The Destiny Upgrade
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Fury of the Tempest
ZamuelNow
Stairc -Dan Felder
Z2
Paper Shadow
Philadelphus
Ramsus
Hayatecooper
Xel Unknown
Kindulas
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Pony Tales: Aspirations of Harmony :: Developer's Corner :: Game Mechanics Discussion :: Destinies and Boons
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Searching up information is not using intelligance. That's just doing research, anyone could do that.
Additionally, not every game is in the same place all the time. Some games have you constantly on the move. What's the point of having a forensic labatory and huge criminal databank, if you never actually go there?
Additionally, not every game is in the same place all the time. Some games have you constantly on the move. What's the point of having a forensic labatory and huge criminal databank, if you never actually go there?
Fury of the Tempest- Freakin' Alicorn Princess
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
1) Using that information gleamed from research however is using your intelligence.Fury of the Tempest wrote:Searching up information is not using intelligance. That's just doing research, anyone could do that.
Additionally, not every game is in the same place all the time. Some games have you constantly on the move. What's the point of having a forensic labatory and huge criminal databank, if you never actually go there?
2) Than you and the DM should figure out a way to still have that, even if it's something silly as "Instant forensic laboratory, just add water"
And the example you give?
GM: "Sorry but you can't take that destiny due to plot/campaign related reasons. Or you could but than you can't use its level 4 feature."
Player: "What now?"
If the GM is putting restrictions on UT/Racials/destinies/something because "the plot/campaign says so", s/he is not doing a very good job as a GM.
Anyway, I'll wait for Kindulas or Stairc or any other of the official developers to shine a light upon my questions.
Demonu- Equestrian Honor Guard
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Remember one of the reasons why they removed the Dragon Disciple? Its because the GM HAD to make a Dragon NPC for it. Of course, the flavour could be change, but as long as it was Disciple an NPC had to be made for it.
Its the same reason I'm speaking of now, a reason why you don't get a lab at level 4.
Having a GM say you can't have it, even through you've been doing non-stop travelling isn't a GM being a bad GM, but a GM making sense. The GM doesn't bend every single will of the player after all.
Its the same reason I'm speaking of now, a reason why you don't get a lab at level 4.
Having a GM say you can't have it, even through you've been doing non-stop travelling isn't a GM being a bad GM, but a GM making sense. The GM doesn't bend every single will of the player after all.
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
I believe it had more to do with the +10 bonus to Knowledge and Magecraft shenanigans.Fury of the Tempest wrote:Remember one of the reasons why they removed the Dragon Disciple? Its because the GM HAD to make a Dragon NPC for it. Of course, the flavour could be change, but as long as it was Disciple an NPC had to be made for it.
Its the same reason I'm speaking of now, a reason why you don't get a lab at level 4.
Having a GM say you can't have it, even through you've been doing non-stop travelling isn't a GM being a bad GM, but a GM making sense. The GM doesn't bend every single will of the player after all.
And coming up with a dragon NPC is considered hard these days? Oh the humanity! If the player lets you know beforehand, that's not so difficult. GM's have to come up with NPC's all the time, be they prepared in advance or on the spot. And if the player does take you by surprised, just slap generic dragon + mentor archetypes together and flesh it out later.
Really, the argument "Because then the GM has to come up with an NPC" just sounds pathetic.
Anyway, that's not what I'm asking about.
Master Detective: why the changes?
Demonu- Equestrian Honor Guard
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Demonu wrote:I believe it had more to do with the +10 bonus to Knowledge and Magecraft shenanigans.
And coming up with a dragon NPC is considered hard these days? Oh the humanity! If the player lets you know beforehand, that's not so difficult. GM's have to come up with NPC's all the time, be they prepared in advance or on the spot. And if the player does take you by surprised, just slap generic dragon + mentor archetypes together and flesh it out later.
Really, the argument "Because then the GM has to come up with an NPC" just sounds pathetic.
Anyway, that's not what I'm asking about.
Master Detective: why the changes?
Please READ things properly before using things as an argument.Kindulas wrote:Similarly, the Dragon Disciple destiny, while awesome in flavor, had problems with both
A) Being a static min-maxable stat bonus
B) Forcing the DM to invent and kill a super-powerful NPC. This had the same issues as the old boons, only worse.
We couldn't figure out a good way to do it, but we *will* have a cool dragon-related destiny to replace it.
My argument is simple. Master Detective was changed because:
1. Having all this cool stuff has nothing to do with a Master Detective. You just get a lab and archive. That's not being a detective at all.
2. Forcing the DM to have a way for you to constantly have access to the lab and archive.
I have seen nothing that counters or discounts these reasons.
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Not just that they had to come up with an NPC but they had to create one and were required to outright kill it off regardless of bonds or if you should feasibly be able to save your mentor. Plus, the crazy stat buffs.
I wonder if there's a half step between Twitchy Tail and a forensic lab. Raw intuition and investigation are both valid forms of figuring things out. I also think that a GM should let a player know when something will be difficult but they should also try to find a compromise.
I wonder if there's a half step between Twitchy Tail and a forensic lab. Raw intuition and investigation are both valid forms of figuring things out. I also think that a GM should let a player know when something will be difficult but they should also try to find a compromise.
ZamuelNow- Freakin' Alicorn Princess
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
The NPC making/killing is not a real reason. You could just as easily just..... not do that step at all and hand them a pile of loot for some other reason at level 10. It's all about flavor for everything except mechanics. The players/GM can come up with whatever they like and flavor reasons are no excuse to remove anything. That said, I'm not really sad about them removing Dragon Desciple simply because it was inexplicably better for Knowledge characters than anyone else. I'm really not sure why the bonuses couldn't be applied to any attribute of your choosing. Removing it because the +10 bonuses were problematic, that's actually a reason. (Though, I'm not sure why it was an important one. Before level 10 it was basically an incredibly specific magic point. At level 10.... who cares? The balance of the game is already at gonzo levels of insanity.)
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
And if you are getting to "forcing GMs" to do things... Then why'd Miracle Worker's level 4 get such a nerf? I mean that forces the GM to either throw a good deal of powerful poisons, curses, and/or diseases each day to make it's three a day nat-20s worthwhile or the GM makes the player's choice feel weak. I mean really. Heal is the weakest of all the stats (next to endurence) to make meanful nat-20s over... Even if you use it for CMCs it's kinda hard to make it that great. And even with it's buffs to level 7, still I'd debate the level 4 was the crazy nerf that ties up GMs hands more then I'd see how making any Dragon would be (which I also recall didn't it get removed the needing to kill the thing at level 10? So that point was more put into the GM's control of how to play it off...)
Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Healing Hands - 3/Day
You have gained the skill of a healer and the treatment of ailments has become routine to your skilled hands. You may treat your next skill check to cure a poison, curse or disease as though you rolled a natural 20.
Healing Hands - 3/day
You have gained the skill of a healer and the treatment of ailments has become routine to your skilled hands. You may treat your next skill check to cure a poison, curse or disease as though you rolled a natural 20.
... Uh.... Xel. Can you explain to me how they managed to nerf a skill when its exactly the same as it was before?
You have gained the skill of a healer and the treatment of ailments has become routine to your skilled hands. You may treat your next skill check to cure a poison, curse or disease as though you rolled a natural 20.
Healing Hands - 3/day
You have gained the skill of a healer and the treatment of ailments has become routine to your skilled hands. You may treat your next skill check to cure a poison, curse or disease as though you rolled a natural 20.
... Uh.... Xel. Can you explain to me how they managed to nerf a skill when its exactly the same as it was before?
Fury of the Tempest- Freakin' Alicorn Princess
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Well, even if Xel was wrong about it being a nerf, he's certainly right about it forcing the GM's hand and being incredibly limiting. It would be better if it worked on any Heal check at all. Even if that meant having to cut it down to 1/Day, in the end that'd still result in more overall uses of the feature.
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Not really, it works fine for me. I mean, if its not a poison, curse or disease, the likelyhood of needing the nat 20 is slim. Unless your doing something like surgey or something.
And really, having a poison, curse or disease that your players can catch, every now and again, isn't exactly as hard or strenuous to do as say, creating then killing an NPC
And really, having a poison, curse or disease that your players can catch, every now and again, isn't exactly as hard or strenuous to do as say, creating then killing an NPC
Fury of the Tempest- Freakin' Alicorn Princess
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
But you don't actually have to create/kill that NPC. It's not a mechanic, it's just flavor. It could easily as say "You don the magic pair of pants and gain +10 to knowledge and your pockets always have 10 gold coins in them, no matter how much you've pulled out."
There are plenty of other uses for Heal. Mental health, transformations caused by weird stuff like Laughter (which is neither a curse nor is it a disease or poison) or from strange super science machines, surgery as you mentioned (which is a lot more likely in some games than curses, diseases, and poisons are), creating medicines, identifying exactly what's wrong with someone, etc. All of these things would greatly benefit from an auto nat20. And those were just the ideas I came up with in a single minute.
There are plenty of other uses for Heal. Mental health, transformations caused by weird stuff like Laughter (which is neither a curse nor is it a disease or poison) or from strange super science machines, surgery as you mentioned (which is a lot more likely in some games than curses, diseases, and poisons are), creating medicines, identifying exactly what's wrong with someone, etc. All of these things would greatly benefit from an auto nat20. And those were just the ideas I came up with in a single minute.
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Oh lovely... That was a nerf that happened ealier then I feared... Cause I've got a game where we've been playing it as a nat-20 to any heal check... And that's been fun and fine by the GM for us. Also I really don't understand why it's limited as it is. And not a pure nat-20 heal check...?
And really... You can somehow factor in an NPC to be built into the world the GM is building, but a new-er GM could easily end up just putting out some randomly strong possons, curses, and/or diseases to just throw the level 4 Miracle Worker a bone that if done poorly would be nothing more just there for no reason other then the fact the GM was feeling sorry for the healer's lack of much he can do with that feature. The "looks like a job for auqaman" seniorio deal... Which can feel quite like a big letdown.
And really... You can somehow factor in an NPC to be built into the world the GM is building, but a new-er GM could easily end up just putting out some randomly strong possons, curses, and/or diseases to just throw the level 4 Miracle Worker a bone that if done poorly would be nothing more just there for no reason other then the fact the GM was feeling sorry for the healer's lack of much he can do with that feature. The "looks like a job for auqaman" seniorio deal... Which can feel quite like a big letdown.
Re: The Destiny Upgrade
You know. If people aren't going to listen to me.
I'm just going to let the mods speak.
Even through I KNOW people won't be happy.
I'm just going to let the mods speak.
Even through I KNOW people won't be happy.
Fury of the Tempest- Freakin' Alicorn Princess
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Sorry Fury, I know you have trouble grasping this concept but, listening to you and agreeing with you are not the same thing. We hear what you're saying, we just don't agree with your viewpoint. Nobody has been ignoring you (in fact largely we're replying at least in part directly to you).
Ramsus- Freakin' Alicorn Princess
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Well, there's weird things in the system that allow you to use any skill for certain things as long as you flavor it correctly. Like Weathercrafter. So giving a nat 20 to heal skills can have some weird ripple effects. Other than the ripple effects being potentially weird (and thus limiting future design space too) I completely agree with you.
Why don't we just write it out so that it's dealing with everything a heal check is supposed to be able to do normally, without worrying about the ripple effects of heal checks that are used for weird things? What else should we add to the current description?
Why don't we just write it out so that it's dealing with everything a heal check is supposed to be able to do normally, without worrying about the ripple effects of heal checks that are used for weird things? What else should we add to the current description?
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
That sounds like it'd be a buff to help improve the feature to be able to do everything that it should be able to do, but cut it out of any of the wierder outcomes that I agree with you, that feature shouldn't be able to pull off like that. (don't know how I didn't see that myself I do have an unicorn with heal weathercrafting that in all means of logic shouldn't be comboed with Miracle Worker like that. But other normal heal-check related activities should be allowed.)
Re: The Destiny Upgrade
You could rephrase it as "a healing related check" and not even specify the skill. Then you couldn't use it for weather-crafting and such, it wouldn't be useable for non-healing stuff, and there's the (very narrow) chance you could use it with a different skill (like Perception or History for identifying a problem or such if you happen to be better at that skill or something).
Edit: And the plus side of that phrasing is that you don't end up leaving things out because we didn't happen to think of them right now.
Edit: And the plus side of that phrasing is that you don't end up leaving things out because we didn't happen to think of them right now.
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Bumping this in anticipation of a definite answer.Demonu wrote:Okay, could someone please explain to me the thought process behind the new Master Detective destiny?
I really liked the old level 4 feature, as it allowed you to get more involved/invested in your campaign's world and its characters. That was my original pitch/idea for the destiny way back in the day: to accumulate information (of any kind) and then use that information to further your (party's) goals.
The way I read it now it:
- level 4: get 2 uses of Twitchy Tail
- Level 7: get 1 use of an alternative Twitchy Tail and 1 extra of Twitchy Tail
Level 10 is still the same so that's cool but when compared to some other destinies, it seems rather lackluster. I mean, great detectives like Sherlock Holmes and Batman and others use their intellect to solve puzzles, not just wait for god to provide them with an answer to an (at first glance) narrow question.
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Regarding the new Shape Shifter destiny: why do all Forms of the have a prep time of 5 seconds but Cheetah is instantaneous? I get that the form itself is supposed to be faster than the others but it just seems odd.
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So Plane Shaper (still) doesn't allow only you to walk to your own back and forth at will/with prep time?
I can get why that might be a problem but an official explination would be enlightening.
Also, while on the subject, is there any potential for the Master Detective destiny to be changed to something else?
Because its level 4 and 7 features are virtually identical to the group boon Brainstorm, which severely hampers the reason/coolness/whatever to even take the destiny in the first place.
Brainstorm
- Spoiler:
- -Brainstorm
When you put your heads together, who knows what you might figure out. For the party, a group brainstorm can unlock the secrets of the universe. Or at least answer a couple pressing questions about the situation. The party gains the following group talents
Atop the Fourth Wall - 1/Day
Preparation Time: 30 Seconds
For the next ten minutes (real time), all players may use player knowledge as if it was character knowledge.
We’ve Got It! - 2/Day
Preparation Time: 1 Minute
You may ask the DM a question. The DM must answer it truthfully to the best of his or her ability with either a “yes” or a “no”.
Our Heads Together – 1/Session
You may ask a question and indicate three possible answers to it. The DM must indicate which of these three possible answers that you have indicated most accurately answers your question. For example, you may ask the question, “Who ate the cake? Was it the Butcher, the Baker or the Candle-Stick maker?” The DM then indicates the most accurate of these answers. If more than one answer is accurate (for example, if both the Butcher and the Baker ate the cake together), the DM informs you of all accurate answers. If none of the above is accurate (for example, if none of the listed individuals ate the cake) the DM informs you that the answer is, “None of the above.”
Demonu- Equestrian Honor Guard
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
So I was looking at the new Evolution today, specifically Benevolent Genetics and the fact that Darwin's Donation can give allies one of your racial traits.
Because if the latter, you can effectively give up to five allies 5 racial points each, per day.
- Benevolent Genetics:
- Benevolent Genetics
Not only are you changing, but you have learned to mutate others. You can implant someone with a virus that replaces a segment of their genetic code with one of your own and quickly causes part of their flesh to regrow in your image, until their next extended rest.
Darwin’s Donation - 5/Day
Touch a willing ally and expend X uses of this power. The target gains one of your racial traits that is worth X points until their next extended rest.
Because if the latter, you can effectively give up to five allies 5 racial points each, per day.
Philadelphus- Designer
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Oh cool, you found another new way Focused Evolution breaks the game.
Ramsus- Freakin' Alicorn Princess
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
The Devs just love to brake their own game as hard as they can... And call it fun...
Re: The Destiny Upgrade
Just have it so the person cannot lose a magic point through the effect or something
Fury of the Tempest- Freakin' Alicorn Princess
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
er hate to burst your bubble but that would make it more broken...
tygerburningbright- Freakin' Alicorn Princess
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Re: The Destiny Upgrade
... How would you? You give them racial talents, but they can't suddenly loose their magic point, or magic-drain abilities through it.
No buffs.
No buffs.
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Pony Tales: Aspirations of Harmony :: Developer's Corner :: Game Mechanics Discussion :: Destinies and Boons
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