in time Kishi hasn't moved off of Honda. I mean, sure there are more important things at hand, but it doesn't change the fact that she is currently straddling Honda in the middle of the street. That, along with the screaming and the almost attempted murder not two seconds previous, paints a very 'What the hell is going on' picture for any passerby.

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Everyone frantically taking screenshots

 

[lobonLight63]

[X][Trust] Tell her about the promise you made to Sayaka.
-[X] We promised not to drag the party into it. We did this for us.

 

[Sentient Tree]

It's almost always a flat bonus.

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Sounds good. Any chance you could tell us what that bonus would be, or is that something we have to discover for ourselves5? 10? 50?

Should it be a multiple of the strength roll then? Like instead of just being an extra 1dwhatever added to DR, should it be (1dwhatever)x2 or x3 or something? I'm honestly kind of at a loss here.

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One issue that people haven't mentioned yet is that 1d(Str/2) doesn't scale very well, since it's being pitted against 1d(Str) being added for damage. Even if weapon dice didn't exist, damage from Str and Dex would always outpace damage reduction from Str.

What kind of a multiplier you want is partially dependent on how fast weapon dice scale. If they will continue growing as we level up, damage reduction scaling needs to take that into account too. If they won't grow that much then damage reduction only needs to keep up with damage from Str.

I would suggest erring on the side of too much damage reduction rather than too little, as it's capped at 90% reduction anyway (also because I'm biased since I'm a player ). Err even further towards too much if we're only talking about on turns where we are actively taking an action to block, as that is sacrificing an entire action so it needs to do something substantial to make up for it.

An idea is to use equipment such as shields to scale damage resistance to match damage from weapons. For example, Forsworn is among the best defensive equipment that you can get at our level, so it could add the same dice to damage resistance as a high damage weapon would add at this level.
You could also have Str add a set amount to damage reduction, instead of a die. It would be less swingy, but it would also give us an appreciable amount of damage reduction that we could rely on, as well as make every point of Str feel meaningful. I would suggest it being +Str/2.

So my suggested mechanics for normal damage reduction would be 1d(equipment dice)+(Str/2)

On the other hand, I just realized that we're probably only talking about the block action itself, in which case I would suggest making damage reduction from Str scale to our Str. So

1d(equipment dice)+(Str)

Also, thanks for taking the time make this quest and improve the mechanics, @Saturday (and presumably @Dark as Silver ). Making balanced game mechanics is hard and time consuming, so we really appreciate you taking the time to work on them.

 

[Dark as Silver]

(and presumably @Dark as Silver ).

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I didn't do much, Saturday came to the Quest Ideas thread with suggestions and I niggled at the more obvious flaws.

 

[Pyran]

[X][Trust] Tell her about the promise you made to Sayaka.
-[X] Stress that we made that promise entirely of our own will and Sayaka never asked for or pressured us into making it. The fault for this situation is entirely ours. /

 

[Dragonstar719]

[X][Trust] Tell her about the promise you made to Sayaka.
-[X] Stress that we made that promise entirely of our own will and Sayaka never asked for or pressured us into making it. The fault for this situation is entirely ours. /

 

[Muroxxas]

[X][Trust] Tell her about the promise you made to Sayaka.
-[X] Stress that we made that promise entirely of our own will and Sayaka never asked for or pressured us into making it. The fault for this situation is entirely ours.

 

[noler]

Oh noooooo!!! Saturday, why???

Okay, hmm, okay. Our actual promise to Sayaka didn't say anything about not telling Kishi right? I mean, I guess it was sort of implied, because she didn't want Kishi to think she was a coward, or something??

We just got Sayaka to not hate us, and this was told to us in something like confidence but... at the same time, Kishi deserves the truth. She doesn't deserve to be lied to, even by omission.......

I guess we didn't tell her we were going to solo the boss in the first place because she would have asked why we wouldn't just go as a party, and that was explicitly against our promise to Sayaka, because it would've pressured the party, right? Can we just tell her that?? Saturday, I wasn't prepared for this!!

[X][Trust] Tell her about the promise you made to Sayaka. Our honest thoughts, feelings, and logic on it.
-[X] Stress that we made that promise entirely of our own will and Sayaka never asked for or pressured us into making it. The fault for this situation is entirely ours.

I hope this doesn't make Kishi angrier... we're doing our best Kishi! Promise!!!

 

[epic]

Damn it sucks it ended without a ending and I was really enjoying it, Just going around trying to live and make everyone happy, Really felt like you were doing your own thing.