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Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Night10194 posted:

Honestly, poo poo's better for the 2522 Empire than the actual 30 years war. For the most part the agriculture and normal system of government are still working, outside of portions of the north that are under some degree of pillage. The Empire actually has coherent armies and is ahistorically good at paying them. Yes, you occasionally have to fight Satan or Dracula, but without widespread famine and a total breakdown of the social order I'd honestly take the former over being enmeshed in the real 17th century clusterfuck.

Plus you get bitchin' wizards and the regimental chaplain can heal gunshot wounds and summon comets of fire.
Why don't you team up with Dracula to fight Satan? Wait, poo poo, Dracula's friends with Death, that means he'd ally with the Empire.

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The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

It has happened occasionally. The Counts don't appreciate it when someone tries to destroy the world they want to rule.

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
I think Von Carsteins sometimes have ambitions of being recognized as actual no-poo poo counts.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
While less so than 40k, kind of the rule with Warhammer is that any faction can be fighting any other faction, including themselves, for basically any reason.

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

ask me about nix or tailscale

WhitemageofDOOM posted:

Part 7, Adepts Part 1

Just FYI, I don’t think this is going to get picked up for the archive if you don’t edit in a consistent header with the name of the game.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

While less so than 40k, kind of the rule with Warhammer is that any faction can be fighting any other faction, including themselves, for basically any reason.

I suspect this is one of the biggest reasons for the Empire being the HRE: Civil wars are always on the table. The second reason is sweet hats.

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy

JcDent posted:

I think Von Carsteins sometimes have ambitions of being recognized as actual no-poo poo counts.

Yeah, I think wanting the elector seat was an ambition for some of them in the past.

RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Oct 2, 2018

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Something that always gets lost in the story of Vlad and Isabella's attempt to become Emperor and Empress is that it took place during the height of the Time of Three Emperors, when the Empire as we know it didn't really exist and was mostly a series of smaller warring states. Imperial legitimacy at the time was mostly 'are you a noble' and 'how big is your army', to which the answers were 'Well, I did marry into the Von Drak family legitimately' and 'very', so he was a fairly legitimate claimant.

Anniversary
Sep 12, 2011

I AM A SHIT-FESTIVAL
:goatsecx:

WhitemageofDOOM posted:

Part 7, Adepts Part 1

Just wanted to say thanks for doing these, enjoying your write up and perspective!

WhitemageofDOOM
Sep 13, 2010

... It's magic. I ain't gotta explain shit.
FFRRPG Part 9: Adepts 2

Whoops guess i should have saved the ninja, there are only two jobs left.


Paladin
While the dark knight is a clear upgrade over the blackmage, the paladin is far from an upgrade to the whitemage.

Level 1- Cover, choose an ally when they take damage you take it instead. You can end this or change who is under cover without using your action, and cover won't trigger if you are at 25% or lower life.
Level 1- Sentinel, If an ally at 25% or lower life and you aren't as a reaction ability you take the damage for them. So yeah even without cover you get to tank.
Level 8- Hallowed Bolt, Deals 75% weapon damage lighting damage to all enemies, with a chance to silence. A clear parallel to the dark knight's level 8 with one huge upside. It's lighting damage and that means it gives you a real alternative to holy.
Level 15- Healing Wind, For 34 Mp heals 9 * Mag hp to everyone, sadly it uses mag and you use strengh...well paladins CAN use magic weapons(staves) but they are inferior to swords. If you do use a staff though this falls aside for being a flat amount....EXCEPT that you can spam it out of combat. It's pretty efficient at mp to healing.
Level 22- Cleansing Strike, 125% weapon holy damage and a chance to inflict condemn. It'll do.
Level 29- Astra, This negates the next instance of one or more negative statuses being inflicted on EACH PARTY MEMBER.
Level 36- Seal evil, a flat 60% chance to inflict stone to undead. Not worth it.
Level 43- Holy Circle, Grants the party protect and increases all holy damage they deal by 25% seeing as you only DO holy damage this is great protectga that gives you +25% damage at around the same level/mp cost. You will be spamming the hell out of this until you get great gospel.
Level 50- Judgement Blade, Inflicting 125% weapon holy damage to all enemies with a chance to inflict stop on all of them. IT BEGINS.
Level 57- Divine Ruination, Inflicting 150% weapon holy damage to all enemies with a chance to inflict confuse on all of them.
Level 64- Great Gospel, For the low LOW price of 200mp this heals 17 * MAG hp to all party members and grants wall negating ALL DAMAGE RECEIVED FROM ATTACKS&ABILITIES for the rest of the turn and the next three turns. This is THE single best ability in the game besides grand summon Cerebus "Give everyone haste and an extra turn", but you don't have to be a summoner who was allowed anywhere near Cerberus to get it.

Playable Level- 22
Whitemages, Paladins are NOT. Dark knights, Paladins are NOT. What paladins are, are an early game tank that slowly becomes THE BEST ENDGAME CLASS IN THE GAME. Judgement blade is loving ridiculous, Group Damage with a chance to stop? Sign me up. Great Gospel is the second best ability in the game, with Astra shoring up the only whole in your perfect defense game.
However it's getting there, I put their playable level at 22 for a reason, and that might be generous a lvl22 knight is a lot more complete than a lvl22 paladin.

Rune Knight
Oh god rune knights, let's get into this poo poo. At least Paladins had a payoff.

Level 1- Runic, by giving up your action you absorb the next spell or monster ability that consumes mp ignoring it's effect into mp healing for you, runic ends at the start of your next turn. Also RUNIC CAN ABSORB YOUR FRIENDS SPELLS! This is a great example of why they shouldn't have been slavishly devoted to how things worked in a game.
Level 36- Return Magic, This is much better whenever you are hit by a spell(or monster ability with mp cost) you have a Level/2+Spr*2 chance activating this ability, In which case choose one regain mp equal to it's cost or have the effect ALSO hit whoever cast it. I mean the choice is obvious. Smack their face.
Level 64- Quadra MAgic, See Return magic? Pay the MP costx3, DO IT FOUR TIMES!

Level 1- Fury Brand, Do 100% weapon damage with a chance to inflict berserk.
Level 15- Stardust Ray, Do 75% weapon damage to all enemies with a chance to inflict spirit break.
Level 22- Shellburst Stab, Deal damage equal to target's MP for the low LOW cost of 35mp, it can't break the damage cap but if you meet a boss with MP? Enjoy doing the damage cap repeatably for 999 damage.
Level 29- Blaster Punch, Deal 100% weapon damage to all enemies with a chance to inflict magic break.
Level 43- Viper Bite, Deal 125% weapon poison damage to an enemy with a chance to inflict venom.
Level 50- Hellcry Punch, Deal 150% weapon damage to an enemy with a chance to inflict power break and silence.
Level 57- Icewolf Bite, Deal 150% weapon damage to hp and 200% weapon damage to mp. GOD drat IT RUNE KNIGHT you almost got all this way without doing mp damage.

Playable Level-1
I mean rune knights only do one thing and that's murder mages, but with runic and fury brand they are doing it just fine from level 1. How good a rune knight is plays heavily into how many MAGES ie enemies that use MP the GM throws at you. If they are common the rune knight will do great, if the gm just has mag based enemies doing magic damage but not using mp because why track that poo poo for enemies? The rune knight will cry.

WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Oct 3, 2018

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

Yeah, I think wanting the elector seat is ambition for some of them in the past.

Mannfred actually holds the Elector seat officially; the Empire prefers to pretend this isn't true but legally he's an Elector Count.

E: and yeah, it is important to note that the modern Empire bears only the faintest legitimate lineage to the original Empire of Sigmar, having been effectively destroyed, uh, at least twice. The Von Carstein claim is honestly no worse than Karl-Franz's.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


There's the fact that vampires are enemies of Sigmar, mostly because Nagash is an rear end in a top hat and cursed them to be harmed by Sigmar's symbols after failing him.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

Great Gospel is completely broken and on the wrong class. A twofer

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mannfred isn't an Elector, actually, because Sylvania's original tribes never joined Sigmar and the kings of the Fennone were never made Counts. Sylvania is technically part of Stirland, but ever since Mannfred returned Stirland has no way to enforce the claim. Technically, Sylvania is represented by whoever is currently the Elector of Stirland.

He is a count, though. Just not an Elector Count.

The Fennone were weird from the snippets we get in Night's Dark Masters. They were apparently known as masters of smithing and early human magic comparatively, but they hated the dwarfs because they saw dwarfs and greenskins together a lot and so assumed they must come from the same place and couldn't be trusted. Also seem to have had a sense of leyline magic, as many of the old tribal holds were built over places of dark power.

They were extremely paranoid and dour people, and their descendants remain the same. Sylvanians have always been fatalistic.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Oct 2, 2018

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
Just get to the point where someone successfully sues a vampire count to reclaim Sylvannia for Stirland and we'll have our Early Modern Glorantha adventure in WHF.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

In exchange for recognizing Vampires, Vampires must agree to term limits of “one human lifetime”

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Tome of Salvation

What is holiness? We just don't know.

Now, I like this book. I do. But something you've probably noticed at this point: We're over 150 pages in and there haven't been hardly any actual game mechanics. A few tables to roll on, some color, an extra class or two, some new advancement stuff for priests, but nothing like Realms of Sorcery's whole subsystems or Tome of Corruption introducing ways to play a Chaos campaign or Night's Dark Masters having extensive mechanics for generating Castlevania villains. Tome of Salvation starts to hit a point where it is, perhaps, a bit too dense and the book is about 95% fluff. You can go too deep on fluff and worldbuilding and start to stifle things, especially if you find yourself repeating yourself within the same book; ToS could probably have done with a little editing down. It is the second biggest book in the line, after all, just after Tome of Corruption. ToC was huge because it was a disorganized mess that tried to do 80 things at once; ToS is huge because with Sigmar's Heirs being a pile, it and Realms of Sorcery and others have to basically serve as the Empire book in addition to doing their thing.

And yes, I will get to Sigmar's Heirs after this one. Finally.

Sacred Sites are weirdly random; there's no real rhyme or reason to why some sites get blessed or cursed. Say you're the site of a slaughter of pilgrims by Khornates. There's an equal chance that the site becomes cursed (because of blood spilled by followers of the blood-spiller), that nothing happens, or that it becomes a blessed site of a great martyrdom. The most common cause for a blessed site is something that interested a specific God; a place where a brilliant captain had a strategically important last stand is more likely to draw Myrmidia while a battlefield where a single man killed a hundred foes in a berserk rage is likely to be blessed by Ulric, that sort of thing. Sacred sites are also formed on the extremely, vanishingly rare cases where a God has appeared in the mortal realm, according to legend. Many of these manifestations aren't real, or were merely the manifestation of a divine servant, and every cult is very cagey about the possibility of direct divine appearances. Reported divine appearances are swiftly investigated, because if the Hunters and Priests don't get on them right away the legend can grow out of control, even in the case of a fraudulent claim. Moreover, the sudden influxes of pilgrims, heterodox preachers looking to draw on a new legend for legitimacy, and hucksters can bring huge disruption to a community. A false sighting can even result in persecution of a community for blasphemy against the Gods. Claiming you saw Rhya in the woods is dangerous, but if it's true your community is going to become very important and very rich, very quickly; nothing brings investment like a genuine wellspring of sacred power.

Other holy places become holy because they are associated with holy people. A library where a sainted venerated soul dispensed her justice and wisdom would become sacred to Verena, for example. Magnus the Pious's birthplace in Nuln is an important Sigmarite site. Religions can also just say a place is really holy and it might take, like the Temple of Sigmar in Altdorf. Sometimes, a place is clearly chosen because it was holy, but records are lost as to what made it thus. The Theater of Ravens in Luccini is where the Morrites meet every 10 years to discuss doctrine, and they know it has always been blessed of their God even back to the days of Proto-Tilea and the first introduction of Morr to the Classical Pantheon from the North, but they don't remember why.

Temples are all over the place in the Old World, as you may've gotten the impression. Sigmarite sites are the most common holy spaces in the Empire, and while Verena and Myrmidia are growing fast in popularity, neither actually has that many temples in the Empire. Ranald doesn't bother with temples and doesn't name sites holy, or at least, doesn't do so in ways that most normal priests would recognize. Taal and Rhya have thousands of ancient sites in the Empire's many forests, less visited because they aren't near the growing cities and burgs. Coastlines and rivers boast shrines to Manaan, and almost every community has at least a small shrine to Shallya. Ulric is almost entirely worshiped in Middenland, and so the area around Middenheim is ringed with holy sites, while they grow uncommon and fall into disrepair elsewhere.

There's a lot on the difference between shrines and temples, but really, a shrine is a small marker of a holy site (and may become like a temple, if the site is important enough) while temples are larger, more active repositories of priests and important rites. Interestingly, in poor villages, a temple may be dedicated to the pantheon rather than a single God, as they don't have room to build shrines to all the Gods their community needs to function. Almost every village in the Old World centers around at least one temple, and they remain important social hubs in towns and cities. In smaller and more remote temples, the caretaker may be a simple caretaker, not even a priest of the cult. There simply aren't enough priests to maintain active priests of every God a community needs in every community. There are also monasteries dedicated to cloistered orders of men and women who worship and scribe far from the 'normal' world.

The example temple is weird. It's a temple of Myrmidia dedicated to the legend of Nahmud the Dark Maiden. When Myrmidia was campaigning against wickedness and uniting Tilea and Estalia as a mortal woman, she rescued a dark-skinned woman who claimed to be a princess of a far off land. This woman warned her of a great ambush and allowed her to outmaneuver her foes, then thanked her for the rescue and left to live alone in the mountains. Nahmud left behind scrolls, a testament of her encounter with Myrmidia, that have been rediscovered and ruled to be very sacred and very untranslatable. When the Order eventually managed to get them translated by a High Elf they'd aided, what the Abbot heard shocked him, and he quickly had the elf murdered and the translation hidden. There is no hint in the book what the translation was, but my suspicion of a dark-skinned princess from a far off land is that the woman Myrmidia rescued may have been Nehekaran. Given this is all happening with an Estalian order, and Estalia had the whole 'attacked by vampires, Goddess had to kill their general herself to save the country' mess with the War of Blood back in Night's Dark Masters, I don't think Myrmidia having been aided by a Lahmian vampiress would go over well among the faithful. Lots of other possibilities, of course. Anyway, the example monastery is a pretty normal place except for having the original scrolls and possibly the translation buried within it, moved from Estalia to the Empire to hide them away from the faithful. Which is an obvious adventure seed. Still, if you're trying to give a place report on an example temple, why put all this Da Vinci Code stuff in the place? Also, the example map and everything being written in 'handwritten' text makes it more difficult to read, as it's trying to be an 'in universe' map and letter from someone visiting the place. The Shrine of the Dark Maiden just isn't very useful as an example of a 'typical' temple.

Also, it gets more detail than, say, all of Altdorf, Talabheim, or Nuln do in the Empire book. This place gets almost as much of a write-up as many of the cities in the Kislev book. It also gets an entire page of plot hooks and threads to use, complete with area markings, a cast of NPCs, etc. It's just weird that there's this much detail devoted to this one temple.

Next: Holy Sites of other Gods

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Though one thing I will give Nahmud the Dark Maiden as an idea: The text mentions she's barely mentioned in the Bellona Myrmidia, but that she's been built into an important character in the text with additional apocrypha. This is a real thing that happens: Ask Enoch, Who Walked With God and Then Was Not, and the massive piles of sacred writing that followed about him based on that evocative image and the fact that nothing much was written about him in the canon so you could add your own stuff.

WhitemageofDOOM
Sep 13, 2010

... It's magic. I ain't gotta explain shit.

Barudak posted:

Great Gospel is completely broken and on the wrong class. A twofer

I wouldn't say the wrong class at all(Except in the sense no class should have party targeting Wall), paladins are pretty big on negating damage and protection while dishing out damage (Astra, Cover/Sentiniel, Holy Circle). I'd say healing wind is "On the wrong class" as it's a heal(So is Great Gospel but who gives a poo poo?).
But broken, God yes, so very, VERY broken.

Leaving your GM to just save or dies or spamming debarrier is absurd.

But Bluntly, we never asked "What is this class doing?" I can **say** that the paladin is a warrior who prevents damage while dealing damage, but that's the hindsight of 15 or so YEARS. Back then we didn't think to make sure each class had a clear focus, that's why so many are just random jumbles of abilities. Why some classes can have everything but 4 ripped out and lose nothing and other classes repeat the same ability 5 times without thinking.

What were we trying to do with the fencer? Get each category to 8 classes, which is probably why the geomancer and blue mages are adepts.
Why doesn't the Summoner have invoking? Because Yuna didn't and that's the summoning method used.
Why is the Ninja so awful? Because it's jamming all the ninjas together, rather than saying "The ninja uses mp support skills to supplement dual wield" they just jammed them all together. All that elemental damage comes from one game, where the elemental damage was A)Different than the black mage, and B) All at equivalent to rank aga spells as well.
Why is the Mystic knight designed to sort of function well and the rune knight a semi-coherent cobbling together of things towards a clear goal? Dear god I have no clue.

It is as often stated they just jammed things together because that's how it worked in the game.

WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Oct 2, 2018

Ronwayne
Nov 20, 2007

That warm and fuzzy feeling.

wiegieman posted:

There's the fact that vampires are enemies of Sigmar, mostly because Nagash is an rear end in a top hat and cursed them to be harmed by Sigmar's symbols after failing him.

Draculas vs Skeleton Clown God is also one of the better match ups in the game.

Anniversary
Sep 12, 2011

I AM A SHIT-FESTIVAL
:goatsecx:

WhitemageofDOOM posted:

It is as often stated they just jammed things together because that's how it worked in the game.

I'm dying here. And inspired.

Ronwayne posted:

Draculas vs Skeleton Clown God is also one of the better match ups in the game.

Wait, Skeleton Clown God?

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead, started out with a miniature that didn't age well and was probably goofy even way back when.

DigitalRaven
Oct 9, 2012




Ronwayne posted:

Draculas vs Skeleton Clown God is also one of the better match ups in the game.

Now I want to run a game where draculas are not necessarily trying to defeat the Skeleton Clown God, just to remove the curse around Sigmarite symbols. Because then they could show the appropriate dedication, piety, and so on, and get Sylvania officially recognised as separate from Stirland and the Count of Sylvania (Mannfred would need... removed, of course) promoted to an official Elector Count, gaining greater political legitimacy. And, because vampires, a good crack at being Emperor in a couple of hundred years.

I'm envisioning a lot of legal battles, that breaks out into magical duels. WHFRP meets the Craft Sequence.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Also if they could get rid of the weakness to divinity, Chaos symbols and weapons would stop working on them as well. Can't imagine many Vampire Lords that wouldn't prefer to be able to take on their counterpart giant combat monster badasses, Chaos Lords, on much more even terms.

The Chaos Lord's magic weapon doing a shitload of extra 'holy' damage to vamps makes fighting one as a vamp really suck, especially as the Chaos Lord might have Fate and the vamp can't.

It's actually kind of a neat thing: Mechanically, vampires are great Chaos hunters (immune to mutation, hard to drive insane, tough to kill, strong, fast) while Chaos champions are great vampire hunters ('blessed' weapons are common, enough armor and toughness to tank through a vampire's strength, mutations can give them some tricks to match blood gifts with luck).

Also actually kind of surprised vamps don't get more mention in ToS, given that one of the long-term goals of the Lahmians is to undermine the influence of the religious cults so they won't have to fear holy symbols or blessed weapons. But then, Night's Dark Masters was like the last book written in the line.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Oct 2, 2018

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
I suspect it's because the only religious cult that bothers itself much with vampires is Morr, and ToS already presents Morr as having a staunch "kill the undead" policy and that his templars are great vampire hunters. None of the other cults seem to pay vampires much mind, their areas of influence don't intersect much. Taal might take exception to the dark forest critters, I guess.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Taal is likely to object to Dire Wolves and Vhargulfs, at least, yes.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






WhitemageofDOOM posted:

Part 8, Adepts 2
Please tell me you will show off how botched the XP scaling is in this game. For a system devoted to being a Final Fantasy process sim even and especially when it shouldn't, I remember the business of getting levels to be the peak of process sim bullshit.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

NGDBSS posted:

Please tell me you will show off how botched the XP scaling is in this game. For a system devoted to being a Final Fantasy process sim even and especially when it shouldn't, I remember the business of getting levels to be the peak of process sim bullshit.

Please tell me the game expects you to literally level grind like it was a JRPG.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






Night10194 posted:

Please tell me the game expects you to literally level grind like it was a JRPG.
Basically. I just checked to be sure that I do in fact have the same PDF, and yes it is the same because my playgroup foolishly decided to try this mess shortly before I joined up. (It failed as expected.) The game thinks you'll have about 4 to 5 at-level encounters before leveling...and thinks you'll get through a level per session. Which is some Kevin Siembieda "I have no clue how my own game works" bullshit, because...
  • Turns involve rolling a bunch of dice even if you are one-shotting things.
  • I don't know how easy it is to one-shot enemies with damage rather than insta-kill status effects, so if you aren't one-shotting things then combats will take a while. Which turns the game in play into a shittier version of Descent or some other tactical minis game.
  • The game expects the GM to craft all monsters from scratch using some complicated logic on how much this or that affects its total XP/Gil payouts. So there's no provision for handwaving, no provision for pulling an encounter out of your butt on less than five minutes' notice, no provision for quick-and-dirty Steal/Mug values from four slots per monster (though those slots can be duplicates or empty), and a strong incentive to make encounters "memorable" (read: longer).
  • Speaking of which, there are a few effects that give out extra loot and/or Gil. They're not overpowered in the least because most of them are on the Thief (which trades combat capability to get them), and the last is an advantage that caps at +20% Gil for anyone who has it. The game has a sidebar that smugly suggests worsening treasure tables if these get out of hand. And while this almost certainly won't happen, the temptation is still there.*
  • XP/Gil payouts are divided evenly among the PCs. This probably makes sense from the standpoint of a consistent input-to-output ratio but which also makes for several more steps in play like actually dividing those totals and forcing the players to act as beancounters for every point of XP and Gil. Edit: And if someone isn't alive and present at the end of combat, which is totally possible because the FF games had effects like instant death/Stone/Encircle or other ejection abilities, they don't get a share of XP.
  • If the PCs bypass encounters they only get half XP, which is then further capped at 1/5 the amount they need to level.
  • Dealing with monsters is the principal way you're expected to get XP. Traps exist but have little guidance on using them well, and social encounters only give out 1/5 or even 1/10 the amount you need to level.
*Contrast this with the 4th Edition rules for the Rogue, which can choose one of three loot-boosting effects in addition to other things at chargen. That game has the forethought to explicitly tell GMs to not punish their players just because one of them took a class for getting more loot. Overall we could contrast FF3E with FF4E all day here because the latter is a much less brain-dead work, but for now we're just sticking to this example.

NGDBSS fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Oct 2, 2018

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Having XP AND levels in a game is something I've come to realize is a very stupid idea for RPG design.

One or the other, generally.

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.
Now would be the right time to continue my Ravenloft review.

...unless I just jinxed it.

OvermanXAN
Nov 14, 2014

WhitemageofDOOM posted:

Why is the Mystic knight designed to sort of function well and the rune knight a semi-coherent cobbling together of things towards a clear goal? Dear god I have no clue.

Because Mystic Knight functioned really well in FF5 and Celes' Runic command in 6 was questionably useful there outside of the one boss fight explicitly designed to show it off?

Barudak
May 7, 2007

Of course the XP system is completely messed up. I appreciate they did so little thinking about it they used the games with hundreds of short random battles xp system instead of the tactics games.

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

JcDent posted:

Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead, started out with a miniature that didn't age well and was probably goofy even way back when.

What do you have against Robert Z'Dar? :colbert:

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.
Oh right, I was gonna write this.

Final Fantasy d6 Part 1 - Introduction

Final Fantasy is something nerds all over the world love, so there are a lot of Final Fantasy tabletop games out there! Unfortunately, they're nearly uniformly terrible because they try to get as close to the battle system in the video games as possible - which means all sorts of Super Fun things like charge time and constantly recalculating initiative and everything being in weird percentages and stats that are like five or six derivations from the main stats that you actually invest in. They'd probably be playable, I guess, if you were on IRC and had a dedicated bot to do all the calculations for you (and from what I understand, at least one of the games was actually intended to be run that way), but if you wanted to sit at a table and toss some dice around, you'd be in for an utterly wretched time.

Enter Final Fantasy d6.

In the words of its creator:

quote:

Although I was inspired by the Returners, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that it was flawed for laid-back,
around-the-table gaming, and I naïvely began a slow conversion of the rules systems into something that I felt was
more conducive for casual play.

But, as things often do, the more work I put into the system the more complex the rules became, until finally they
took on a life of their own and became a total system modification. In too deep to stop now, I could only forge on
ahead. I attempted to reproduce combat that accurately reflected the feel and style of the Final Fantasy series,
where battles were dramatic, larger-than-life and grand affairs; cinematic opposed to mechanically monotonous, if
you will. I endeavored to churn out a system filled with grand possibilities and heroic action. I struggled with a
world where titanic struggles between good and evil for the fate of the world would be an accurate summary of
the typical adventurer's day, and that's just before breakfast.


Did they succeed?

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell, yes and no.

Final Fantasy d6 is fun. Fights are quick paced and easily resolved. Character creation can be wrapped up in ten minutes or less if you know what you're doing. You don't have to worry about being a specific race to minmax your starting scores. Every class gets cool things to do, even the fight guys. If you really want to dig into the system, you can customize everything from your limit breaks to your class loadout (no longer are you bound to being JUST a black mage or a samurai or whatever!). Your party is rewarded for working together to solve problems in as cool a way as possible with narrative currency that does everything from boosting your rolls to letting you cheat death or go out in a blaze of glory.

Final Fantasy d6, however, is not really what you'd call balanced. Some classses are essentially invincible, and others are extremely difficult to use effectively at all without heavy reclassing. Despite the fact that FFd6 claims that a good character will make use of all their stats, Dex is (as is often the case) a god stat that is used for everything from calculating skill caps to determining damage. (For that matter, there's the fact that skill caps actually exist, and that they're handled extremely poorly). Magic classes still get more ways to affect the narrative than other classes. 90% of character choices that don't directly advance a class are trap options or otherwise far inferior to actually picking up stuff from your job. The narrative currency is given out so infrequently that you can't really afford to do cool things with it. And so forth.

It's still better than fuckin' Returners, though.

Next time - Chapter I: Gameplay, or 'what the gently caress is a final fantasy, anyway?'.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I am excited to see a more fun Final Fantasy RPG.

Zereth
Jul 8, 2003



Barudak posted:

Of course the XP system is completely messed up. I appreciate they did so little thinking about it they used the games with hundreds of short random battles xp system instead of the tactics games.
The Tactics game system gets you XP per action, based on the difference in level between the characters, doesn't it? That'd be a huge pain to handle all the math yourself.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

Zereth posted:

The Tactics game system gets you XP per action, based on the difference in level between the characters, doesn't it? That'd be a huge pain to handle all the math yourself.

Actually calculating the way those games work faithfully would be a mess although certain actions, notably using a potion, have static XP values. What Im more getting at is the rate of leveling where you can expect to level up at least once every battle against equal level opponents.

WhitemageofDOOM
Sep 13, 2010

... It's magic. I ain't gotta explain shit.

OvermanXAN posted:

Because Mystic Knight functioned really well in FF5 and Celes' Runic command in 6 was questionably useful there outside of the one boss fight explicitly designed to show it off?

Yeah but mystic knight's DON'T function like FF5, they get an element or status and apply it to their weapon for one attack. It's more Steiner w/ ViVi than the FF5 mystic knight.
But still basically those two classes are their own things.

Everything the black mage wanted to do? The mystic knight just does BETTER.
Exploit weaknesses? Mystic knight has more elements.
Deal statuses? Mystic knight also does weapon damage if they fail.

NGDBSS posted:

Basically. I just checked to be sure that I do in fact have the same PDF, and yes it is the same because my playgroup foolishly decided to try this mess shortly before I joined up. (It failed as expected.) The game thinks you'll have about 4 to 5 at-level encounters before leveling...and thinks you'll get through a level per session. Which is some Kevin Siembieda "I have no clue how my own game works" bullshit, because...
  • Turns involve rolling a bunch of dice even if you are one-shotting things.
  • I don't know how easy it is to one-shot enemies with damage rather than insta-kill status effects, so if you aren't one-shotting things then combats will take a while. Which turns the game in play into a shittier version of Descent or some other tactical minis game.
  • The game expects the GM to craft all monsters from scratch using some complicated logic on how much this or that affects its total XP/Gil payouts. So there's no provision for handwaving, no provision for pulling an encounter out of your butt on less than five minutes' notice, no provision for quick-and-dirty Steal/Mug values from four slots per monster (though those slots can be duplicates or empty), and a strong incentive to make encounters "memorable" (read: longer).
  • Speaking of which, there are a few effects that give out extra loot and/or Gil. They're not overpowered in the least because most of them are on the Thief (which trades combat capability to get them), and the last is an advantage that caps at +20% Gil for anyone who has it. The game has a sidebar that smugly suggests worsening treasure tables if these get out of hand. And while this almost certainly won't happen, the temptation is still there.*
  • XP/Gil payouts are divided evenly among the PCs. This probably makes sense from the standpoint of a consistent input-to-output ratio but which also makes for several more steps in play like actually dividing those totals and forcing the players to act as beancounters for every point of XP and Gil. Edit: And if someone isn't alive and present at the end of combat, which is totally possible because the FF games had effects like instant death/Stone/Encircle or other ejection abilities, they don't get a share of XP.
  • If the PCs bypass encounters they only get half XP, which is then further capped at 1/5 the amount they need to level.
  • Dealing with monsters is the principal way you're expected to get XP. Traps exist but have little guidance on using them well, and social encounters only give out 1/5 or even 1/10 the amount you need to level.
*Contrast this with the 4th Edition rules for the Rogue, which can choose one of three loot-boosting effects in addition to other things at chargen. That game has the forethought to explicitly tell GMs to not punish their players just because one of them took a class for getting more loot. Overall we could contrast FF3E with FF4E all day here because the latter is a much less brain-dead work, but for now we're just sticking to this example.

I skipped over the exact exp charts, because well 100 levels of that poo poo.
Everything you said is true, and things i was going to talk about in combat and monsters and even other things that make it all stupider.

To answer your question, one shotting enemies after the early levels is drat near impossible. Death itself doesn't show up til the 40s, not Save or Die but "Skip this poo poo".

Despite all this, I still have a weird nostalgia for this terrible dumpster fire I helped create. Every chapter i review this game makes me want to put it back together in a way that doesn't suck more. The fact I could probably do that by myself in like, a week, says a lot.

WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Oct 3, 2018

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WhitemageofDOOM
Sep 13, 2010

... It's magic. I ain't gotta explain shit.
FFRRPG, Part10: Chapter 5 Skills
No, no, oh god why. WHY.
You mean I actually have to COVER SKILLS?

Alright, I'm going to read the rules so first off. Let's cover starting skill points.
Warriors get 240, Experts get 260, Mages get 280, Adepts get whichever of those they basically should be in anyways.
I what? Why do mages get the most, why do warriors get the least? WHY?

Secondly, skill defaults your default in a skill is 10+Stat*3, EVERY SINGLE SKILL uses Agility or Magic for it's default, except social skills those use spirit, and climbing it uses Strength. I...What? What? WHAT?! So yeah gently caress warriors.
If you have a mag of 12(like say a taru taru mage) that gives you a default of 46, for a good chunk of the skills in the game. Remember this as we go forward.

Skills are bought on a 1 to 1 ratio even the ones with infinite under skills like lore, if you have a skill aptitude from your class you spend 1 point for +2. Skills must be within 20 to 50 to start....4 points higher than our Taru Taru mage defaults to on half the skills, and lower than what he defaults to on social skills.

Advancing skills, oh you get 10 skill points per level and can raise a skill by.....TWO POINTS PER LEVEL? SO IT TAKES AN ADEPT TILL TWENTY SIX TO HIT 50%+Level+stat*2% expertise? (Sorry gambler your playable level just hit 43 with chocobo slots if you can't guarantee moogle slots always work.) You also get 6 points that can only be spent on infinite under skills, hope you bought 3 of those, i mean unless you went for lore master mage with your skill aptitude, then you needed SIX, which the skills you trained will probably be worse than your defaults for 30+levels.

To learn new skills you can either crit when defaulting which gives you a rating of 20. Your mage critted that streetwise check, he did so good he lost 30 points from it! Now realize you have a 1 in 10 chance of doing this every time you default.
Or you can spend time and gil to learn a skill, which gives you a skill ranking of 20 OR your default whichever is higher. Now why didn't it work like that for crit learning? I have no idea.

This system was so obviously just hacked on because they needed a skill system like 3e had, rather than thinking "What works for final fantasy". It's awful, the list is huge, it's poorly conceived, and it made the gambler worse by me mentioning it. gently caress skills, i'm out.

gently caress skills, just, gently caress skills.
I'm out.

WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Oct 3, 2018

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