|
neonchameleon posted:Yay I was the fighter. With Combat Maestro the fighter gets a mark which encourages enemies to attack him. However, he has really lackluster damage mitigation or self-healing even if you intentionally choose those options. As a daily I can spend a recovery and get a bonus. For some reason this power shows up twice, under different lists, with different bonuses, but under the same exact name. Or as a daily I can get regen 5, after I'm bloodied. Or as an encounter I can get a damage reduction to a single attack equal to my damage bonus (so 6) which could be re-framed as a very mediocre heal that's more limited than a straight heal. I can also choose psych up and get temp hp equal to one heal as an encounter. So... 7 more hp. Better than the damage reduction at least, and scales a ton better. All together it means that a Defender Fighter can make enemies attack him, but that just encourages enemies to focus fire on someone who is no better than any other character (and is actually far worse than the warlock build we had) at surviving. Defensive bonuses or self heals are weak, rare, and come at enormous cost, as they are dailies/encounters and require you to spend a class feature. Looking at the other options, a straight damage aggressive fighter build would be pretty boring to play and would still be far weaker than the warlock. A tricky/controller fighter might be possible, with all the movement based abilities. But that's of limited usefulness and depends on the encounter terrain. As a more general issue, choosing from a variety of lists for abilities and just allowing more choices as you level up strikes me as a problematic decision. Players will choose the abilities they favor the most first, and will have to pick from an increasingly unappealing menu as they level up. Some abilities are also clearly better than others, so they just act as filler and trap choices on the menu. Gating abilities by tier is the easy solution, and even pbta games do it.
|
#
¿
Sep 1, 2014 04:51
|
|
Thanks! 
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 13:30 |
|
|
Error 404 posted:Also, aside from mechanics stuff, I'd love if anyone could post more specifically about the text or organization issues with Steakpunk. The biggest issue is that vital information for creating a character is scattered throughout the document. This wasn't just for you, it was a problem for almost all of the submissions. It's still in development so this stuff is excusable, but make sure to put a clear one page checklist with everything we need to do to make a character somewhere in the character creation section. It's particularly hard to do that with your system, because depending on your approach the stats are assigned differently. Which was also a bit troubling because it meant understanding the significance of our choices took a very long time, like several hours of unraveling, evaluation, and re-evaluation to find out what this stuff really meant for the characters in play. The solution might be a one page walkthrough for each approach that we can reference step by step. The character sheet needs a full re-design, it was hard to look at and actively confusing. We ended up abandoning it altogether and putting the stats in a list format. I get that you probably understand it, and it all makes sense to you. But without visual shorthand or explicit indicators the whole thing was just a mass of squiggly mysterious numbers. I'm pretty sure I discovered the logic of it near the end of character creation, once I had a feel for the system and I could compare my easy list of stats with the thing. But it didn't help me make the character (besides revealing that for hp purposes we were actually level 2) and it was harder to read than the list. I don't think any of the other players even bothered trying to figure out how it worked. I actively discouraged one of the playtesters who came late to char creation from even looking at it, and instead walked him through the whole thing with a stat list. Document layout is a tricky business. I'd look at other character sheets as an example. Basic advice is that numbers that are related should be grouped under a single theme and distinguishable from other grouped numbers. For example HP/Defenses can be in one block, while Attack/Damage would be in the other. You bunched yours in a table with all cells about the same size with no primacy given to more important stats. Eventually we discovered that you had a header with the relevant ability (highest, middle, lowest) and the to the right of the header you had dependent stats, and then derived stats beneath. Although it was a little inconsistent with how things were written and where the stats went. That was a pretty hard one to puzzle out too, because there weren't any visual cues to lead the eye.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 1, 2014 19:31
|
|
|
P.d0t posted:Since Error 404 is fielding the organizational stuff, I'll ask about the mechanics/maths/etc. We just removed the insane dependent clause that let us use reserves for extra turns. Getting another turn breaks the action economy, itʻs not the same as just healing or the damage boosts or the status effects, although being able to choose from all those options makes them an extremely good resource, which makes the feat that gives you more very appealing. The monsters were not too tough. We actually beat the encounter with ease on both occasions. On the first we did it on the first turn of the first round. With the second it took slightly longer but we were in no danger. The problem really was not that our characters were too weak relative to the enemies. The problem was that our characters didnʻt feel cool. Nothing felt like it combined with anything else. I built a defender, I did that for every game I could. As a defender it was the same basic problem as in trifold. I could mark, but I was not a less appealing target than anyone else on the field. I got +1 DR for choosing defender. Nothing else mitigated damage or improved my defense. Defenses are determined by approach, but depending on your approach you either have high hp/dr, high defenses, or mediocre both. What that means in play is really hard to tell. After some time trying to figure it out, I ended up settling on "it kind of balances out" and went with forceful for the better reserves feat. It took me a very long time to call it a wash though, and if it is a wash, then why is it a choice to begin with? This was a big problem throughout. Every mechanic seemed to lead you through a series of confusing choices that ended up not really mattering in the end. Why am I unable to really emphasize defenses? Why is the striker unable to really emphasize attack? No matter what you choose, you end up with either +2 or +3 to attack (+1 extra for a racial). All the characters, no matter how theyʻre built, end up looking more or less the same. The controller can use his ability to deal slightly more effective debilities and do it on a miss. But he canʻt really get lots of reserves, so itʻs very limited. The striker has razorwind, which works really well, but he has no way to stack extra damage or attack on it. The defender has a mark, but he has no way to take advantage of it. In fact, just like trifold, all the mark does is make the enemy focus fire on a guy who is no more capable of defending himself. Thatʻs only advantageous because Iʻm the most useless character so if I go down first it really doesnʻt hurt the party as much as if an effective character went down. The leader can donate his reserves or make self heals slightly better by existing. Not exactly a lot of tactical choice there. A recurring theme in the conversation was "they must not like ____" because our choices felt wrong for building a ______. Then we realized we were all saying it. I would work on clarifying the choices and making sure they actually have significance for the character. Then buff the classes a lot so that the controller is dominating the battlefield and crippling enemies, the striker is an angel of death, the defender is a wall of meat that punishes enemies for attacking allies, attacking him, and for existing, and the leader is in control, giving vital boosts exactly where they're needed. If you need to also buff the poo poo out of enemies to make that work, then that's great. So long as everyone feels like they are what they want to play, instead of being some watered down, slightly better at their thing but still mostly the same as everyone else, generic meat man.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 2, 2014 07:38
|
|