Official Errata: Changes and fixes to the game (Subscription Recommended)

thematthew wrote:Yes, I did read the logic on item creation. This still lets me get 7-8 pips on turn 1, and start spending my minor actions toward pulling out another weapon.

Like another ritual knife if I have one. Thus being able to have upwards of 18 pips available for use on any extra actions that are thrown to me on turn 2.

Can't you only bring one weapon into battle? Or were the rules changed without me noticing?

If I remember right, you can /carry/ multiple weapons and stuff but only /equip/ one weapon and armor and 3 trinkets.

You can spend two minor actions to swap a weapon you are wielding for another one.

So, you could turn your standard into a minor then use the ritual knife, then spend two minors to swap out your knives and use them again. And thats the end of using the knives under this line of action.

Thats -12 health for +6 pips turn one.



You could use a +3 pip power, the knife and one minor action to put away your knife and thats -6 health for a total gain of 6 pips. You could use a +4 pip power and be at 7 pips instead with some debilitation effect as well as the -6 to life.

Daredevils rush is broken, and shouldn't be taken into account for balance. Honestly as cool as the combo is, I don't know why Dan allowed it and Iron Shield.

Someone could use a warlord style ability to let you take another standard action which you could either spend using another +3 pip power or turning into a minor to pull out the other ritual knife and use that, which will be 3 pips at the cost of another 6 life.

In order to have two ritual knives barring DM/GM intervention you need to have 4000 gold which should give you an extra 4 standard actions. Its been established there are a ton of +3 pip powers for one standard action.

In the above, you've essentially gained two more standard actions. This isn't a problem.

The highest pip count this can take you to is 14 pips starting turn two. You could then (If you hadn't during the warlord giving you an extra go) bump yourself up to 17 pips with the ritual knife and if you used gather energy first turn and your +3 pip power as one of your standards this turn be at 18 pips.

So, yeah, it can get you 18 pips. At the cost of 7 standard actions which if you had just taken 7 turns to normally gain 3 pips would leave you at 25 pips (7x3+4).

7 standard actions to get you to 18 pips seems fine to me. It requires item and teammate support and makes you feel awesome.

Though "It's over" turn 2 is a problem. Mathamatically this is fine, but it isn't in practice.

is Weather-Crafter as an Pegasus ability supposed to take 5 minutes more then the utility?

So, you could turn your standard into a minor then use the ritual knife, then spend two minors to swap out your knives and use them again. And thats the end of using the knives under this line of action.

Thats -12 health for +6 pips turn one.

I'm not really following how you do this one, mostly because I can't find a rule allowing you to swap a Standard Action out for a Minor action. Also, because you can only use 1 Free Action per round.

The problem is that you can go ahead and use a +3, +4, or +5 move on turn 1 (By the by the new best thing ever with Daredevil's Rush is Perfect Defense, since you can use it to take 0 damage while gaining the pips) And spend your 6 hp for 3 pips, and 1 of your minors required to swap weapons. (By the way, Sanctity of Faith is a good choice for a turn 1 [+3] move)

This way if you have 1 friend willing to throw you an extra action you can have the 17 pips required to use It's Over on turn 2 (all you have to do is gain 4 more pips, which can be really easy if the guy giving you an extra action goes right before you, thank you Perfect Focus, and then spend the second Minor Action to finish weapon swap and activate the Knife, gaining 3 more pips. That's 4(starting) +6 (Turn 1 Ritual Knife + Sanctity of Faith) +7 (Perfect Focus right before your turn, or any of a host of +4 moves + Ritual Knife Turn 2) and a Standard Action Left for Turn 2.)

That's the kind of shenanigans that I am warning people about with this current version of the Ritual Knife.

While we are going to be rebalancing "It's Over" as the item expansion did indeed add new combos that make it not work as intended, I really don't understand why you're not factoring in the balance of traits and items into these strategies. Simply saying, "this item makes this combo awesome" doesn't really matter if the item costs so much that its cost balances or outweighs the benefit. The same with a trait. Perfect Defense is indeed an intended combo with Daredevil's Rush. We might change that later but right now it is intended to be that way. Traits are intended to be worth 2000 gold (though this isn't standardized yet, we're going to revamp them so this balance is indeed echoed throughout all traits, but perfect defense already sits around this level). 2000 Gold is about 2 standard actions and using it to combine with Daredevil's Rush to get a few pips over the average for a standard action is a combo that feels cool and has its uses... But trades overall power and effectiveness for a short burst of pips.

I love that people are having fun building with items and traits, but talk about balance really needs to factor these things in.

As a side-note that also functions as an example; often times I see people comparing a build that uses traits and multiple items to the average builds that don't use either... Which is a huge swing. Items are supposed to increase your combat effectiveness by around 60% on their own and traits do even more. Dealing with 3000 gold of items and one trait (2000 gold) should increase your effectiveness over a build that uses no traits or items by 100%. You should be twice as effective automatically. It shouldn't be surprising when your build is twice as good as an unaugmented one.

I actually am looking at it from the standards of with varying items, and different traits Stairc, and what I am noticing is that there is a huge discrepancy between the effectiveness of your money.

For 2000 bits I can get my choice of:
A 1/Battle 3d10 damage fireball
A +2 initiative bonus with a 1/battle minor action attack dealing 1d8 damage for free
A 1/battle choice power dealing 3 damage or moving my initiative order up or giving an ally 4 temp hp in response to my single target attack (Not personally a fan of this one, I feel the versatility is getting it knocked down too hard)
A [+1] that gives a no-save 1 turn dominate at the cost of my next turn 1/day
The ability to bump up Ongoing Damage by 2 every time I hurt something
A 1/battle Free Action to convert up to 6 hp into pips at a 2-for-1 rate
A twice per battle heal spell which can be buffed by my pips
3 temp hp whenever I make a single target attack
A 1/battle ability to copy a save ends effect from me to another creature
A 2/battle hurt self to heal ally for double
A 1/battle Curse Eater that specifically heals for 4 each
A 1/battle copy single target attack to all adjacent targets
A +1d6 damage per turn against a chosen target
A -2 penalty to opponent's saves

That's all of the 2000 bit effects.

Basically every single one of these is a better bonus than: Can use a [+1] power 3/battle to deal 2d10 damage to a single target, but every 1 you roll on any damage die hits you for more than 1/5th of your hp.

That one is more expensive btw.

I do admit that It's Over being reworked will go a long way to fixing the problems inherent with the massive pip-gain build standards, But as it stands there is some really crazy stuff that can happen just because you allow people practically free pips. And yes, 6hp for 3 pips, as a free action is practically free. And according to the expected equipment table, anypony can start with this and 8 temp hp if they really wanted to.

That all having been said, my post wasn't really me trying to reiterate how crazy the Ritual Knife is (I feel it is, but no point in reiterating it too much) it was showing the best case scenario I could easily see, while asking about Nehiel's statement about using a Standard action to do a Minor action.

thematthew wrote:I actually am looking at it from the standards of with varying items, and different traits Stairc, and what I am noticing is that there is a huge discrepancy between the effectiveness of your money.

I wouldn't be surprised. After all, as I've said before, the items were a quick beta we threw up in a week. We've been surprised with how well they've done thus far. We're doing a system revamp of them when we get time.

thematthew wrote:A 1/battle choice power dealing 3 damage or moving my initiative order up or giving an ally 4 temp hp in response to my single target attack (Not personally a fan of this one, I feel the versatility is getting it knocked down too hard)

Might want to read this one again. It's once per round.

thematthew wrote:Basically every single one of these is a better bonus than: Can use a [+1] power 3/battle to deal 2d10 damage to a single target, but every 1 you roll on any damage die hits you for more than 1/5th of your hp. That one is more expensive btw.

This is a combo item. It's built to be taken with the Unacceptable combat trait. The huge drawback isn't intended to ever function in practice, but to make the player that finds this combo *feel* like they're more powerful than otherwise, because they dodged a massive drawback. It's a psychological aspect.

thematthew wrote:I do admit that It's Over being reworked will go a long way to fixing the problems inherent with the massive pip-gain build standards, But as it stands there is some really crazy stuff that can happen just because you allow people practically free pips. And yes, 6hp for 3 pips, as a free action is practically free. And according to the expected equipment table, anypony can start with this and 8 temp hp if they really wanted to.

Yes, it is practically free. However, a standard action is worth 3 pips - so the item is arguably dramatically overpriced. I still like to overprice any pip-generation item for exactly this reason. It's also why I was reluctant to have the ritual knife change from the safe version it was before. However, I'm willing to give this a shot as, mathematically, it works out more than fine. If it doesn't work out well, we'll reexamine our assumptions.

We also might need to tax "one ally grants other allies pips" powers further, but so far those builds exist mainly as a fun theory for theoretical optimizers. In practice, most players don't like taking those powers anyway and they're actually significantly below average except for a very few exceptions.

thematthew wrote:That all having been said, my post wasn't really me trying to reiterate how crazy the Ritual Knife is (I feel it is, but no point in reiterating it too much) it was showing the best case scenario I could easily see, while asking about Nehiel's statement about using a Standard action to do a Minor action.

In the tabletop you can, but I don't believe we've stated if the skype version can or not. Anyone have an opinion on this?

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:

thematthew wrote:A 1/battle choice power dealing 3 damage or moving my initiative order up or giving an ally 4 temp hp in response to my single target attack (Not personally a fan of this one, I feel the versatility is getting it knocked down too hard)

Might want to read this one again. It's once per round.

Yep, I missed that. And this gave me an idea for another hilarious duo.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:

thematthew wrote:Basically every single one of these is a better bonus than: Can use a [+1] power 3/battle to deal 2d10 damage to a single target, but every 1 you roll on any damage die hits you for more than 1/5th of your hp. That one is more expensive btw.

This is a combo item. It's built to be taken with the Unacceptable combat trait. The huge drawback isn't intended to ever function in practice, but to make the player that finds this combo *feel* like they're more powerful than otherwise, because they dodged a massive drawback. It's a psychological aspect.

However at 3000 bits it is supposed to be the equivalent of a standard action, and the action it gives you is free stab stapled on top of your stab three times. That's exactly 3 standard actions, so the drawback pushes it way out of being worth 3 standard actions unless you are comboing it with Unacceptable, Midnight's Blade, or Take Aim. Which in turn means it soaks up more resources to be worth what it is supposed to be in the first place, and it screws over all of your damage dice if you don't take those.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:

thematthew wrote:I do admit that It's Over being reworked will go a long way to fixing the problems inherent with the massive pip-gain build standards, But as it stands there is some really crazy stuff that can happen just because you allow people practically free pips. And yes, 6hp for 3 pips, as a free action is practically free. And according to the expected equipment table, anypony can start with this and 8 temp hp if they really wanted to.

Yes, it is practically free. However, a standard action is worth 3 pips - so the item is arguably dramatically overpriced. I still like to overprice any pip-generation item for exactly this reason. It's also why I was reluctant to have the ritual knife change from the safe version it was before. However, I'm willing to give this a shot as, mathematically, it works out more than fine. If it doesn't work out well, we'll reexamine our assumptions.

We also might need to tax "one ally grants other allies pips" powers further, but so far those builds exist mainly as a fun theory for theoretical optimizers. In practice, most players don't like taking those powers anyway and they're actually significantly below average except for a very few exceptions.

But a standard action is not worth 3 pips taking none of your real actions during your turn. Thus the hp cost. And even then it should probably be built as a discount to your power instead of just being free pips, so that you can't abuse weapon swapping to get too crazy.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:

thematthew wrote:That all having been said, my post wasn't really me trying to reiterate how crazy the Ritual Knife is (I feel it is, but no point in reiterating it too much) it was showing the best case scenario I could easily see, while asking about Nehiel's statement about using a Standard action to do a Minor action.

In the tabletop you can, but I don't believe we've stated if the skype version can or not. Anyone have an opinion on this?

I am currently not sure about it, mostly because the division between minor actions and standard actions allows you to enforce a 1 minor action and 1 free action per turn standard, which in turn gives you the ability to make more interesting minor actions which are good, but would be a little crazy if you could do it multiple times per round.

However at 3000 bits it is supposed to be the equivalent of a standard action, and the action it gives you is free stab stapled on top of your stab three times. That's exactly 3 standard actions, so the drawback pushes it way out of being worth 3 standard actions unless you are comboing it with Unacceptable, Midnight's Blade, or Take Aim. Which in turn means it soaks up more resources to be worth what it is supposed to be in the first place, and it screws over all of your damage dice if you don't take those.

Actually, 1000 bits is 1 standard action. 3000 is 3 standard actions.

The blade is indeed intended to be paired with builds that use Unacceptable. If it is not used in those builds, it isn't worth it. However, it makes people who like Unacceptable (which is going to get an upgrade in the revamp of traits) and are looking for combos with it. The drawback of Unacceptable doesn't matter for this reason, as it's never supposed to be triggered in an actual build.

That was a typo. What I'm saying is that since the weapon is specifically designed with a ridiculous flaw, it is overpriced. The effect is quite literally the same as 3 extra standard actions, so long as they are all stab, but you also have to work around this drawback just because we want this to be a weapon to be paired with this specific Trait.

That seems like backwards thinking to me. The weapon without the drawback quite literally is exactly what your stated design intent was for items (1000/Standard Action Value) so in order to limit it's usefulness in, for example crazed barbarian builds that are still level 1, it has a drawback which makes you either take a combat talent just to not kill yourself with it or not use it until level 2 and thus be sitting at least 2000 bits worth of equipment behind everypony else just because you didn't want to wait even longer until you could afford your sword-chucks.

Don't forget that there is a full-refund policy in place for items, so you can swap out items without taking a loss when you sell them, so you could afford to play with different items at level 2. The Unacceptable Trait should work very well with this item, as it increases your crit chance and DPR. The damage for each of these attacks goes up by 1 with unacceptable, as it increases each die by 0.5. 5 extra damage is a bit below a whole extra attack, but it's still a nice chunk (I assume with all those pips you can keep up the trend). The increased crit chances up it as well. However, the Unacceptable trait is still below the trait curve's goal (most traits are, traits playtest beta were designed before items and it was during items that we decided that traits should be worth 2k - we're planning the revamp to go back and fix these things because they were officially never even taken out of beta).

But this argument isn't about Unacceptable being sub-par. It's about Sword-Chucks being overpriced.

To make Sword-Chucks a viable option I have to have Sword-Chucks (3000 bits) and Unacceptable (A whole freaking character trait)

In comparison, to make Fleshrender a viable option I have to have Fleshrender (2000 bits), the ability to have ongoing damage get applied (you know, like any one of the many combat talents which really isn't asking much of an investment), and an attack. Seriously just some way to do damage.

Or

To make the Chaos-Bound Blade a viable option I need my Chaos-Bound Blade (3000 bits) and to roll initiative. Seriously, that's it.

Or hows about Paramedic's Robe, it costs 3000 and all you need to make it work is a healing power.

Hellspike Armor and Heirophant Armor don't even ask that much of an investment. You just have to get hit and they start doing their own work.

And Pheonix Cape lets you say 'oops screwed that up!' and stop being unconscious.

Hell, Empathic Circlet is also kinda overpriced at 4000 bits to let you use Channel Mind. That actually is a 300% mark up, which is insane even if you are trying to limit access to Channel Mind to people who either get it as a character or pay through the nose, but that still doesn't require you to invest anything else into it, just have some [+] moves.

So, yeah. Seems overpriced to me.

The 12 effect of be prepared states I and up to six allies can use any combat talent possessed regardless of whether or not it was brought into the battle.
So if I'm using a conjured weapon will I have access to non-weapon talents if I'm under the 12 effect of Be Prepared?
and if it is possible to use non-weapon talents what happens if I conjure a second weapon while still using the first?
I apologise for interrupting but it's been really bugging me.

@thematthew
You seem to be assuming that Unacceptable stops being a valuable character trait once you take Swordchucks. It actually gets a bit better than normal when you take Swordchucks, because now you have a reliable way to roll multiple dice as a [+] power. Swordchucks is expected to be used with Unacceptable. Unacceptable is similar to a prerequisite for Swordchucks if you're attempting to optimize your character. This isn't an 'investment' with no return, Unacceptable still functions and gets better with Swordchucks in play (more dice are being rolled). So assuming that, after the traits are reworked, Unacceptable is equal in power to the other traits - you still need to just compare the items on price-tag. The fact that you need to take Unacceptable for Swordchucks to be balanced doesn't make your end result in combat any less effective.

Doc pseudopolis wrote:The 12 effect of be prepared says I and up to six allies can use any combat talent possessed regardless of whether or not it was brought into the battle.
So if I'm using a conjured weapon will I have access to non-weapon talents if I'm under the 12 effect of Be Prepared?
and if it is possible to use non-weapon talents what happens if I conjure a second weapon while still using the first?
I apologise for interrupting but it's been really bugging me.

Oh not at all! Interrupt at will. And a Merry Christmas to you too. =)

Interestingly, it matters what order you use the effects in. One effect says that you can't use normal combat talents, the other says you can use all your combat talents. Whichever applies last is the one that overwrites the former. So if you already have a Thunder Hammer roaring in your hooves and trigger the special while the hammer is equipped, you'll be able to use all your other talents too. However, if you then conjure another weapon (making the last effect one that forbids you from using your normal combat talents) then you'll be restricted to the new weapon's combat talents until you dismiss it. This will also prevent you from using the other combat talents from the weapon you had conjured at the time.

Thank you for clearing it up ser and a merry christmas to you too.

Hey everypony, finally got some time after D&D camp wrapped up to make a long-overdue edit to It's Over!

So, let me explain this change. Before the addition of items and the newer expansions, you probably couldn't trigger It's Over efficiently until turn 5 or 6. You could do it before hand, but only with a dedicated team member - and such team aid was often even less efficient or left players vulnerable during the opening rounds of combat. In short, doing it on turn 5 or 6 was what we expected to happen - and since combat was mostly designed for 5 rounds... We were fine with combat ending when... Well... We wanted it to end.

However, with the addition of items and new powers - it became feasible to trigger It's Over on turn 2 in some cases. Because the power was so overpowered that it was supposed to just end the battle, the prospect of actually using it in a relevant time-frame made the power broken. Even in team-builds using inefficient pip-sharing abilities, the power was twice as efficient for its pip cost as it should have been; so the price in inefficient buildup was more than made up for in hyper-efficient payoff.

So now that we actually have to think about people using It's Over in the early rounds of combat, we've scaled it appropriately to a combat talent of its cost. In short, it does about half as much damage as it used to and many monsters will be thankful for that. It's our Christmas present to them.


[-17] It’s Over! - Standard Attack [Created by Masterweaver]
When you use this talent, choose one;
A) Deal 7d12 damage to target creature.
B) Deal 3d12 damage to up to six creatures.


We considered just removing the power entirely, as many have suggested, but we think it's mainly because of how broken the former version was. Many players still love this power for being the biggest damage smacker around, and it's great for Derpy's Lightning builds that mean to go big off the 12 special. However, it's no longer broken... So it shouldn't be as big a pain this time around. If you really can't stand huge damage on a single attack though - feel free to simply ban it from your custom games. Hopefully, this solves the issue. If it doesn't, we'll address it again.

Personally, I think it's been slightly overnerfed, mainly the damage dealt to other creatures, but I understand why it was nerfed. T'is a shame though...

Although I do like how you removed the annotation of It's Over from the doc. That's a nice touch...

I still say It's Over SHOULD be removed. No matter how much you nerf it, the spirit of that talent is just plain wrong in my eyes. And I'll aways argue that IO's existence is holding the rest of the cambat system back.

I've assumed for some time now that It's Over was a bait talent, to spur people towards finding ways to break the game via pip production. Interesting to see that it's real...

sunbeam wrote:I've assumed for some time now that It's Over was a bait talent, to spur people towards finding ways to break the game via pip production. Interesting to see that it's real...

I thought that too, still think of it as such. And that's why I've feel Its Over should be removed.

So, one for each side of things. =)

How exactly would you say it's holding the rest of the combat system back Xel? I remember you mentioning this before, but I don't quite remember why.

Well... I think it's holding back the possible amazing [+] pip talents that could be made if that talent wasn't in this system. While I will admit Daredevil's Rush was in need of a nerfing. But I personally feel that it could've worked with a lesser nerf if It's Over didn't exist as an official talent. Also I mostly just don't understand why it's even there to begin with, it's a black sheep of a move meant only for minmaxing... Other then just being a joke talent that's ment to try and brake the combat in half. And I gotta admit but I think the new AOE of It's Over is way too underpowered as is. Despite my feelings that the move should be removed altogether, I gotta admit that it should be at least a 4d12 to hit six targets... Otherwise you just wasted a good deal of pip farming that you could've used on a fire giant or something a lot easier to use.

Those are very good points.

The reason the power is currently in the system is because some players love big, splashy effects. It's also a good move to use in a Derpy's Lightning build, which is a favorite of a lot of people building in the system.

At present though, it's definitely not holding back [+] pip powers. The [+] pip powers are based on a strict balance that places [+3] as almost-like-skipping-your turn, and anything above that needs to come with hefty drawbacks. It's Over is currently based on that formula. It costs nearly 18 pips, which means that it should make up for skipping nearly 6 turns. When you use it with its single target mode, it deals 7d12 damage. As the 0 pip basic single-target blueprint that we build around (but haven't published, for reasons we've discussed before) deals 1d12 damage... This is about the same as you'd get doing 1d12 each turn for 7 turns (the 6 to build up if you were starting at 0, then the 7th turn to use the power). As such a delay of damage is harsh, the power also has the added benefit of costing 1 less pip than a [-18] power it's balanced around and the versatility of being able to use it as AOE, plus the niceness of triggering it off a Derpy's Lightning or similar. Also, doing all that damage in a single turn can kill a monster before it heals or does something else evil.

So, it's not holding back the design of [+] powers. It's right on the dotted line for power balance. I can guarantee you that removing it from the system wouldn't suddenly allow us to start making more powerful [+] abilities. We'd have to throw out our whole formula and the formula has been very, very strong in balancing things thus far - so we definitely don't want to do that.