Proposed replacement for crappy power system.

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

The 13 Wise Buttlords
Master
Posts: 233
Joined: Sun May 25, 2008 5:19 am

Proposed replacement for crappy power system.

Post by The 13 Wise Buttlords »

Okay, so, the idea D&D has been trying to constantly promote is that of having a couple of uber attacks you use but mostly using lesser ones.

Here are my two problems with that:

A) It doesn't conform to any cinematic fighting sequence I know. If characters have tricks they like to use, they generally save them for the end of the fight or use them in escalating trump cards. This is true for crappy stuff like Eragon or crazy stuff like Dragonball. D&D tends to make you want to burn your best powers at the beginning of combat, rather than the end, because it'll put you at a relative advantage for the rest of it. Now, in 3E it wasn't noticable because classes could either do their main trick whenever they wanted to (rogues, sword-based characters) or a characters' lesser tricks were varied or good enough that it wasn't all that different from their huge trick (wizards). But in 4E, it's extra stupid. There's no reason why a ranger wouldn't want to whip out Blade Cascade as soon as they can or a Wizard to cast Hurl Through Hell at first opportunity, as long as the buffs are up.

B) 4E's system is just dumb. You burn through all of your powers AND unlike 3E combat doesn't have the decency to end when you do this. I understand the desire to have combat last a reasonable length, but the stupid shit where all of the best moves get used in the first three rounds and the next three or four are just at-wills is just retarded. I can sort of understand where they're going with this--they don't want the wizard to use Kamehameha all the damn time but the implementation is stupid and boring.



So, instead, to address these concerns, how about this instead?

There's no such thing as 'per day' or any of that bullshit. All characters have a thing called a Momentum Counter, which goes up over the course of combat or get powers used on them. Higher-level moves require a higher Momentum Counter. Spamming the same moves causes your Momentum Counter to go down faster. As you go up in level, your momentum counter charges faster, so the combat-ending desperation move of Kamehameha in DB becomes something you use every other round when DBZ rolls around.


BIG TIME EDIT

Okay, so here's just an idea I came up with real fast-like further down in the post.

No, there's no powers/encounter, because there's no climatic buildup and because it encourages people to blow through powers as fast as they can (creating the rocket launcher tag problem or the padded sumo problem).

Instead, I propose this:

All powers have a color or suit or what the fuck ever label. When you use this label, you adds points from these colors or suits or WTFE. You build up enough points and you get to use a bigger, more badass power.

The power replenishment numbers are something like Your Level - Power Level. So using relatively weaker powers will keep your value high. Eventually, your level gets high enough so that your color value will increase faster than you can use powers; that's when you start getting iterative attacks so you use low-level powers again.

I don't know how many colors or suites or what the fuck evers to use. It might just be one. It might be four and I intentionally scatter power points around so that one round you're using a Mega Slash (4 purple) + Air Slash (2 blue) combo which gives you 2 red dots and 1 yellow dot and then you use a damn Quick Attack (2 red) + Healing Slice (1 blue, 1 yellow) which gives you 2 purple dots and 2 yellow dots. And so on.

It's complicated, I admit, but in the course of 5 rounds a mid-level character will burn through about 12 powers, all of them different. And he can keep going as long as the combat requires because as long as he's using powers or taking damage he'll get new powers.

And then we can make it so that having a power used on you replenishes your own colors so there's a strategic element of not giving a dragon enough black dots so he nukes your ass with dragon breath. Or if your powers hand out a lot of black dots you save them up and meganuke his ass and then default to defensive powers.


I don't know. What do you think, sirs?
Last edited by The 13 Wise Buttlords on Tue Jul 22, 2008 7:01 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Psychic Robot
Prince
Posts: 4607
Joined: Sat May 03, 2008 10:47 pm

Post by Psychic Robot »

Does it involve grunting and shouting for an entire episode followed by the enemy revealing that he was actually not using the full extent of his power followed by the protagonist revealing that he has the ability to unleash an omgwtfbbq move against the enemy which will then seemingly defeat the enemy until he reveals that he was actually not using the full extent of his power...

I keed, I keed.

Sounds interesting.
Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.
Ant wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?
You do not seem to do anything.
The 13 Wise Buttlords
Master
Posts: 233
Joined: Sun May 25, 2008 5:19 am

Post by The 13 Wise Buttlords »

Does it involve grunting and shouting for an entire episode followed by the enemy revealing that he was actually not using the full extent of his power followed by the protagonist revealing that he has the ability to unleash an omgwtfbbq move against the enemy which will then seemingly defeat the enemy until he reveals that he was actually not using the full extent of his power...
You mean Princess Bride?

It's a little lower level than what I was planning, but sure. None of that 'I am not left-handed' crap, though.
User avatar
JonSetanta
King
Posts: 5525
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: interbutts

Post by JonSetanta »

The concept of Momentum is similar to an early Spring 08 (winter?) discussion of charged attacks. I believe the debates were inconclusive, other than revealing the common observation that performing a Dynasty Warriors charge-your-bar-and-rush-the-boss move would become very, very popular and favorable.

In some settings it would be abusable, while in others it might make for more interesting battles singe everyone can do it.
It's a dilemma you must weigh for your own games.

Alternative names for Momentum: Drama, Intensity, Epic ("This battle is becoming too epic!"), Fate, Plot

You could have a system that rewards characters with per-encounter charges that could be cashed in for short-lived action points or saved up for a Big Bang, given out every time a player scores at least one successful hit (and damage) on an enemy.
The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:
Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:25 pm
Nobody gives a flying fuck about Tordek and Regdar.
The 13 Wise Buttlords
Master
Posts: 233
Joined: Sun May 25, 2008 5:19 am

Post by The 13 Wise Buttlords »

The concept of Momentum is similar to an early Spring 08 (winter?) discussion of charged attacks. I believe the debates were inconclusive, other than revealing the common observation that performing a Dynasty Warriors charge-your-bar-and-rush-the-boss move would become very, very popular and favorable.
You don't charge your bar or waste your time with piddling attacks. That's stupid and does lead to the Dragonball Z problem, where combat is only resolved by breaking out the Kamehameha.

You should always be busting out with cool attacks; it's just that you shouldn't have the option of blowing them all to take out the enemy super-fast and you shouldn't be able to not have it when the dramatically appropriate time in combat comes up.

I mean, take a daily power, which 4E and 3E were both really bad about. You're storming the BBEG's castle and a guard patrol gets in a couple of lucky shots, so to save your buddies you bust out with your strongest attacks. So when you get to the throne room to fight the BBEG, you've already wasted your best two powers just getting there.

And no, don't give me this 'well, you're only supposed to use your powers when appropriate, that's what it's balanced on'. Fuck that noise. It might be 'balanced' over the long run, but it sure as hell is anticlimatic. Do you ever hear of heroes training to use their super big power but then not getting to use it because random bandits got the jump on them on the way to barbarian warlord's camp? That's retarded.
Koumei
Serious Badass
Posts: 13871
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: South Ausfailia

Post by Koumei »

sigma999 wrote:The concept of Momentum is similar to an early Spring 08 (winter?) discussion of charged attacks. I believe the debates were inconclusive, other than revealing the common observation that performing a Dynasty Warriors charge-your-bar-and-rush-the-boss move would become very, very popular and favorable.
I don't know who you were playing as, but I never used the Musou. Why would I need to, when you can just C4 (attack-attack-attack-charge attack) people all the time? Yeah, Ling Tong was completely awesome. He only had one tactic, but that tactic was "win the game".
User avatar
JonSetanta
King
Posts: 5525
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: interbutts

Post by JonSetanta »

Koumei wrote: I don't know who you were playing as, but I never used the Musou. Why would I need to, when you can just C4 (attack-attack-attack-charge attack) people all the time? Yeah, Ling Tong was completely awesome. He only had one tactic, but that tactic was "win the game".
Ling Tong. :D

I prefer Samurai Warriors 2 and Empires as of late, though.
Ina and Fuma are my favs as mentioned (probably many times) before.

But imagine if any character could charge their 'specials'. Perception, stealth,and preparedness would be more important than actual combat ability... or is 3.x already like that?
The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:
Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:25 pm
Nobody gives a flying fuck about Tordek and Regdar.
User avatar
Psychic Robot
Prince
Posts: 4607
Joined: Sat May 03, 2008 10:47 pm

Post by Psychic Robot »

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:I mean, take a daily power, which 4E and 3E were both really bad about. You're storming the BBEG's castle and a guard patrol gets in a couple of lucky shots, so to save your buddies you bust out with your strongest attacks. So when you get to the throne room to fight the BBEG, you've already wasted your best two powers just getting there.
What would you suggest for spells, something like spells/encounter rather than spells/day?
Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.
Ant wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?
You do not seem to do anything.
Koumei
Serious Badass
Posts: 13871
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: South Ausfailia

Post by Koumei »

sigma999 wrote: Ina and Fuma are my favs as mentioned (probably many times) before.
It's been ages, but my favourites were Oda ("Demonic Japanese Warlock Cao Cao") and... Nene, I think she is. The ninja who acts like a motherly figure to the others, and has the special where she clones herself, attacking you with an army of Nene, all making that yipping sound.

Fuma... was he that damn Hojo ninja?
But imagine if any character could charge their 'specials'. Perception, stealth,and preparedness would be more important than actual combat ability... or is 3.x already like that?
It sort of is, really: scry, put your buffs on, teleport and shout "SURPRISE!" before unleashing your best combination of abilities.

Ideally, you'd want some kind of system where you can use your best ability on someone after you've charged the ability up against that same person. This way, people don't charge up on a bag of chickens and then unleash some smackdown on the boss.

...this is basically what the CAN is all about, isn't it? I mean, this is what started it.
The 13 Wise Buttlords
Master
Posts: 233
Joined: Sun May 25, 2008 5:19 am

Post by The 13 Wise Buttlords »

No, there's no powers/encounter, because there's no climatic buildup and because it encourages people to blow through powers as fast as they can (creating the rocket launcher tag problem or the padded sumo problem).

Instead, I propose this:

All powers have a color or suit or what the fuck ever label. When you use this label, you adds points from these colors or suits or WTFE. You build up enough points and you get to use a bigger, more badass power.

The power replenishment numbers are something like Your Level - Power Level. So using relatively weaker powers will keep your value high. Eventually, your level gets high enough so that your color value will increase faster than you can use powers; that's when you start getting iterative attacks so you use low-level powers again.

I don't know how many colors or suites or what the fuck evers to use. It might just be one. It might be four and I intentionally scatter power points around so that one round you're using a Mega Slash (4 purple) + Air Slash (2 blue) combo which gives you 2 red dots and 1 yellow dot and then you use a damn Quick Attack (2 red) + Healing Slice (1 blue, 1 yellow) which gives you 2 purple dots and 2 yellow dots. And so on.

It's complicated, I admit, but in the course of 5 rounds a mid-level character will burn through about 12 powers, all of them different. And he can keep going as long as the combat requires because as long as he's using powers or taking damage he'll get new powers.

And then we can make it so that having a power used on you replenishes your own colors so there's a strategic element of not giving a dragon enough black dots so he nukes your ass with dragon breath. Or if your powers hand out a lot of black dots you save them up and meganuke his ass and then default to defensive powers.


I don't know. What do you think, sirs?
User avatar
JonSetanta
King
Posts: 5525
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: interbutts

Post by JonSetanta »

Yes Fuma was That Hojo Ninja. He was so ridiculously CHAOS and GAR when I first tried SW2 that I instantly became obsessed with mastering his floppy fightan noodle arms .
I didn't consider using Ina for months but I read somewhere on a forum about her intended usage, and set out to get better with her (and deck her out in the best stuff, lightning bow for chi, chi boost, attack boost, speed, and best weapon). She's my current fav; can fight 3+ generals at a time on a good encounter on hard mode and they don't even come close to her, slays hordes within seconds just by holding circle.

Buttlord: what's all this about colors? I would stand up and clap for this concept in a video game development meeting, but in an RPG it's best to stick with numbers, tokens to hand out, and/or standalone (lump) actions.
The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:
Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:25 pm
Nobody gives a flying fuck about Tordek and Regdar.
The 13 Wise Buttlords
Master
Posts: 233
Joined: Sun May 25, 2008 5:19 am

Post by The 13 Wise Buttlords »

Buttlord: what's all this about colors? I would stand up and clap for this concept in a video game development meeting, but in an RPG it's best to stick with numbers, tokens to hand out, and/or standalone (lump) actions.
It doesn't have to be colors. I also suggested suites and what the fuck evers.

Cards might work the best, come to think. You get 12 cards of each suite and you draw more of them and discard as you build up your damn tokens. That might even work for expansion options, where Aces and Jokers just count as any token you want.

Hmm.
Draco_Argentum
Duke
Posts: 2434
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Draco_Argentum »

The idea has merit. But you need something to control charging up on manufactured opponents.

"The power replenishment numbers are something like Your Level - Power Level." This is a bad idea though. It would encourage using your weakest attacks over and over until you were able to use your best move.

Another thing I recommend against is something like the WoW warrior's rage bar. Charging up to an awesome attack then spending all your rage and being stuck with weak attacks is also anti-climatic.
Amra
Knight
Posts: 400
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Amra »

I've been thinking something along similar lines myself. What I was imagining - and I haven't thought this through to see how it stacks up against 13WB's idea - is that you'd get multiple pyramids of "conditional" powers, each of which is topped by an at-will. When you "buy" a power, you don't get one, you get a stack of 'em. The prerequisite for using moves further down the pyramid is that you've used moves further *up* the pyramid already in that fight. You can always choose to go back up the pyramid in the fight to set up different combat options, and you can always choose to go to a different pyramid available to you in the same fight - you're not forced to keep going down the same one.

What this means is that for every round the fight progresses, you have *more* options available to you; and the "style", "tree" or "pyramid" (whatever you like) you choose to take your moves from in a given situation will depend on the enemy you're fighting.

As you level, not only do your powers scale but you can add more options to your pyramids of choice according to the fighting style(s) you prefer. You could also scale by level by reducing the number of steps required to get to the uber-moves at the bottom of the pyramid. Once you've used an uber-move at the bottom of the pyramid, you have to go back one or two levels in that pyramid, but there's nothing stopping you from prepping several big guns if the fight goes that way. Now I come to try to explain it, I guess I'm really thinking "diamond" rather than "pyramid" but this is for illustration only so bear with me.

The basic idea is that the fights *start* at the padded-sumo end of the scale but *end* with rocket-tag. There is no reason why this couldn't apply to magic as well.

Let's say that the Wizard has an uberomgwtfbbq spell called "Blistering Lightning". It does hefty damage and can leave a wide circle of enemies twitching and writhing on the floor; but he can't just pull it out of his ass, he has to build up to it. Not by "charging" or anything retarded like that, but by using other magics that he can build on to get his big effect.

Round One, he looks at the situation and decides that against the enemies the party is facing, Blistering Lightning is going to be his best option. The pyramid that's at the bottom of starts with, say, Lightning Whip. He pulls out his mojo, starts chanting, and gets a tongue of crackling electrical energy he can slap people upside the head with whilst getting out of range.

Round Two, he has more choices. He could have realised that his enemies are lightning-resistant (or have just had a better idea) and switch to a different pyramid, of course, but lets say he's going with Plan A. Now he could either lay down his Cloud of Lightning to block line of sight and dish out some damage to the bad guys, or he might decide that they're a bit too close for comfort and magic up his Electric Fence to throw enemies back who come into contact with it.

Round Three, he can pull out his Blistering Lightning if he wants to. Maybe he can't get close enough to the bad guy yet, maybe the rest of the party hasn't beaten people down enough for it to be a fight finisher or maybe he's in danger of taking more heat than he thinks he's going to be able to deal with. As such, he can choose to pull out another Electric Fence, or Lightning Whip, or even throw out a different power from another pyramid without losing his progress in this one.

The upside is that characters get more options as the fight progresses, there's no requirement for them to have uncanny prognostication powers about whether the enemy they're facing is the enemy for the day and there's no bullshit Conservation of Dailies going on; you can use your super-moves in as many fights as you have in a day, just not every round. If a fight goes on long enough, you might even get to a point where you've got three or four rockets in your launcher, or you might fire 'em off as quick as you can get 'em.

The downside is that you've got to keep track of which powers you've used, which is additional book-keeping. I don't see that as a big deal but I'm prepared to get argued into submission that I'm wrong. 8)
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

Some of this can be handled with a "closing" mechanic. That is, if you have to push past the danger zone of someone with a longer weapon in order to get inside and use your dagger, then you have to build up to the point where you can Voldomolest people by succeeding at a dangerous closing maneuver against an opponent. And once you do that, you can Voldomolest them to your heart's content.

So that would put some characters into a situation where they were running around with Glaives and their job would be to chop up zombies and goblins and shit before they got a chance to use dagger dance or bite; and some characters would run around with daggers and try to jump on in against major opponents and repeatedly kidney shank them.

-Username17
RiotGearEpsilon
Knight
Posts: 469
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2008 3:39 am
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Post by RiotGearEpsilon »

'Optimum' range strikes me as a mechanic with a lot of room for interesting implementations - more interesting than 'how fast do I go vs. how awesome am I each time'. I'll be watching this with interest.
Manxome
Knight-Baron
Posts: 977
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Manxome »

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:You don't charge your bar or waste your time with piddling attacks. That's stupid and does lead to the Dragonball Z problem, where combat is only resolved by breaking out the Kamehameha.

You should always be busting out with cool attacks; it's just that you shouldn't have the option of blowing them all to take out the enemy super-fast and you shouldn't be able to not have it when the dramatically appropriate time in combat comes up.
This sounds awfully close to saying that everything should just be at-will. Or at least not limited in the number of times you can use it.

I'm not confident that I completely understand all the proposals made so far in this thread, but most of them seem to boil down to:
  • You get 'points' during the battle (mostly for getting turns, but maybe also for other things)
  • You can spend these points as you get them for attacks, or save them up for bigger attacks later
That seems to be Buttlords' "momentum" in a nutshell. Buttlords' "colors" and Amra's "pyramids" both seem to be schemes for having multiple flavors of points, so that which categories you currently have points in determines which uber attacks are currently available, and which attacks you make right now determines which flavors of points you'll accumulate.

That's not to say that the details of those systems aren't interesting or important, but the underlying idea of all of them seems to be: you can alternate between weak and strong attacks, or use medium attacks continuously, and you can shift between these strategies on the fly.

Is that the goal? Based on the quote above, that doesn't appear to be the goal, at least for Buttlords.

Still, if you want to have some attacks that are better than others, then there has to be some reason you don't always use them, or they might as well be your only attacks.

Those schemes sound like they're attempting to keep your overall power output consistent (except maybe for the first couple rounds), with just the option to trade damage now for damage later. As I think everyone is aware, that trade is not generally worth it. It's worthwhile if you get interest (in which case no one uses medium attacks unless the fight's about to end) or if you need a spike in damage to overcome enemy DR/healing/whatever.

Frank's got a different-sounding scheme; he's described it in terms of range, but let me try to abstract it: some (all?) fighting styles have a preferred state you can get into that makes them more effective--let's call it "zen." If you're not in zen, you can make weak attacks (maybe), or you can attempt to attain zen by performing some sort of dangerous/costly maneuver. Once you attain zen, you can use awesome attacks as much as you want, and by default, you will remain in zen, no matter how many attacks you make. You may need to achieve zen separately for each target you wish to attack. One could also imagine actions you could take to knock opponents out of zen.

Under this system, achieving zen is an investment, but there's no fixed upper limit on how long you can benefit from it once you have it. You don't bother with zen if you're going to kill the target quickly anyway, because it's not worth the entry cost, but you want to do it in long fights--so it's something you'll use against major foes and not mooks.

Even when zen is worthwhile, when you choose to try for it could be an interesting tactical choice--you put yourself at risk when you do it, so if the system's constructed right, it may be worth taking actions to reduce that risk first (e.g. weakening/distracting the opponent, or giving yourself some sort of defensive advantage). If there are rules for knocking people out of zen, it may also be worth taking some precautions to ensure you can stay zenned long enough to be worthwhile (whether that means getting a positional advantage, or making sure the enemy isn't zenned, or whatever).

Maybe being in zen for one style also imposes some sort of penalty (or at least prevents zen) for other styles? So if you get really close so you can knife your opponent, that means you can't use healing magic, or at least can't enter the trance that lets you use awesome healing magic. Or something.

Do those sound like more appealing basic properties? Seems to me like it could be an interesting system.

There's other ways to limit cool abilities, of course.
  • K brought up the idea of cumulative penalties for cool abilities in this thread.
  • There's also the concept of accumulating a resource in the target for powering big attacks, such as peril in this system. Basically, attacking someone inflicts damage, but also causes the target to gain "peril." Peril doesn't do anything by itself, but if someone has enough peril, then you can use up that peril to hit them with a stronger attack. This is similar to the points/momentum/colors/pyramids thing, but you can set up an opponent for your ally's uber attack, and you can't charge your omega strike by slaughtering rats, though it has some different issues.
  • Others?
The 13 Wise Buttlords
Master
Posts: 233
Joined: Sun May 25, 2008 5:19 am

Post by The 13 Wise Buttlords »

To Manxome:

I'm not just talking about a tradeoff between small/medium/large attacks, I'm talking about trading between blue/red/green/yellow attacks.

Another annoyingly incoherent example.

At the start of a round, you automatically get a card from two categories: Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, or Spades. One card must be different from the ones you picked last two rounds.

Every power requires a certain expenditure of cards. For example, Mega Slash costs 2 Heart cards, but it also gives you back a Diamond Card. It also has the side effect of giving your foe a Diamond Card when you hit them with it. At higher levels, though, Mega Slash gives you back a Heart Card and a Diamond Card.

The trick is that at higher levels, you're being given enough cards so that your accumulation of cards is faster than you can spend them on low-level powers. So while everyone spams a basic attack at level 1, it becomes useless by level 5 because a Level 2 attack is better at it in every way.

This is to keep players from wailing on foes with outdated attacks just to charge up for a super one. Partially because their DPS goes down, but this is also because at level 15, spamming a level 10 power replenishes your deck faster than spamming a level 5 power.

Specialists cycle through a smaller selection of powers than generalists in return for slowing down an opponents' power usage on them; there are opponents out there that have devastating attacks (Say a Three Diamond / Two Spade / Two Heart one) and if the specialist can keep hitting them with attacks that only hand out Club and Heart cards they'll charge up slower. The downside of this is that specialists don't have as wide of an array of powers--though it's more of a 3rd Ed wizard specialist problem than a rogue vs. undead problem.

To keep first level powers in circulation, you can use them for iterative attacks. Alternatively, since I'm proposing a system where you can't select defensive or offensive abilities separately (every power in the game has a defensive or offensive flipside to it), you could staple the defensive powers on to the end of your attacks as a hilarious 'fuck you' to mooks.

But that's a separate problem.
The 13 Wise Buttlords
Master
Posts: 233
Joined: Sun May 25, 2008 5:19 am

Post by The 13 Wise Buttlords »

The Latest And Greatest Attacks, BTW, are intentionally weighted to be a little inefficient so that immediately going for them at the start of combat will put your DPS behind unless you get lucky. You're supposed to accumulate enough cards first so that when you start going for your LAGAs if your foe is still alive you can use lesser attacks again without a hitch.

They're supposed to be used at the end of battles or as a desperation manuever, not when things are clipping along nicely. Alternatively, you use your LAGAs against opponents you hopelessly overwhelm in the interest of cutting combat short--you get power NOW in return for fucking up your replenishment rotation. But this doesn't matter when the guard patrol is going to die from your megaattack a round sooner. However, there's none of this bullshit where using your Kamehameha against an astonishly competent guard patrol leaves you gimped for the confrontation against the Big Bad.
Manxome
Knight-Baron
Posts: 977
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Manxome »

Yeah, so you've got 4 flavors of points and partial control over which flavors you get and which flavors your opponents get. And you've got some system I don't begin to understand for phasing out lower-level powers at higher levels.

I'm not seeing any part of this that changes the fact that, at any given level, you're choosing between making lots of medium attacks or making weaker attacks to build up cards for bigger attacks. That's certainly not the only thing you're choosing between, but that still sounds like one of the fundamental choices.

And that's entirely OK if that's intentional, it's just that you sounded like that's not what you wanted.
The 13 Wise Buttlords
Master
Posts: 233
Joined: Sun May 25, 2008 5:19 am

Post by The 13 Wise Buttlords »

I'm not seeing any part of this that changes the fact that, at any given level, you're choosing between making lots of medium attacks or making weaker attacks to build up cards for bigger attacks.
That part you're missing is that you generally don't use weaker attacks. Powers are intentionally designed to become So Last Season. So this tier have Hadouken as your Big Bad Attack; next tier Hadouken becomes your spam attack and Kamehameha is your scene-ender. Next Kamehameha becomes your spam attack and Spirit Bomb is the climax attack, and so on.

Weaker attacks don't build up your card pool as fast so using them either means:

1) The power is really situational but awesome when it works correctly, like Animate Objects. Alternatively, you're fighting a ghost and your only power that really works is 'ghost blade' or somesuch.
2) You futz'd up (or got futz'd up) your card rotation somehow, forcing you to resort to using weaker attacks for a little bit.
3) You're trying not to trigger a monster's Mega Ultimate Ability. Lowering your own DPS to lower a monster's DPS doesn't mean much one-on-one, but it's a very sound tactic in a team-based game.

However, I do want to avoid the Inuyasha problem of earlier attacks being COMPLETELY useless as you advance in levels. That's why I'm also proposing an iterative attack system where you're eventually able to throw out a couple of Hadoukens while firing a Kamehameha from your mouth. This doesn't affect your power rotation, it's just a bonus for being higher level.
Manxome
Knight-Baron
Posts: 977
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Manxome »

OK, so...the part I was missing is just that you don't have any "medium" attacks?

I don't care if you've got some powers that are so weak that you don't normally use them; they're not part of the typical tactical picture. I also don't care whether those exact same powers used to be good at lower levels; that's part of the advancement system, not the tactics.

So that leaves what you're calling "spam attacks" and "climax attacks," which appear to have all the characteristics I described for "weak" and "strong" attacks, respectively; specifically, that "strong" attacks are objectively better than "weak" ones, except that you need to do X "weak" attacks for each "strong" attack. That's going to tend to a cycle of a particular length, and that length will have nothing to do with the opposition you're facing. It'll also encourage people to do weak attacks on weak (or even manufactured) targets to charge up for the big attacks against the boss.

And I don't see how this is different from the system you specifically complained about except that "piddly little" has been renamed "spammable," "charge bar" has been renamed "cards," and you've added a lot of complicated details that deal with orthogonal tactical considerations.
Amra
Knight
Posts: 400
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Amra »

For what it's worth, I hate the idea - in a tabletop RPG, at least - of the moves you start with ending up as not-worth-doing crapola. Your starting abilities should scale so they're *always* good; advancing in level means you get more and more cool shit you can bust out, not that the manoeuvres you've been practising for longest gradually suck. Yes, fair enough, there should be some big badass ubermojo you can pull out as your awesome quotient increases, but the basic tricks of your trade should keep on giving.

The way I was imagining it working, your 'instant' powers are all good and keep getting better as you level... but the number of different things you can chain off them gets larger, your ubermojo gets badder and you can get there more quickly.

Originally I envisaged being able to combine different big bad moves that you'd prepped but realised that wouldn't work because it'd be impossible to add new stunts to the system. Figuring out an open-ended mechanic for that is frankly beyond me.

Anyway, the point was that having a bunch of weak-ass attacks you don't use because you've picked up new ones is, from where I'm standing at least, really lame. Abilities shouldn't be "crap", "medium" and "heavy": for their level they should always be "good", "better" and "holy FUCK, man!" If you can do a thing, it should be useful to you; albeit maybe less often.

A punch in the face doesn't stop being good just because you've been training for ten years and have since learned to kick someone in the ear; it's just that now you have the option to punch someone in the face or kick them in the ear and your punches have got really good. 'Tis my opinion, anyway.
Tydanosaurus
Journeyman
Posts: 145
Joined: Tue Jun 10, 2008 4:40 pm

Post by Tydanosaurus »

Why tie recharge only to attacks?

IMO, it'd be interesting to tie recharge to the things that matter for the various classes. Fighters could get "points" for marking and taking hits from other classes, Clerics for buffs and heals, etc.
Tydanosaurus
Journeyman
Posts: 145
Joined: Tue Jun 10, 2008 4:40 pm

Post by Tydanosaurus »

Amra wrote:The downside is that you've got to keep track of which powers you've used, which is additional book-keeping. I don't see that as a big deal but I'm prepared to get argued into submission that I'm wrong. 8)
You can get a similar, but slightly different, effect with a point system and counters. Players generate 1 "Wild" point each round automatically, but different pyramids require different colors. A Rogue, for instance, could get:

Dagger Red Strike. Cost 0. Generate +1 "red" point.

Sneak Red Attack. Cost 1 Red. Generate 0. (double damage)

Subtle Red Attack. Cost 2 Red. Generate 0. (triple damage)

Lingering Red Attack. Cost 3 Red. Generate -1. (triple damage, target Weakened, save ends)

Then just give counters for different pyramids. You could use 1 wild and one red, or two red.
Post Reply