Breaking the Unbreakable

I am not saying that you can't have double damage, I'm saying that double damage takes a lot of work to make work and is really boring in comparison to most of every other thing you could be doing. Also, the idea of a randomly doubling crescendo just made me really happy so I might make that power a reality if I get really bored.

You might think it's boring, but some other people might go :O When they see it. You need to account for everyone when you design things, as Dan said, and I kinda want the double damage to be a reality~

Also let's have d12 crits that auto-kill boss fights! Oh wait.... nvm. Yeah, I forgot. We threw balance and any attention to having mechanics that don't detract from the fun out the window entirely already haven't we?

In fact, new propositions that match these ideas!
[+1] Totally Balanced
Kill a random creature.

[-20] *shrug*
Kill everything in the combat.

[-6] Flanking Manuever
Two party members take an extra turn where they deal double damage and heal the amount of damage they do and kill all the minions. Also the GM is obligated to cry (save ends).

There Stairc, we have ideas. Please tell me these are not terrible and we shouldn't stifle such dross.

As much as I enjoy arguing things, the whole point of this thread went out the window on page 2... And that was when I had finished proving my point and we went on to argue about game balance, which this thread was not at all about. It was all about breaking things because I was bored. So I think we can take this argument somewhere else while I find a new toy to smash on the ground.

We admittingly got A LOT of damage boosters in this sytem we DON'T need any double damage boosters in it. Headshot while not anything what I first thought it was. Still strikes me as an talent worth trying out.

So, to get this back on the track I want it on:

The floor is open to any who come! Post whatever talent you think is underrepresented and want to be the star of a build, and I will do my damnedest to turn it into part of a combo that will make you feel better about the poor little guy.

So far I have Headshot in the running as the next big thing.

Smash and Grab or Feedback Wave.

Why not something extremely hard? Fireball. +1, 1d8 to three enemies. Just try and break it.

I say try to build a summoner that uses Smash and Grab... Cause I could totally use a better combat build for one of my characters that has that talent and have been meaning to want to use Smash and Grab a bit more.

Fireball
Monkey's Backfist
Midnight's Blade
Draw Blood
Gather Energy

Fleshrender

There is a basic, 5 minute construct that has fun with his fireballs by giving people ongoing damage, making everything he can adjacent, and dropping fireballs on people to hit everything at +6 damage while increasing ongoing damage. Is it super broken, no. Is it optimized, not yet. Would it be fun, I'd play it and enjoy it.

Edit: You could swap out Gather Energy with Where it Hurts to make it 1d8+1d12 to the targets.

Feedback Wave
Domineer
Everlasting Misery
Critfisher
Paranoia

So this one was a two-fer for me.

#1) Feedback wave is the star damage here, since you are actually going to domineer something into upping it's pip count as much as possible while hurting its friends.

and

#2) It uses paranoia on the guy it dominated since it still counts as an enemy, and 'gets' to make free attacks on everything it knows and loves.

Extra lulz arise when it uses Dazzling Performance as a special.

Headshot
Everlasting Misery
Blood is Power
Drain Blood
Take Aim

Fleshrender

Basic combat:
Turn 1) Blood is Power, Take Aim
Turn 2) Headshot, Drain Blood
Turn 3) Drain Blood, Take Aim

And so on, Everlasting misery when they make the save. You should have enough most of the time. By the start of turn 3 they have Ongoing damage 9.

Really headshot is there because it needs an attack that adds pips, Siphon Life would also work well here, probably better even. But I promised to do funny things with Headshot, so here we have it.

Really, when you get down to it, any single, cheap attack that doesn't really impress can be made so much better just by putting it in the place of headshot here. It's kinda sad really.

So I feel that Fireball needed something more AoE focused, so:

Fireball
Monkey's Backfist
Hellfire Rain
Critfisher
Everlasting Misery

Fleshrender
Boomstick ASAP

Assassin's Gambit for a Special

At this point you actually boomstick a Monkey's Backfist to make a big web of adjacency, then hellfire rain. Afterwards you fireball to your heart's content. If you feel like you need pips fast for some EM you fire off Critfisher on d8s so you can get enemies to gain vulnerability against you. Then you laugh.

I feel like that's enough for tonight. But please do post more, something should get me off on another completely out of left field tangent.

Overall opinion myself: I would play any one of these 4 builds, I would probably have the most fun with the Feedback Wave one however.

Ramsus wrote:As a GM I would laugh so hard at one of my players suggesting they were allowed to buy that item. There's no way it's comparable to anything else. It's way off the power scale.

I have no idea how you make these statements. I walked through exactly how it's balanced based on the standard for item potency. 5000 Gold is supposed to generate 5 rounds worth of stuff. This is a little more than that and doubles damage in combat that is designed to last 5 rounds, getting double the bang for your buck if you use it to the max. It is entirely reasonably priced.

I've noticed this trend a lot. You tend to make sweeping statements without backing them up at all and with having no context from the other items in the revamped expansion - ignoring the formula and justification that *was* explained.

As for double damage not being fun, that's up to you. Some players love simple effects so they don't have to keep track of a bunch of different complex things. Luckily, you don't have to take it - but nevertheless you intend to just ban it from whatever game you run because you don't like it. This is not a healthy attitude when designing a system for many different types of people.

Psst, Dan. We've gone past that part of the thread. It has gone back to doing weird shit with talents because I'm bored.

thematthew wrote:Psst, Dan. We've gone past that part of the thread. It has gone back to doing weird shit with talents because I'm bored.

*laughs* Sounds fun.

I'm thinking of creating a custom-limited version of the game, where you're dealt out several booster packs of combat talents and figure out the best build you can make out of them. Then you play a one-shot adventure.

I've done 4 builds so far, 2 which I was kinda meh on, 1 which I thought could be amusing, and 1 which I would love to play because it comes out of nowhere with what it does.

I need some people to put forth more things they want me to try to do something crazy with. Specifically things which are under-utilized, and people do not think are good.

This line of thinking has already made me look at Smash and Grab and realize that it has low potential, and costs too much for how little it does.

They look like a ton of fun. Particularly love the Feedback Wave one too - it's awesome to watch Paranoia's drawback turned into an advantage. Good thing we didn't delete Paranoia from the system.

thematthew wrote:
I need some people to put forth more things they want me to try to do something crazy with. Specifically things which are under-utilized, and people do not think are good.

My favorite thing in building too. This player desire does indeed exist.

I'm still not a fan of Paranoia, nor the whole set of paranoia abilities. But I did find one way to use it that I was happy with. And I actually really like that build with it's crazy crap standard of only being as good as the enemies being thrown at it.

Exactly. =)

Btw, one thing that I missed is that Paranoia was set as a [+1]. This is a typo, it was supposed to be as a [+2] and I didn't realize that till just now. I'll post that in the Eratta thread.

Well, I suppose it sucks less now, but it is still kinda sub-par most of the time.

Definitely sub-par most of the time. I've considered making it a [+3] too, but I like it as a Johnny talent at the moment.

Personally, I still think Smash and Grab should be [+1], not [-1], since basically every [+1] pip attack is better than it.

thematthew wrote:Personally, I still think Smash and Grab should be [+1], not [-1], since basically every [+1] pip attack is better than it.

The issue is if a bunch of players gang up on a solo or something, they can deprive it of pips almost infinitely if it's a [+1] power and lock it in place. Pip denial is restricted for a reason.