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On the subject of buffing, two bard combat talents might need a work-over:

[-2] Dis-chord - Standard Utility
Flip a coin for each foe. If heads, that foe is now Confused (when they target a creature, flip a coin. If tails, they attack one of your enemies at random instead [save ends].) If the flip is tails, the foe's next attack deals an extra 1d12 damage.

Is it just me, or is this talent hideously not-worth-it in even the best of times?

As far as chances go, you've got a 50-50 chance per enemy to give them the save ends condition, OR to give them a silly 1d12 extra damage. But if you do manage to confuse them, that enemy has to roll another coin to actually put the effect you made a risk for into motion. An effect they can easily save against, meaning it might not do anything at all, if they get a good coin toss, or if they don't use an attack.

So overall, you've got a 1/2 chance of screwing you and possibly your entire team over by giving the enemy a damage buff, but only a 1/4 chance, per enemy turn, for you to actually benefit from the talent (unless it makes save and removes it).

I understand that the low cost and general potential usefulness is what invites the risk, and that the risk can be altered with coin-toss reroll traits/items, but the drawback is truly hideous (1d12 damage is pretty big, and if applied on top of an already strong attack, or ANY multi-target attack, vs the  player's small 30 hp...), and there's a fairly good chance of the positive effect doing nothing at all (due to it having a 50% chance of working, and only working on attacks, and being saveable against).

Lets say you fight six enemies.
- In a best case scenario, they get all save ends effect that makes them target a random enemy 50% of the time, so you've got a 50% chance of them sucking at their attacks, for as long as they don't save.
- In the worst case scenario, you just granted those enemies a whopping 6d12 damage total (or 1d12 each), to use against you at their leisure. And it cost you 2 Pips. That kind of stuff feels utterly terrible for anyone to experience (because nobody wants to be the guy that actively wipes their team, or get someone killed by buffing an attack that shouldn't be fatal on its own).

[-3] Alluring Alto - Standard Utility
Flip a coin for any number of target creatures. If you win the flip, that creature must attack target ally if able until the end of your next turn.

I cannot fathom the purpose of this talent. Why would you pay a fairly high 3 Pips to make a creature (or several creatures, even!) attack one of your allies, as a standard action? And if you do have a sensible reason to pay 3 Pips for this purpose, why does the talent have a 50% chance per target of doing nothing instead?

Unless its wording is misleading (is it your allies, or its the monster's allies, that is, your enemies), this seems like something a griefer or selfish player would pick, and can get someone killed by having monsters gang up on them and doing overkill damage.

If I was to make a guess, they are suppose to be taken with Sleight of Hand, more or less guaranteeing successful coin flips...

For Alluring Alto, the target ally should be the Tank, so he doesn't have to waste pips to defend allies with things like Defender and whatnot. Bards are supports after all...

Try this... Imagine more than one player taking dis-chord.

If anything that makes things worse as save ends don't stack and you get a way higher amount of the draw back... you're arguing against the move right?

Try this... Imagine more than one player taking dis-chord.

This would allow several players to stack the d12 extra damage on enemies next attacks, if they're unlucky (since there isn't anything that actually prevents this extra damage from stacking). This can only be useful if you have a reliable way of making it the monsters hit each other, which the confusion's 1/2 chance isn't, if you even manage to apply it along with the damage.

And unless that talent specifically allows it, you wouldn't improve chances of it actually working by making the enemy toss a coin twice due to the save ends conditions not stacking.

So it would only improve chances of the confusion being applied to monsters that don't have it, whilst at the same time, improve the chances of the 1d12 extra damage being applied to those who don't have it already AND those that have it, making them potential one-shotters at that point!

I assume you intend it to buff enemies and then make them hit each other? That requires a lot of luck, and risks a TPK or several dead players. Costing your team a combat encounter is not worth the risk or the benefits this talent might give you.

For Alluring Alto, the target ally should be the Tank, so he doesn't have to waste pips to defend allies with things like Defender and whatnot. Bards are supports after all...

If this is the case, why is the talent unreliable (requiring coin tosses) and fairly expensive (-3PiPs) and non-convenient (standard action)? There are far better/efficient ways to support the tank than this talent would be. If anything, this should be a PiP booster.

You've got to think it through a bit more.

If 2 people have dischord - odds are one of them is going to succeed (especially if they have second chance). If the first user fails the flip, they enhance the damage. Then if the second user succeeds, that enhanced damage is likely going to be going back in the monsters' face - doing even more damage for the heroes. If the first user succeeds, the second user can do something else with his turn.

And in general, one user being able to introduce a 25% chance of the entire encounter (two successful coin flips needed) smacking itself instead of the players is pretty intense. The power isn't unbelievable or top tier, but it's definitely dangerous to a DM.

Alurring Alto though... Yeah, no idea what that's about. We want to make moves that let you control enemy targets overcosted - but that's ridiculous.

So you're saying the save ends condition stacks on itself? That's not clear from the talent. Better fix that up.

And still, the talent requires two people to have it, to function properly?

And possibly "re-toss coin" extras to be reliable?

Whilst otherwise potentially wiping the group (which, as I have pointed out already, is NOT FUN, for ANYONE, and utterly crushing for the responsible player)?

Those all still add up to a lot of drawbacks and unreliable usage for a wildly varying benefit, if any. Not a talent many would find worthwhile or fun.

If anything, the 1d12 damage should really be nerfed to something less outrageous - 1d4, 1d6, maybe.

Or maybe apply a different drawback entirely: maybe make the enemy forced to attack the caster, so there isn't any threat to the other players, just to you - After all, it's really not fair for other players to have to suffer for your bad luck.

Or remove the drawback, and increase the cost.

Or make confusion work, guaranteed, for the next attack that will happen, once it is applied, but make the affect not be a save ends condition.

Zarhon wrote:So you're saying the save ends condition stacks on itself? That's not clear from the talent. Better fix that up.

No, but the extra 1d12 damage is a different effect than the confusion. So this simple piece of teamwork can get the entire enemy team, or most of them, to attack eachother with a damage boost to those attacks. Against 5 enemies, you could force the team (in some situations) to skip their turns and attack eachother with a damage boost of 1d12 each. That's two players skipping all the enemies' turns, having them attack one another (for what damage that's worth) and dealing an extra 1d12 damage each (5d12)...

And that's BIG.

A lot of potential for the move.

I'd be happy with polishing the design and making it more user-friendly, but that's why it's not just strictly more powerful right now. It's already really strong in the right combination in quite a few situations...

Uhm, so how would one player be able to make a monster miss 25% of the time / coin toss twice, then, as you described previously?

Zarhon wrote:Uhm, so how would one player be able to make a monster miss 25% of the time / coin toss twice, then, as you described previously?

It's not 25% of the time that way. It's that before any coins are flipped - the player has to get two correct results in a row. The chances of that are 25% expected value (to use common terms).

Basically, the move is definitely viable at present (especially if you take advantage of the extra damage from a 'failed' flip by getting the enemies to attack one another with the damage boost) - but probably too chaotic from a *design* perspective. Basically, the move's main problem looks to be its design rather than its balance.

Perhaps isolate it's drawback to only affect the user, or make it mild/manageable even in worst case?

Or perhaps make the drawback isolated to the caster (so it's a risk entirely on their shoulders, not the whole party's)? Abilities that can lead you to harm someone other than you, or the whole team, whether directly or indirectly, are generally avoided/disliked in general. Nobody wants to be "that guy".

And having the answer to the problem of one person using the talent is just "have two people do it" or "use it twice at once" that'd be kinda crazy to use... While it has a gives two good outcomes, kinda, it still has the chance of giving a +2d12 damage bonus to the enemy's next attack if the thing fails. And /still/ they have the option of just trying to avoid attacks while they have the save ends effect depending on how smart the GM wants to have the monster's attack plan be. Cause this bonus has no time limit. While the Confusion Effect DOES... So it has a good deal of risk with a questionable level of reward.

We do indeed need to balance for multiple uses of the talent, like how kindle pain could easily be buffed if one person was responsible for applying ongoing damage and then waiting to use kindle pain... But if everyone takes kindle pain, damage can skyrocket quickly before the monster ever gets a chance to save.

This is like that. Frankly, a whole party of people that make the small sacrifice of including Dis-Chord in their build in addition to what else they're doing... The start of the fight they all use it until one of them succeeds on the flip. Then all the failed flips before-hand will just make the final success all the better - because it's upping the damage the monster will do to its allies. Then one person also takes second chance to make sure the monsters miss the confusion flips too.

This one setup gives the players a huge advantage for little opportunity cost - each player can still run lots of other build options. It's not broken or anything, it's just a strong strategy that's pretty fair (just very swingy). You could REALLY build around it via misdirection and stuff too.

However, I think the talent is probably *too* swingy right now - or there should at least be a more contained version that still captures the nifty flavor.

What happens if somebody get's Dynamic Duo and pairs it with somebody with Master of Madness... But not both of them have Laughter... What happens at level ten?

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:However, I think the talent is probably *too* swingy right now - or there should at least be a more contained version that still captures the nifty flavor.

Might just need the limitation that it only affects the player who activates it. While it's swingy, I was wondering if the system had any weird force multiplication abilities in it and I'm glad to see it did.

That'd be a good fix. I think I saw someone mention that before too, and it'd help make sure that the player that likes gambling can take it without directly making his friends' day worse.

Xel Unknown wrote:What happens if somebody get's Dynamic Duo and pairs it with somebody with Master of Madness... But not both of them have Laughter... What happens at level ten?

Um... Missed this question.

Xel Unknown wrote:

Xel Unknown wrote:What happens if somebody get's Dynamic Duo and pairs it with somebody with Master of Madness... But not both of them have Laughter... What happens at level ten?

Um... Missed this question.

The guy with Dynamic Duo gets a benefit that he can't use, simple as that. You need Laughter to be able to use Master of Madness, without it nothing can be used from the destiny.

Rapid Recovery
At the beginning of your turn, if you have less than 4 pips you gain 1 pip.

Armor of Energy Storing - 1000 Gold
Armor
You do not lose your pips when you fall unconscious.

1) Does the Rapid Recovery trait allow you to gain PiPs even when you would be unconscious/KO'd at the start of your turn? Unless I'm mistaken, you only "lose" your pips when you actually get KO'd, but it shouldn't prevent you from gaining any more (up to 4, at least).

If this assumption is incorrect: would being equipped with the Armor of Energy Storing allow for you to gain/keep Pips in this manner?

2) Do conjured weapons vanish when KO'd (automatically, or on a save, similar to conjured creatures), or do you keep them until you manually dismiss them / use an ability that makes them vanish? The "conjuration KO vanishing rules" state them only conjured creatures - the weapons aren't clarified.

Zarhon wrote:

Rapid Recovery
At the beginning of your turn, if you have less than 4 pips you gain 1 pip.

Armor of Energy Storing - 1000 Gold
Armor
You do not lose your pips when you fall unconscious.

1) Does the Rapid Recovery trait allow you to gain PiPs even when you would be unconscious/KO'd at the start of your turn? Unless I'm mistaken, you only "lose" your pips when you actually get KO'd, but it shouldn't prevent you from gaining any more (up to 4, at least).

If this assumption is incorrect: would being equipped with the Armor of Energy Storing allow for you to gain/keep Pips in this manner?

2) Do conjured weapons vanish when KO'd (automatically, or on a save, similar to conjured creatures), or do you keep them until you manually dismiss them / use an ability that makes them vanish? The "conjuration KO vanishing rules" state them only conjured creatures - the weapons aren't clarified.

1) Technically, yes, you can gain pips with these kind of effects as the rules are now.
2) They do, and yes this needs to be clarified. Noting it

If I target myself with confusion and lose the coin flip when attacking does that mean I just randomly choose an enemy to attack regardless of the attacks stated targets?

Confusion for reference:

Also is Form of the Reaper activated by All or Nothing's -15 effect.

Doc pseudopolis wrote:If I target myself with confusion and lose the coin flip when attacking does that mean I just randomly choose an enemy to attack regardless of the attacks stated targets?

Confusion for reference:

Also is Form of the Reaper activated by All or Nothing's -15 effect.

Form of the Reaper is activated by All or Nothing's -15 effect, and if you target yourself with confusion and lose the flip you will attack one of your enemies at random, not your allies.

If I'm under the effects of meditate and I use the suck blood talent granted by it the damage is boosted but the not the healing correct?

Talent for reference:

Absolutely. That's why we use the phrasing "roll a d8" then do two things based on the result - to show that even if one of those gets boosted the other doesn't.

If I use Charm on myself and use an attack that targets a random creature does it whiff it targets me or am I simply not targetable by it.

Talent for Reference: