Time of the Gods: Into the Amber Age
- Thread starter Powerofmind
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You have the wrong conversion method. X is not converted to 5X; it is converted to Y where Y% is the probability of rolling X or higher. I.e. After conversion, the range has no bias at all; it is basically the uniform distribution (though not quite the uniform, since it is discrete).
Not quite true. Right now, even a 20 in skills after excellencies only gives you +40. The chance of rolling 40 under someone else are 18%, and the chance of rolling 60 under them is 8%. At least before you count the neglect the -1 from untrained, our "brute" still has a 1/10 chance of getting a draw and a 1/10 chance of winning a round outright.
Fair point. Counterpoint - a martial artist with 20 in melee should be able to auto-gib you if you are within striking range. A 20 is a huge investment - just getting +10 from traits probably requires 7-8 melee focused ones, plus there is the 15 legend invested in stats plus the excellency. If you invest that much in melee, you deserve to be able to kill anyone untrained that you get within striking distance of. The counterbalance to this isn't to nerf how killy you are, but exploit your other vulnerabilities to this - e.g. use social combat, attack you from range, etc. Since getting your avatar blown up doesn't even mean you lose (you aren't likely to lose more than a single shrine, if that), even a surprise betrayal from a melee character doesn't screw the player over.
I thought Avatar gave higher health? Even at 20 skill at x4, you only gain an average of 4 degrees of success on a novice opponent, which isn't enough to deal 10 damage. Unless you have a trait which doubles damage, in which case I contend that that is the problem.
Fair enough; that helps a bit. However, that is an incentive to have at least 1 rank in a skill, not an incentive to level said skill. I'm concerned about leveling skills not being sufficiently rewarded.
Um. Are you suggesting that you can get e.g. +5 Melee from traits for 6-8 legend? If so, I have absolutely, utterly, and totally no idea how.
Is this applied (near)uniformly to all avenues of Legend spending? Because if you only make skill growth more expensive, then it becomes noncompetitive compared to other options.
For example. We know that a Water avatar gives us an increased wound threshold; I take that to mean that we tale 1 less wound any time we are hit. Its base cost is 4, but it gives 3 back as accumulating Legend discount towards Avatar, so it is really a trait that costs one, and it reduces degrees of melee success against us by 1. If we find spirit of the rhino or whatever for 3 legend which gives us +1 damage when we win, combined this becomes almost the same thing as +1 degree of success in melee overall. In other words, these two traits which cost less than 5 together give us as much of a benefit as 10 points in melee. Plus a bunch of other stuff, since e.g. Water Avatar also gives us drown-grappling.
Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
- Pronouns
- He/Him
@Crabs @Ephemeral_Dreamer @fasquardon @Ian Drash
If i'm reading the tally right, then you all voted for a plan that doesn't involve marrying saiga (or at least not yet). Any chance you'd consider consolidating to my plan? I've got like 14 votes to veekie's...19 i think?
[] Plan No Husbando (yet)
[] Acquiesce to Saiga's first condition (not voting for this is implicit refusal of the condition, can be difficult and will likely upset Saiga).
[] Give something else instead of either condition (can upset Saiga regardless of what is offered if it doesn't include easing up on his fishers).
-[] We will bless some of his people to make up for this year, as soon as we have a shrine in his village
[] Demand more in exchange for granted requests.
-[] A shrine to us in his village
-[] Information about the island, especially any nearby villages and spirits; we need to know more before we make such a commitment.
Also if you or anyone else has opinions on whether i should change anything minor about my plan, @Sivantic and i are discussing potential changes, and i'm willing to make minor changes if they'll gain more votes than the lose (@PrimalShadow has already vetoed some things i think?)
If i'm reading the tally right, then you all voted for a plan that doesn't involve marrying saiga (or at least not yet). Any chance you'd consider consolidating to my plan? I've got like 14 votes to veekie's...19 i think?
[] Plan No Husbando (yet)
[] Acquiesce to Saiga's first condition (not voting for this is implicit refusal of the condition, can be difficult and will likely upset Saiga).
[] Give something else instead of either condition (can upset Saiga regardless of what is offered if it doesn't include easing up on his fishers).
-[] We will bless some of his people to make up for this year, as soon as we have a shrine in his village
[] Demand more in exchange for granted requests.
-[] A shrine to us in his village
-[] Information about the island, especially any nearby villages and spirits; we need to know more before we make such a commitment.
Also if you or anyone else has opinions on whether i should change anything minor about my plan, @Sivantic and i are discussing potential changes, and i'm willing to make minor changes if they'll gain more votes than the lose (@PrimalShadow has already vetoed some things i think?)
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
I distinctly remember that plan being something very different when I voted for it. This is annoying.
I was thinking of this, yes.
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- Location
- Hell
Don't worry I'm working on it. Also do you have any suggestions for tasks?
Oh huh, I forgot double 10s explode.
Damn, the Wild Magic roll was 10+10, then 1+1. Double doubles.
Aspect of the Hunter/Warrior for another +1/+2 which doesn't get it's cost boosted by animal aspects.
First one costs 2 Legend, second one costs 3 Legend, or you upgrade the first to T2 for 5 Legend.
2 T1 Predator aspects for 5 Legend and 4 Melee.
1 T2 Predator aspect for 7 Legend and 5 Melee
1 T1 Hunter aspect, 2 T1 Predator aspects for 8 Legend and 5 Melee.
That's kind of what led to Harzivan though. The intent is to limit that AND move such a massive gap over to require the next tier in skill.
Damn, the Wild Magic roll was 10+10, then 1+1. Double doubles.
Remember, the maximum number of skills you have is capped by your Avatar rating. Having 1 rank is a non-trivial investment. Not maxing out your skills is essentially wasting your skill slots.
Aspect of the Lion/Bear/Wolf/Insert Apex Predator here T1 +2 Melee.
Aspect of the Hunter/Warrior for another +1/+2 which doesn't get it's cost boosted by animal aspects.
First one costs 2 Legend, second one costs 3 Legend, or you upgrade the first to T2 for 5 Legend.
2 T1 Predator aspects for 5 Legend and 4 Melee.
1 T2 Predator aspect for 7 Legend and 5 Melee
1 T1 Hunter aspect, 2 T1 Predator aspects for 8 Legend and 5 Melee.
That's kind of what led to Harzivan though. The intent is to limit that AND move such a massive gap over to require the next tier in skill.
Agreed. That was my point, actually; the true cost of losing the -1 isn't the skill cost, but allocating a skill slot.
True. However, if skills are weak enough compared to other Legend investment options, that won't be a tight constraint; basically, the main benefit of the skill slot would be that first rank, and everything after that would be a thing we are allowed to invest in but don't want to because the returns are bad.
I'm saying that as of now, it feels like we are in this circumstance. Prior to learning about the mechanics, I thought upgrading trickery would be our best way to boost short-term strength, at least per legend. Now, I no longer feel this way; a tenth of a success per rank just isn't enough to be a major deal.
Those are a lot cheaper than I thought they were. I suppose I stand corrected.
If I'm not mistaken, under AN's system, each point of skill corresponded to +10 on a roll. We've since cut that bonus in five. Don't you think that is excessive?
Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
- Pronouns
- He/Him
HELP ME I NEED TO BE PRODUCTIVE BUT I CAN'T STOP WRITING OR DOING STATISTICS FOR THIS QUEST
Hello again children—now, if I remember correctly, I was telling you about Maui and his theft of the Moon Sphere, right? Good. So, I think I left off with the promise that I'd tell you about the next time the Moon Sphere showed up. But I'm afraid that was a little fib—first, I have to tell you about a little girl, even younger than most of you. She was the daughter of the chieftess of Moto Nui, a small but prosperous village on a small but prosperous island of the same name. Moto Nui—the island that is—was an odd island, one of the last islands claimed by Gaerig and her pantheon. Due to its distance from anything else, it's lack of importance and population, its protective reef, and its already bountiful coconut trees, soil, and waters, few Gods put shrines upon the island when it was found by voyaging Gaerigeans. After the war with the Demon began, Moto Nui was thus the first island to lose attention and shrines, so by the time the Moon Sphere was lost, only a single local spirit lived upon the island, and so when Gaerig's fury roiled the ocean, they were cut off from the rest of civilization. The people of Moto Nui were hardy people however, and their reef and their position outside of Gaerig's influence allowed them to continue to fish whilst other peoples were cut off from even the shallowest seas and starved. And so they were perhaps the healthiest of Gaerig's people, though their spirit was weak, and their bloodlines weak, having lost all but the faintest traces of the original Gaerigean blood in the face of more ordinary immigrants over the years.
It was into the first year of this new life that Moana was born. Neither as large and powerful as her mother, nor as slim as her father, Moana was a special girl—not because she was the future chieftess of the village, as the village thought, nor due to her tendency to escape their sight at the blink of an eye, as her parents thought. No, Moana was special because she was a rare example of divine blood strengthening itself in a bloodline—though both her parents displayed no traits indicative of even the earlier Gaerigean lines, Moana displayed great strength, as well as an affinity for both the waters of the reef and the ocean beyond the reef, even at a young age. Of course, this lead to difficulties—the people of Moto Nui had quickly forgotten their time as the daughters and sons of Gaerig and Saiga, and now feared the ocean. The chieftess and her husband quickly learned that if they ever lost sight of Moana, they had to check every boat they had, lest she make her way out to sea.
Of course, I'm fibbing again—her latent divine blood wasn't the only reason she was attuned to the sea. You see, while Gaerig had—and has—always been prone to creating Shadow Gods of herself, due to her Moonbeam and general greatness, her great wrath in those times and the war with the Demon had swelled her Legend and her power beyond even the normal levels, and she had accidentally created a great Shadow God. Unlike more recent Shadows of our Great Ocean, this Shadow was kind and loved mortals—but she was too weak to do more than slightly blunt her true self's anger. However, the Shadow Ocean had done something better-she had found the Moon Sphere! Even with it shrunk in power, glow, size, and weight to fit Gaerig's loss, the Shadow was too weak and limited to get the Sphere within Gaerig's influence, many miles away, and she could not even speak. However, she found that when she was near Moana, her power increased just the tiniest bit, enough to make herself known! …That is, if her target were not a 3 year old baby. And so, Moana grew to forget the strange sight of the waters molding themselves to her wishes, shaping into an image of a large man whose image flickered into a menagerie of animals. Luckily for the Shadow Ocean, Moana's grandmother had seen what happened, and rolled the Moon Sphere into a nearby cave to wait until Moana was old enough to take on this clear quest from the gods.
Moana's life was, I'm sure, exciting, as she learned to be a chieftess, but alas, I don't know much of what happened. Suffice to say that she was a good chieftess-to-be, and learned all that her people had to share, hiding her yearning to explore the harsh ocean because she knew her people needed her. But then, when she was 16 years old, already the strongest in the village, Gaerig's wrath finally struck the island. Where before the reef had teemed with fish, now it was practically empty. Moana's natural thought was to look to the ocean, which of course seemed calm from afar, this far from Gaerig's influence. When her parents refused to allow it, her grandmother decided it was finally time, and showed her where their people had hidden their ocean-worthy ships after the waters turned on them. With a blessed satchel from their local spirit and her own great strength, Moana set forth to find this "Maui" her grandmother had spoken of—for she was Moana of Moto Nui! And Maui would board her boat, sail across the sea, and restore the Moon Sphere of Gaerig!
AN: I was going to do this tomorrow, especially since we already have like 3 omakes (...2 of them from me <.< >.>) this turn, but...then this happened
I've done like nothing today but stuff for this quest...shit, i'm sorry @Sivantic but at this point i need to step away from this quest (or at least doing work for it, i'll prolly still read and rate things ) and get ready for bed; if @Powerofmind keeps the vote open until the morning, i'll look at it again...but then, if he locks it tonight i doubt we'd have been able to change things around anyway, since we're like 5 or 6 behind and i think a lot of people stopped following the quest after the fear/faith thing, or at least they don't do so for every update...
Moana in the Amber Age Part 2– A Dying Island, the Ocean's Jewel, and the Moon Sphere.
Hello again children—now, if I remember correctly, I was telling you about Maui and his theft of the Moon Sphere, right? Good. So, I think I left off with the promise that I'd tell you about the next time the Moon Sphere showed up. But I'm afraid that was a little fib—first, I have to tell you about a little girl, even younger than most of you. She was the daughter of the chieftess of Moto Nui, a small but prosperous village on a small but prosperous island of the same name. Moto Nui—the island that is—was an odd island, one of the last islands claimed by Gaerig and her pantheon. Due to its distance from anything else, it's lack of importance and population, its protective reef, and its already bountiful coconut trees, soil, and waters, few Gods put shrines upon the island when it was found by voyaging Gaerigeans. After the war with the Demon began, Moto Nui was thus the first island to lose attention and shrines, so by the time the Moon Sphere was lost, only a single local spirit lived upon the island, and so when Gaerig's fury roiled the ocean, they were cut off from the rest of civilization. The people of Moto Nui were hardy people however, and their reef and their position outside of Gaerig's influence allowed them to continue to fish whilst other peoples were cut off from even the shallowest seas and starved. And so they were perhaps the healthiest of Gaerig's people, though their spirit was weak, and their bloodlines weak, having lost all but the faintest traces of the original Gaerigean blood in the face of more ordinary immigrants over the years.
It was into the first year of this new life that Moana was born. Neither as large and powerful as her mother, nor as slim as her father, Moana was a special girl—not because she was the future chieftess of the village, as the village thought, nor due to her tendency to escape their sight at the blink of an eye, as her parents thought. No, Moana was special because she was a rare example of divine blood strengthening itself in a bloodline—though both her parents displayed no traits indicative of even the earlier Gaerigean lines, Moana displayed great strength, as well as an affinity for both the waters of the reef and the ocean beyond the reef, even at a young age. Of course, this lead to difficulties—the people of Moto Nui had quickly forgotten their time as the daughters and sons of Gaerig and Saiga, and now feared the ocean. The chieftess and her husband quickly learned that if they ever lost sight of Moana, they had to check every boat they had, lest she make her way out to sea.
Of course, I'm fibbing again—her latent divine blood wasn't the only reason she was attuned to the sea. You see, while Gaerig had—and has—always been prone to creating Shadow Gods of herself, due to her Moonbeam and general greatness, her great wrath in those times and the war with the Demon had swelled her Legend and her power beyond even the normal levels, and she had accidentally created a great Shadow God. Unlike more recent Shadows of our Great Ocean, this Shadow was kind and loved mortals—but she was too weak to do more than slightly blunt her true self's anger. However, the Shadow Ocean had done something better-she had found the Moon Sphere! Even with it shrunk in power, glow, size, and weight to fit Gaerig's loss, the Shadow was too weak and limited to get the Sphere within Gaerig's influence, many miles away, and she could not even speak. However, she found that when she was near Moana, her power increased just the tiniest bit, enough to make herself known! …That is, if her target were not a 3 year old baby. And so, Moana grew to forget the strange sight of the waters molding themselves to her wishes, shaping into an image of a large man whose image flickered into a menagerie of animals. Luckily for the Shadow Ocean, Moana's grandmother had seen what happened, and rolled the Moon Sphere into a nearby cave to wait until Moana was old enough to take on this clear quest from the gods.
Moana's life was, I'm sure, exciting, as she learned to be a chieftess, but alas, I don't know much of what happened. Suffice to say that she was a good chieftess-to-be, and learned all that her people had to share, hiding her yearning to explore the harsh ocean because she knew her people needed her. But then, when she was 16 years old, already the strongest in the village, Gaerig's wrath finally struck the island. Where before the reef had teemed with fish, now it was practically empty. Moana's natural thought was to look to the ocean, which of course seemed calm from afar, this far from Gaerig's influence. When her parents refused to allow it, her grandmother decided it was finally time, and showed her where their people had hidden their ocean-worthy ships after the waters turned on them. With a blessed satchel from their local spirit and her own great strength, Moana set forth to find this "Maui" her grandmother had spoken of—for she was Moana of Moto Nui! And Maui would board her boat, sail across the sea, and restore the Moon Sphere of Gaerig!
AN: I was going to do this tomorrow, especially since we already have like 3 omakes (...2 of them from me <.< >.>) this turn, but...then this happened
I've done like nothing today but stuff for this quest...shit, i'm sorry @Sivantic but at this point i need to step away from this quest (or at least doing work for it, i'll prolly still read and rate things ) and get ready for bed; if @Powerofmind keeps the vote open until the morning, i'll look at it again...but then, if he locks it tonight i doubt we'd have been able to change things around anyway, since we're like 5 or 6 behind and i think a lot of people stopped following the quest after the fear/faith thing, or at least they don't do so for every update...
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Must have mistranslated the earlier ones to their proper numbers. I did it in my head at first, then I made a chart of value conversions to make it easier.
Not a good argument for double value, but not a bad argument for 3 each instead.
I don't think you understand just what kind of philosophy a 'never win' clause introduces to the system. If there is a way for a character to do an opposed check that cannot fail except against someone also focused on that skill, there will be so much toxic-to-play behavior that revolves around 'relative invincibility'. Harzivan is a great example of this, as usual. Mechanics were introduced that basically made him impossible to defeat in a type of encounter that (at the time) dictated everything, which did jack and shit to the game's difficulty, because AN had to dramatically curve it upwards to deal with the bullshit that kind of focus supported. Even though Harzivan wasn't nearly as broken in melee, he should never. EVER. been able to keep a running fight against a god and three other combat spirits at once. If you are stat focusing and outdoing 10 skill gods with your excellency skills on a regular basis, I've done something wrong with game balance, and a 40 point advantage over a god a tier above you will ensure that you regularly beat that god, roughly 8 times out of 10, as the math you did proved; that a 40 point advantage from a 20 point excellency over a 0 was 'not good enough', just because he didn't focus as much on a skill as you did.
There are means of increasing damage significantly, or adding strong modifiers as veekie calls them. For a spirit to have skill 20 skill at x4, an 80 point advantage, they have also picked up multiple traits that give melee, many of which also increase the damage you do or reduce the damage you take. Assuming 2 average rolls, the 80 point advantage will get his 4 wounds, and then an extra wound or two from Strength, and then an extra wound or two from aspect of X, and then aspect of Y gives a strong modifier that shifted your roll higher and pushed you up another degree... With a 40 point lead, at 20 skill, you've got plenty of advantages already. You don't need more.
Because you should always waste precious skill slots with 1 rank in a skill. Why do you think I included them? To prevent bullshit gaming of the system, just like you suggested you do to get around the 0 skill penalty.
Maybe that's solely from a faith standpoint, but it's really not that difficult. Spirit of Strength T3 gives a non-skill damage bonus, melee 4, and ranged 2. Straight to the trait costs 18 legend at once, but a raiding spirit running off Accumulating action will get each upgrade for around 2-3 less, more if they're especially stingy like SVers would be about sleeping. If it was you guys trying to build a warrior super-god, you could get T3 strength in 8 legend, maximum, while also picking up discounts for other combat-boosting traits. Being forced to spend a whole 15 legend picking up skill 10 and excellence is fair. It's an actual limit to how stupid you can get at a certain pace.
Avatar enhancements become significantly more costly after the first one, as do Divine enhancements. The wound threshold reduction is powerful and is supposed to be powerful, as is the drowning grapple, but both of those bonuses are situational. There are ways around them, backdoors past them. Any aquatic aspect removes grapple drowning immediately, and influence based attacks ignore 'threshold' boosts, going straight for avatar hit points. The avatar discount is actually the least effective part of the trait. It's why Spirit of Humanity gives it's legend cost in faith discount, because while it's great early on, when you don't have much (just like skills), it's effect becomes less and less pronounced as the attribute or skill rises (for skills, it's a sign that you need to get base to 10, for attributes, it means you have to pick up more and more and more discounts to get good value out of them).
That I had to cut that by a factor of five to get a relatively balanced system should be reason enough to be especially thoughtful about a 1 point increase, and wildly skeptical of 2. You suggest, from a cut to a fifth, to only be roughly a half, in a situation where Harzivan, who had the full bonus and appropriate combat traits, was able to nearly kill one spirit entirely, cripple a GOD, and put a third on the ropes, at the same time, with multiple penalties, while a rain spirit was doing 2-3 avatar damage per round. When I was first figuring on the reduction, I honestly thought 2 per point was too much when trying to figure 'okay, what is a fifth of that?'
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To be fair, your talking about SV'ers we're going to end up as broken as we can possibly be within a system... AN's system just allowed us to be really fucking broken.
But I guarantee you someone will eventually figure out the numbers, and then its "Unlimited power train 2: Gaerig Boogaloo" all up in this bitch.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
And I will do everything in my power to ensure that getting to that point for Gaerig is purposeful, focused effort on the part of the thread, and is appropriately weak in other areas of lesser focus (and doesn't win so fast, or at least so consistently, that she never has to experience those other areas by blindly bullrushing a problem with her favored method of attack).
Note that skills are CHEAP. Spending Legend directly to raise skills is rarely ideal, unless you need to get your foot in.
Look at our traits:
-T1 Fish - Cost 2 Legend, discounted by Spirit of the Sea to 1 Legend. Grants Trade +1, Navigation +1 and a minor buff. 2 Skillpoints for 1 Legend.
-T1 Crustacean - Cost 2 Legend, discounted by Spirit of the Sea to 1 Legend. Grants Melee +2 and a minor buff. 2 Skillpoints for 1 Legend.
-T1 Walrus - Cost 2 Legend. Grants Fishing +1, Survival +1 and a minor buff. 2 Skillpoints for 2 Legend.
-T1 Human - Cost 2 Legend. Grants Leadership +1, Innovation +1 and a discount of 2 towards raising Faith. 2 Skillpoints for 2 Legend for Fear spirit. 2 Skillpoints for 0 Legend for Faith spirit.
-T1 Mischief - Cost 3 Legend. Grants Trickery +2, a new avatar action, and a moderate buff. 2 Skillpoints for 3 Legend.
-T2 Mischief - Cost 6 Legend. Grants Trickery +1, Survival +1, an action improvement and a moderate buff. 2 Skillpoints for 6 Legend.
-T1 Sea - Cost 3 Legend. Grants Fishing +2, Navigation +1 and an action improvement. 3 Skillpoints for 3 Legend.
-T2 Sea - Cost 6 Legend. Grants Fishing +1, Navigation +1, Trade +1 and an action improvement. 3 Skillpoints for 6 Legend.
-T1 Exploration - Cost 3 Legend. Grants Survival +1, Navigation +1, Trade +1 and an action improvement. 3 Skillpoints for 3 Legend.
And then you consider that any skill you use frequently will naturally rise without spending Legend.
As such, skills are weakened because they are easy to acquire! The cost is basically free with traits if you're taking up one more trait slot, or moderately effective if you're upgrading a trait.
Any Spirit would not find it difficult to acquire at least 8 points worth of skills in their first 10 Legend spending, without spending a single point in skill improvement directly.
Only reason I might see to buy a skill directly is to unlock Excellence in a skill you don't want to wait 10+ turns to grind up by actions.
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I hope you do, because Harzivan started neglecting neat shit like exploration or crafting or monster making (or you know... actually fucking ascending to godhood) in favor of UNLIMITED POWAH!
Which is part of what killed the game.
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Dunkelzahn
Dragon of the Sixth World
- Location
- Manitoba, Canada
Wow. Quite a bit's happened since I last checked in...
...and it looks like I've returned in the middle of a husbando war.
[X] Plan No Husbando (yet)
Seeking more information before making an informed decision is generally a good idea.
Even though I really want Saiga as our Husbando....
...and it looks like I've returned in the middle of a husbando war.
[X] Plan No Husbando (yet)
Seeking more information before making an informed decision is generally a good idea.
Even though I really want Saiga as our Husbando....
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- Location
- Hell
@chocolote12 @Edkose @Fumbles @lioli @ninjafish @Omegahugger @PrimalShadow @Raising Kittens @tricholysis @Van Ropen @Void Stalker
@Ephemeral_Dreamer @Ian Drash @fasquardon @Seventeen This would be almost the same thing as your plan as it includes no immediate marriage, and proposes conditions for Gaerig's hand in marriage. Sorry to have bothered you so but we want to ensure that at least there is no immediate marriage.
This is the current reiteration of the plan with of course the last two tasks as not serious and open to suggestions.
@Ephemeral_Dreamer @Ian Drash @fasquardon @Seventeen This would be almost the same thing as your plan as it includes no immediate marriage, and proposes conditions for Gaerig's hand in marriage. Sorry to have bothered you so but we want to ensure that at least there is no immediate marriage.
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might just want a "To be determined" for those next two tasks in the vote proper then.
just to make sure powerofmind doesn't derp out and actually make those into our tasks, whilst writing at two in the morning.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Hey! I can read a strike-through!
Interesting. So Divine and Avatar traits would scale up in cost rapidly.
Carpricious is still very powerful for a Fear spirit of course. The "I meant to do that!" factor is the difference between at least breaking even versus getting poor roll and dumped into a DE valley. Water Avatar slightly less so, I'd prefer Moon Avatar if there's such a thing though.
Hmm, so that'd be:
-Fish - Full immunity
-Any Ocean or Water elementa affinity - Full immunity
-Spirit of the Sea/Lake/equivalent environment - Full immunity(?)
I assume Walrus, Polar Bear and other "technically need to breath" types would instead get an extra drowning hp buffer to represent super breath holding skill instead? Or for simplicity do they just get to be immune?
Indeed, that's one of the reasons for how we attacked so far. We've been VERY diligently only engaging on our terms, because we'd get our ass kicked otherwise.
Just felt it made for a clearer division. Damage/Wound thresholds, bonuses to skills, etc, are a little ambiguous when mechanically they're nearly the same thing.
Weak modifiers are anything that are easy to get and you can generally have with you all the time, stacking easily. So they add small amounts, and generally act as tiebreakers or cumulatives.
Strong modifiers are either circumstantial(like the Shrine bonus), require advanced traits, takes extensive setup(like our roll over successes from our prior conflict with Saiga making this phase easier), or very hard to get(like Tier bonuses or Inherent traits).
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Hey! I can read a strike-through!
are you sure you can do it whilst having been awake for 20 hours or more?
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
If, when I'm proofing my fluff (I never reread my hard numbers, I'm too good for that) and stumble when going to the next line more than once, I know that I am either too drunk or too exhausted to be writing an update in the first place.are you sure you can do it whilst having been awake for 20 hours or more?
I answered this in my response to Veekie above.
Indeed, maybe I'm not giving this enough thought. I imagined this game as one where your choice of stats fundamentally determines your capabilities; so with a significant investment in X, you should be able to solidly trounce someone who left X untrained, and in turn you should be trounced by someone choosing to focus on X to the point where it is one of the one or two greatest pillars of their character. Are you saying that this philosophy fundamentally breaks the balance in the model you are trying to run?
I'll note that the main bullshit that Harzivan pulled was in fact not in melee; it was in elemental control. The turning point of that war was Harzivan getting Inferno and proceeding to baptize his enemies in flame; there weren't really even skill checks involved.
Fair enough. And between the (soft) trait cap and the fact that traits become more expensive as you collect more, I suppose that buying traits might not be a good legend dump after all. It might just be that legend means much less in this system than it did for for AN.
Though if that is the case, if we weren't a Fear spirit (with instant Fear buys), I'm not sure how I would justify ever sleeping for anything...
Again, that had very little to do with our ranks in Melee. If I'm not mistaken, everyone involved in fighting hand-to-hand at that point had the same Melee score of 10, so the differences came down to Avatar rank and Trait bonuses.
That said, the advancement was definitely silly; a difference of a couple of points in Melee (or Awe, for social contests) would be a neigh-insurmountable gap. I agree that that is decidedly excessive. It makes sense to cut it down at least two or three-fold. x3 would be cutting it down by 3.33x; do you still feel that is insufficient?
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Anyway, a summary to wrap up what I'm saying and what my remaining arguments are.
- You've made a convincing case that maxing out skills ins't prohibitively difficult.
- You've made a convincing case that a x4 multiplier would cause a character with skills of 20 to roll over anyone who doesn't have the skill trained.
- You've made a convincing case that upgrades in this system should in-general be treated as less-valuable per point of legend than updated in AN's system.
- Generally speaking, I'm convinced to reconsider my push for x4, at least until I've explored the problem further and tried to think it over from some other perspectives.
- I'm still not convinced that letting a character with 20 in a skill completely roll over someone who doesn't have the skill or only have 1-5 points in the skill is a bad thing.
- Similarly, I'm still not convinced that letting a character with a 10 skill point lead have an overwhelming advantage over a character with 0-1 in a skill is a problem.
- I still think that the new value of skill points is significantly less than the cost (1 legend a pop). However, I admit that this may be an artifact of us seeing super-cheap prices for everything since it is earlygame, and prices for skill points will be more competitive later on.
- I still think that at least at our current level, skill ranks under the current rules play a near-insignificant role in events, and individual advancements don't feel meaningful.
I appreciate the time that you spent writing in-depth responses to my points, and I want to reassure you that anything negative I may write is intended as strictly constructive criticism, aimed at making the system as a whole better, and not as an insult or challenge to what you have already.
Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Can you please edit clarify that what you put is a *potential* chnage to the plan, to be made if people want it, when i wake up tomorrow (or rather when i make it to my 8am class)
- Location
- scrabbling
I see. Now I know the true way to get Gaerig neat traits.
Fish puns.
Okay. In that case, perhaps my point shouldn't be that skills are too weak but they are too expensive, at least if you buy them directly. Perhaps skills should only cost 1/2 a legend to acquire? Or maybe, spirits should be able to spend 1 legend per year on buying skills for "free", without needing to spend any time on it?