New Expansions - New Content - Post your favorites here

Ramsus is perfectly right though Fury. They choose what gets put into each and every expansion, and they only put a certain amount into each one. I don't know precisely why they didn't put your double conjuration in, but it might be balancing, or trying to get stuff four outside of combat, or any number of reasons, including well... no room.

Telling him to shut it was a bit much.

Now on the topic for something for the expansion

Multitalented: 3/day When rolling a skill check, if another sort of skill is usable for that roll, you may expend a use of this talent to roll that skill as well and use the higher result.

LoganAura wrote:Multitalented: 3/day When rolling a skill check, if another sort of skill is usable for that roll, you may expend a use of this talent to roll that skill as well and use the higher result.

That'd be neat. It's certainly a reason to actually have high Athletics and Acrobatics on the same character.

Athletics or Acrobatics, Arcana or History for magical knowledge, Arcana and Perception for those ponies with Magical sight, Streetwise and Perception for ponies in towns... I'm or even Brawn versus Persuasion for intimidation checks.

I was saying shut up in that we won't get feedback.

Still was being a little bit rude, Fury, especially since even if Ramsus had a 100 page post it'd be possible to see the one you had.

Edit: OH. I see. You're talking about /your/ talent and not his for the reasons why. Misread. Still, telling him to shut it is still a bit rude. He was giving a possible reason, and it was perfectly viable. If Ramsus was wrong, one of the game devs would correct him.

Comment on Multitalented again: It's nowhere near balanced. Being able to take 2 tries at a few skill checks per day can be really powerful.

The thing we realized about Dual Conjuration is that it's silly with Hurricane Blade. In fact, it would become a limiter for future design space, because then we would have to ask every time "Is it too much if this weapon is combined with this weapon, this weapon this weapon or this weapon? Conjured Weapons are created as a closed design, breaking them open to combine with anything might cause problems - and would as long as HB is around as is.

And that was a bit rude. Moving on, now...

Multitalented looks pretty good, but DMs may or may not make it feasible for a character to do so. Some will go by the handbook suggestion and just say "roll Acrobatics or Athletics", but others might specify; "If you're trucking through a crowd, then you have to roll athletics, if ducking and weaving, then its acrobatics". Obviously, they can choose either, but the two skills wouldn't be interchangeable based on the IC methods of going about the check.

There are other situations where such limitations based on player action would apply. It's a very specific limitation, though, so probably not a huge deal.

Well, in that case Multitalented could feasibly be trying both of those quickly and then going for whichever one was easier. Like a person trying to manuver their way through a crowd, and then trying to push, and finding out that being pushy was a bit easier. or something.

Fury of the Tempest wrote:

Ramsus wrote:You might as well ask why stuff from my Skill Support thread never seems to go through. They choose what they feel like choosing.

Ramsus. They've given feedback for reasons why before.

So shut it.

 
Whether you agree with someone or not, telling someone to shut up isn't at all okay. It's also a good way to not get any feedback. Here's your friendly reminder about treating other forum members nicely.

However, as for the Dual Conjuration trait - it actually almost did go in. The problem was that it limited design space for future weapons (as you'd have to figure out how they all might combine together) and it'd be broken with Hurricane Blade (curse you Hurricane Blade! A never-ending source of annoyance).

There were also a lot of other cool ideas this week, and it was cool to get the crescendo-style move back in the system without the issues it had with triggering vulnerability. Combine that with the sweet new Inspiring Presence option that enables whole builds and popular choices like the Staff of the Heavens and that element-controlling utility talent... And things filled up quick.

Combining Flametongue's "Next attack can target up to 4 enemies" with Hammer of Thunder's Ringing blow and now you have a +1 that dazes 4 enemies.
Combining Granite Axe's Reaction with any of the +3 moves that actually do something rather powerful (Such as Hammer of Thunder's Thundrous Blow which also gives you 2 resist from a lightning sheild.
Just for 2 examples without Hurricane blade.

Fury of the Tempest wrote:Granite Axe needs reworking as well...

And the first combo... is one of them a minor action?

It's 2 turns.

I believe people were discussing ideas about traits that enhance AoE builds? How about this?

The Smell of Napalm:

Balanced for damaging 6 enemies with an AoE each turn, on average gaining 1 pip per round, for a total of 5 pips over 5 rounds, in line with traits like rapid recovery and spellscape familiar. Specifically labelled creature so that you can boost it slightly by damaging yourself. May be OP in tandem with Thunderstorm, but that could be fixed by changing "# of creatures" to "# of enemies."
If anybody has any suggestions for keeping it up to snuff when there are less than 6 enemies around (say, 3 or 4), I'd very much like to hear them. Also, to account for the fact that if there are 6 enemies, and you're hitting all of them, there probably won't be six enemies for too long.

I haven't submitted anything recently... so resubmissions of a sort, for reconsideration

Levitate- 3/day
Prep Time: ...lets say 10 seconds
You can levitate, lifting yourself into the air through mind, magic or sheer force of will. For the next 10 minutes, you can fly with good maneuverability (no/penalty to checks), using Arcana for skill checks rather than Athletics or Acrobatics.

This one is probably pretty useful to someone, but I don't think I got any definitive feedback.

[-2] Wabbajack [Standard Utility]
Activate one Combat Talent your party has access to, at random, without paying its pip cost whether it was brought into this battle or not.
The idea is the same, but credit to ZamuelNow for this specific rework of it, so it might be actually playable.

Bronymous wrote:I haven't submitted anything recently... so resubmissions of a sort, for reconsideration

Levitate- 3/day
Prep Time: ...lets say 10 seconds
You can levitate, lifting yourself into the air through mind, magic or sheer force of will. For the next 10 minutes, you can fly with good maneuverability (no/penalty to checks), using Arcana for skill checks rather than Athletics or Acrobatics.

This one is probably pretty useful to someone, but I don't think I got any definitive feedback.

The thing about Levitate is that I as a GM would allow a user to use the flying talents with Arcana so in ways this seems redundant. I'm assuming the intent would be to forego the at-will status in exchange for removing the penalties. I think the may way to look at it is to figure out what it can/should do that's outright different though I'm at a loss for actual suggestions.

Wabbajack would probably be too much of a pain in actual gameplay to number everyone's combat talents and roll.

Well different DMs do different stuff, there are a few UTs I homerule out or against, but they're still valid.

I had a slightly different one:

By Will of Awesome- 1/day
You can levitate, using happy thoughts, sheer force of will, and a bit of "why not?". For the next 10 minutes, you fly with good maneuverability, using ANY skill of your choosing in place of Athletics or Acrobatics. Because you're just that awesome.

It seemed pretty ludicrous to me, but it might be different enough for your purposes.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:Wabbajack would probably be too much of a pain in actual gameplay to number everyone's combat talents and roll.

Roll 1d6 (or 5, or however many for the numbers of allies you have), and then 1d8 (or 9, if he just HAD to take Dangerously Talented). It's not super difficult.

No, but it's rather annoying and could slow gameplay. Also it has the variance problem. While something might technically be balanced on average (this isn't by any means, just bring a full group of players with nothing but Wabbajack and huge -6+ powers, then just have everyone use wabbajack on their turn, with the two combat elements that give you pips at the start of your turn, until everything's dead) if it swings too far to certain extremes - it can utterly throw off combat balance by making one encounter too easy and the next too hard.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:Wabbajack would probably be too much of a pain in actual gameplay to number everyone's combat talents and roll.

Actually, if none of team has Dangerously Talented, you could theoretically roll two dice for this.  One would be a d8 and you'd just count from the top for one through eight while the other would be the player number counted via initiative order.  Skype and pbp can easily do this through online rollers and tabletop can handle it through using larger dice denominations when needed and rerolling numbers that are outside of the range.  If explained as such in a sidebar it's technically not that hard to do in actual gameplay with that setup.

EDIT from seeing the post: One possibility in balancing is to make it an item instead of a talent. Also, it could be assumed that the devs would adjust the pip cost as needed.

Derpy's Lightning's 12 power has caused us enough problems and will probably need to be reworked or eliminated. And that's just trying to account for a 1/12 chance on a single player's build. A guarunteed roulette on *every* player's build? Way too many X factors to be possible to balance.

Something like that sounds fun as a consumable item in a game though - I recommend DMs give a present like that to their players if the players can earn it. As a combat talent? I can guarantee it poses way too many potential issues to get in. Especially as it wouldn't be fun if we had to make it a -9 power or something to be sure it wasn't broken.

No party is going to do that. No DM is going to allow that- and if they do, its not like it will be a surprise when things slow down and the fights are super easy. Outside of that inane scenario, everything on the list can be assumed are meant to be used in any given fight, and if it happens through this then it happens through this- if the thing happening makes one fight too easy,a nd another too hard, then itll be the same as rolling 1s and 2s all combat as opposed to a bunch of crits- its the way the dice fall. Even ones that are meant to be used on random specific occasions- this is a specific random occasion.

If one guy uses this it'll take all of an extra 15 seconds to pull it off. This is just something to mix it up, make things fun. You know what slows a game way down? Laughter. But its a chance for something random and cool to happen, and this is the exact same idea. I do agree, -2 is probably too low:

Bronymous wrote: On the third hoof, where it was 0 pips for something random that has a good chance to not help or even hinder you, the limited selection means a better chance of it being something positive, in that it most likely fits with one of a party's worth of strategies that are in play- so -2 pips is actually probably too low a cost, and it would have to be bumped to -3 or -4 (I'm guessing. I don't know how to balance. But that's what it seems like.)

So buff the pip cost, its not a big deal.

EDIT: If I recall correctly, you said earlier that the reason you nerf things is taht the math works in theory, but once its playtested and stuff you hadn't considered comes forward, you change it. So work it like that. Put it in, LET US PLAYTEST IT LIKE WE"RE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING HERE, and then get back to me on how much it ruins the game. Then you'll have data, and you might be able to put some numbers to it, balance it, whatever.

Feel free to include the mechanic as a special item in your own campaign, or a house-ruled talent. We cannot introduce into the official, endorsed system something so obviously broken and obscenely difficult to balance, prone to extraordinarily high variance and is quite clearly a more abusable version of the already-problematic Derpy's Lightning.

If you want a talent based on the fun of getting one of several random effects - I'm all for it. Just build the random effects into the talent as balanced options - which will be easy to evaluate and make sure are balanced (and won't be prone to super crazy group builds).

For example:

[-?] Do-A-Thing! - Standard Utility
Roll 1d10, then you may activate the corresponding effect.

1: A thing!
2: Another thing!
3: A third thing!
4-10: More things!

And all the abilities, on average, could equal out to an appropriate effect for a -? power. So if it was -2, all the effects on average could equal out to be worth -2.