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Are the non-combat features of the martial classes different enough that it'd be hard to just reskin them based on which combat mechanics you like the best?
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 18:44 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 23:47 |
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Actual identity stuff seems fairly separate from class, thankfully.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 18:46 |
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Mikan posted:Unfortunately, the Barbarian has zero complexity knobs and the Ranger looks really boring compared to the Fighter. Balanced, but boring. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a simple, straightforward class or two. Sometimes you want to play the warlord and buff everyone while controlling the flow of battle, sometimes you just want to his someone in the face. As long as both options are enjoyable for the entire play progression, then I don't see that being an issue.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 18:46 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:Sometimes you want to play the warlord and buff everyone while controlling the flow of battle, sometimes you just want to hit someone in the face. Some of them want to use you. Some of them want to be used by you.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 18:47 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a simple, straightforward class or two. I don't either, but they do a good job with the other classes allowing you to dial it up or down. No reason not to do it with the Barbarian/Ranger.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 18:49 |
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Mikan posted:I don't either, but they do a good job with the other classes allowing you to dial it up or down. No reason not to do it with the Barbarian/Ranger.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 18:57 |
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Mikan posted:Unfortunately, the Barbarian has zero complexity knobs and the Ranger looks really boring compared to the Fighter. Balanced, but boring. The dual wielding mechanic is kind of weak for rangers, not to mention unfun. You only get an off-hand attack if you roll an even number for your first attack, and no matter what, if you're dual wielding you move the damage dice for each weapon down 1 tier. You can take a feat to make the dice normal 1/day, but that isn't any fun either.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 18:58 |
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The dual attack mechanic isn't bad, it's a decent increase in average damage without falling into the Twin Strike trap. Rangers in general seem pretty weak though.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 19:22 |
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GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:The dual wielding mechanic is kind of weak for rangers, not to mention unfun. You only get an off-hand attack if you roll an even number for your first attack, and no matter what, if you're dual wielding you move the damage dice for each weapon down 1 tier. You can take a feat to make the dice normal 1/day, but that isn't any fun either. This sort of thing is why people do playtests, though.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 19:22 |
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Mikan posted:The dual attack mechanic isn't bad, it's a decent increase in average damage without falling into the Twin Strike trap. Rangers in general seem pretty weak though. Actually thinking about it some more, it's not terrible with scaling damage dice. A 5th level ranger would turn his d10's into d8's and maybe get to make 2 attacks with +1 to hit to do 5d10+str mod per hit. E: I guess it's the even rolling thing that bothers me.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 19:25 |
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Mikan posted:I don't either, but they do a good job with the other classes allowing you to dial it up or down. No reason not to do it with the Barbarian/Ranger. I agree with this. A good idea is that every class has simple and complex options. That way the player can play the character they want while still at the skill level they want.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 19:38 |
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So do Fighters get less Skills than, say, Wizards?
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:03 |
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Megazver posted:So do Fighters get less Skills than, say, Wizards? Fighters get 6 points in (free-form player defined) skills, wizards get 8.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:07 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:Fighters get 6 points in (free-form player defined) skills, wizards get 8. Which is one of my issues with things so far, there is no reason for background disparity except D&D tradition. Other classes get 10 or 12.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:08 |
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GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:Actually thinking about it some more, it's not terrible with scaling damage dice. A 5th level ranger would turn his d10's into d8's and maybe get to make 2 attacks with +1 to hit to do 5d10+str mod per hit. You need to take another class feature to get the +1. Otherwise, two weapon fighting adds on average .4 damage per level per standard action, taking into account the dropped die, needing 11+ to hit, and crits. You also miss less often and can hit two targets sometimes... So the math isn't really going to say one way or the other how this works in play. It's a bump up, but is it worth the class feature? Looking forward to hearing how Mikan's game goes. I don't think I'll be able to run this for a few weeks. 
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:08 |
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Mikan posted:Which is one of my issues with things so far, there is no reason for background disparity except D&D tradition. Other classes get 10 or 12. Yeah, Fighters getting less skills has always been kinda bull. Hope you send them feedback about it!
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:14 |
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fosborb posted:Looking forward to hearing how Mikan's game goes. I don't think I'll be able to run this for a few weeks. We're hanging out tonight and chatting about it, then tomorrow is the game itself. It looks like it's gonna be a Ranger, Monk, Cleric, Fighter? The Ranger and Monk are certain.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:20 |
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I personally don't mind it; it makes sense to me that classes like Bards or Rogues are the skillmonkeys. It helps that the skills have a pretty wide definitions. it's not like D&D where you could be good at maybe four narrowly-defined skills; you say you're a soldier and you're capable of doing everything that would fall under the umbrella of "solider". Freeform skills work pretty well in my experience, as long as the players aren't trying to get away with things like "Jack of all trades +10".
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:22 |
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It's the existence of freeform skills that makes point disparity even more irritating.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:26 |
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Mikan posted:It's the existence of freeform skills that makes point disparity even more irritating. Right, it feels like the perfect place to balance in-combat flexibility/utility without bolting on some FATE mechanics.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:35 |
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I think the biggest issue with having such a wide spread of points per class is coming up with things to spend them on, especially since you're not going to want any overlap between your skills. If my rouge has "member of the Dungeonville thieve's guild", taking "street urchin" will wind up being kind of redundant. Likewise, if I have "member of the thieve's guild" and "grew up on a farm", there's really not much else I feel I can effectively add to that. Maybe a narrower spread of points between the classes would help; it's hard to say without seeing people making characters. (On the subject of Fate, it kind of reminds me of when my friends and I played Spirit of the Century, where you get 10 Aspects; once you got past the obvious ones for your character it got harder and harder to come up with new ones, and by the time they got to the last two people were pretty much out of ideas.)
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:42 |
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I noticed that even with 10 points; I'd be okay with like 8 or 10 points for every class, period. I don't mind having sorta redundant backgrounds though.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:48 |
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Mikan posted:I noticed that even with 10 points; I'd be okay with like 8 or 10 points for every class, period. I don't mind having sorta redundant backgrounds though. The problem with redundant backgrounds is that you can only use one per roll, so you'd want them to be pretty distinct so you don't end up spending points on background A, then more on background B, then realizing that most of what background B does is covered by A. I don't know how clear I'm being here. I'm very tired.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:50 |
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I obviously haven't seen the rules, but it almost sounds like an optional lifepath system would be cool here as a tool to help players flesh out their skills. Make each step have branching paths that the player can choose either deliberately or randomly at their discretion. You could even tie these Icons into it.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:56 |
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I should elaborate: I don't mind if backgrounds have some redundancy, since that's almost alwaya going to happen in a game with freeform skills. It's not ideal but, well.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 20:56 |
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You know the whole "Wizard gets more skills" doesn't really make sense, in my eyes. Like, the classic image of a dungeon crawling wizard is a guy who's spent most of his or her time studying in libraries to learn arcane power. Why would that person have a more rounded skillset them a warrior?
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 21:02 |
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So what's the setting like, in general non-NDA-scary terms?
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 21:05 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:I think the biggest issue with having such a wide spread of points per class is coming up with things to spend them on, especially since you're not going to want any overlap between your skills. If my rouge has "member of the Dungeonville thieve's guild", taking "street urchin" will wind up being kind of redundant. Likewise, if I have "member of the thieve's guild" and "grew up on a farm", there's really not much else I feel I can effectively add to that. Yeah, in my experience five Cliches/Aspects for these games is about right.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 21:06 |
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Megazver posted:Yeah, in my experience five Cliches/Aspects for these games is about right. I'm going to throw a dart and say 7. That way you have 5 Cliches, and then 2 things the player makes up because they've run out of cliches.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 21:08 |
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Having a boring class is perfectly fine. I have one "boring" player in my 4e game, who only does vanilla stuff, but still RP's and has a great time, even though he's "missing out" by not taking advantage of system mastery. As opposed to another guy who is all about system mastery. Having characters they're both happy with and go with their playstyle is a bonus.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 21:56 |
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Megazver posted:So what's the setting like, in general non-NDA-scary terms? Jesus gently caress that's hard. Standard fantasy empire with oceans and forests and hell holes and living dungeons. At this point in development, it feels mostly designed to offer adventure seeds. Here's some cities, here's dangerous areas, here's weird areas, here's where the Icons are the most powerful. All of this could change dramatically, but right now the tone is to treat the fluff as tools and to encourage exploration of "blank space" on the map. In general, crazy magic poo poo happens up in the clouds, crazy evil stuff happens underground, and everyone mixes it up and kills each other on the land while the Icons attempt to grab more power or at least maintain the balance they have. There aren't really set events associated with the setting -- it's almost entirely descriptions of what people, entities, and organizations do. That said there are some points of history. Most of it is very brief motivations for Icons like "Icon X wants revenge for this past event" or its racial origin stories "Half elves exist because Y." Best I can say, you don't need to learn the fluff by reading a million lovely novels when you were a teenager -- a single read through will probably cover you, with rereading bits for your session and looking up specific places for inspiration.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 21:57 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:(On the subject of Fate, it kind of reminds me of when my friends and I played Spirit of the Century, where you get 10 Aspects; once you got past the obvious ones for your character it got harder and harder to come up with new ones, and by the time they got to the last two people were pretty much out of ideas.)
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 21:57 |
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fosborb posted:Jesus gently caress that's hard.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 22:08 |
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Verdugo posted:Having a boring class is perfectly fine. I have one "boring" player in my 4e game, who only does vanilla stuff, but still RP's and has a great time, even though he's "missing out" by not taking advantage of system mastery. As opposed to another guy who is all about system mastery. Having characters they're both happy with and go with their playstyle is a bonus. I'm starting to get sick of explaining this, it's been covered a while bunch of times in this thread that there's no reason to make a class Boring People Only when other classes can be dialed up and down. A boring class isn't perfectly fine regardless, you can make a class interesting without making it dumb.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 22:09 |
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Having a feat that unlocks small bonuses for description (a la Vance's) would be a cool middle-ground. Be a barbarian, hulk out all the time, but have some other options.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 22:27 |
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Mikan posted:I'm starting to get sick of explaining this, it's been covered a while bunch of times in this thread that there's no reason to make a class Boring People Only when other classes can be dialed up and down. Seriously, man, calm down. You're getting way too worked up over this.
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 23:01 |
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I was actually looking for a no-frills class to just run through combat a few times to get the jist of it. (I didn't get to the barbarian yet, so I'm trusting you guys on this.) It's thematically appropriate (and a little clever) to have a straightforward barbarian, complicated rogue. The experience of playing the class is tied to its nature, and that's pretty OK. I wouldn't mind a harder-to-play barbarian, but their schtick has always been Naked Fighter + Incredible Hulk. The real question is are they literate?
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 23:12 |
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Also they should be called berserkers, barbarian signifies a culture not an occupation 
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 23:15 |
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This sounds really interesting, but I gotta say I'm worried about how much storygaming nonsense is going to end up in it. Can the "collaborative storytelling" bits be cut out if we just want a mechanically-improved version of 4e, or is it woven into the system at a deep level?
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 23:24 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 23:47 |
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From what I've seen the 'collaborative story-telling' components are mostly using Story Game practices as the GM. Failing forward, keep an eye on the narrative, etc. IMO it does feel pretty "old school".
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 23:52 |
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