Status Effects

I'd like to come up with more status effects. For example, my sphinx and Illithid can both take away abilities, which would be so much more useful as:
Status Effect-Amnesia
An Amnesiac forgets one of its abilities. [Possible: it must be a (-) ability.] That ability cannot be used until the Amnesiac remembers it via save.
[Possible: Amnesia X, where X is the number of moves lost.]

Can we think of more effects? For example:
Status Effect-Drain X
A target with Drain X loses X PiPs at the end of their turn. If this would put them below 0, they remain at 0. [Possible: If they're at 0, they instead take damage.]
Status Effect-Thorned
A Thorned target receives 1/2 the damage they deal.
Status Effect-Thorny X
A Thorny X target takes X damage each time they attack.
Status Effect-Mirrored
(-) Abilities are now (+) Abilities, and vice versa. [Possible: Damaging attacks now heal, and vice versa.]

We also need more buffs! For example,
Status Effect-Reflect X
When hit by an attack, X of the damage is reflected back to the enemy.
Status Effect-Shell X
When hit by an attack, X of the damage instead heals you.
Status Effect-Strikeback
When hit by an attack, immediately counter with a (+) attack.
Status Effect-Drive X
Gain X PiPs each turn.
Status Effect-Berserk X
All attacks do X more damage. However, your attacks are chosen at random and hit a random fighter.
Status Effect-Prismatic
Any damage that would be dealt to you is instead spread out evenly among you and your allies.

(And now, Pokemon effects.)
Status Effect-Enamored
If your attack would hit a certain enemy, flip a coin. If tails, the attack does nothing.
Status Effect-Taunted
You can only use Abilities that deal damage.
Status Effect-Tormented
You cannot use the same Ability twice in a row.
Status Effect-Encored
You must, provided you have enough PiPs, use the same move you used last turn.
Status Effect-Heartless
You may not use abilities that heal yourself or your allies.

Oh stop whining AlicornPriest.

These are a lot of great ideas. I think it's just...

1) Fallout and the Races Expansion are getting a lot of attention right now.

2) We don't really want to have too many keywords in the game, otherwise it's harder to learn. These are great ideas for different effects though that will open up a lot of options for new combat talents. After all, "condemnation" isn't an official keyword - it just functions for one particular talent. And that works well.

Well I read these earlier, I just didn't have the time to reply to them at the moment. Overall, I like many of the ideas found here. A few of them I see as being used for traits for both monsters and players (the thorns aura one specially, and the pip drain for a solo monster). And I also like the idea of the Berserk condition, (Maybe it could be part of a future barbarian move-set) I'm just wondering if the attacks are meant to be random amongst the enemy combatants, or all the combatants? I figure it is enemy combatants because it's in the buff category.

Though I do see it being more of a combat talent than an actual 'keyword' condition. As Stairc said, it's probably good to keep it to as few keywords as possible, after all a key component to this game is it's easy immersion and surface simplicity.

So of course I have to write down the idea that comes to mind:

[-2]Berserk - Free Action
All your attacks do 1d10 bonus damage until the end of next turn. During this time, your attack's targets are determined randomly amongst your enemies.

Something like that. After all, don't barbarians need to go berserk sometimes?

Oh. Sorry. I saw this earlier when I was busier with other things. I did think that some of the effects were unnecessary and possibly even bad ideas because they overlapped with things done by combat talents.

Edit: Ok, I'll look at them now one by one.

Amnesia is crazy powerful the way it's written. Making someone lose one ability is strong enough. Making them lose anymore than 2 is probably more crippling than any effect should be.

I don't particularly like PiP drain. It certainly shouldn't cause damage if it can't. Blinding or weakening or stunning don't.

Don't like Thorned. Like Thorny though.

Mirrored is a really bad idea. Super abusable.

Reflect & Shell are good (though Shell might want a different name. The reference is amusing but, doesn't really reflect what it actually does).

Strikeback is what I was referring to before the edit.

Drive is super abusable.

Berserk is neat. It needs some balance though. The positive effect and negative effect need to scale with each other or just be flat. I actually prefer flat, possibly just deal 1.5 damage for the attack used. Also needs to say what happens if they do an area effect/hits everyone on X team attack. Probably should just force single target attacks only to be used but....that's broken because people might not have any. Kinda a problem with things that already hit random targets (especially Thunderstrike or whatever it's called). So yeah. Good concept. Needs a good deal of work though.

Prismatic is neat.

Enamored is already covered by other powers really.

Taunted is very strong because some builds just don't have any damaging attacks.

Tormented is good.

Encored is good.

Heartless is strong but, fine.

I like the Berserk concept a lot the way you've implemented it SilentBelle. Not sure it's balanced of course, but the elegant way you put it in combat talent form is great. Might also make a fine trait, provided you can activate it at will, like that talent, and it's not always on.

I don't think any of these conditions can possibly be 'broken' or 'overpowered' though - since there's no PiP cost attached. Heck, look at this condition.

Doom - A Doomed creature must make a saving throw at the end of each turn. If it ever succeeds on the saving throw, nothing happens. If it fails, it dies. Doom cannot be removed in any way besides a four hour rest.

This is clearly the most powerful condition ever made. However, it would be underpowered if it took 100 PiPs to use the talent that applied it. So abusable or not, powerful or not, none of those conditions can be 'overpowered' yet. They can only be exciting or interesting, or boring or complicated.

*sigh* You're just screwing with me now aren't you? I meant they were badly balanced for things we'd see in the normal course of play. Also, PiP cost reversal would never be balanced just for the simple fact that you could use it to inflict Doom status and gain 100 pips.
Edit: I consider "has a cost anyone could ever play without horrible horrible cheese" part of balance btw. So if something is so strong that it would cost 20 PiPs to play, I'm going to label it as unbalanced.
Edit 2: @Guy who was thinking "What? Even just scaled up damage fireswath?": Yes, even that.

Ramsus wrote:*sigh* You're just screwing with me now aren't you?

No.

Ramsus wrote:I meant they were badly balanced for things we'd see in the normal course of play.

Dominated is a status effect so powerful it's an ultimate (5+ pip power) merely to use it. We see a lot of powerful things. Also, we can't have any idea of balance until we know the cost vs. the effect.

Ramsus wrote:Also, PiP cost reversal would never be balanced just for the simple fact that you could use it to inflict Doom status and gain 100 pips.

[-10] Ten Stars of Power
Reduce your health to 1 HP. Reverse the PiP costs of all your combat talents (for example, a -3 ability now gains you 3 pips to use and vice versa). You may only use this talent after you have taken your ninth turn this battle.

This is balanced, though not terribly good design (I spent about three minutes on it). Battles should be over by turn 10 anyway, so if anyone pulls this off it's going to take a lot of work and will certainly end the battle fast so the players can get back to the adventure.

Ramsus wrote:Edit: I consider "has a cost anyone could ever play without horrible horrible cheese" part of balance btw. So if something is so strong that it would cost 20 PiPs to play, I'm going to label it as unbalanced.

I understand where you're coming from, but it's not the best way to design for the Timmy Psychographic. Magic the Gathering makes Timmy-Psychographic players thrilled with huge effects with even bigger costs. I'm not a Timmy, but I do like to design for them too.

Uh.... Hmm. Well I really don't like that power still. Mostly because, yeah dropping you to 1 HP is dangerous but...not if you know the next person in the initiative order is the party healer.
Edit: And because I never like "you can use this power only when you're riding a bike, under a full moon, while wearing blue boxers and a frilly black bra made of nylon on a wednesday night between 11:52pm and 1:36am" deals. If a power needs that many caveats in order to use, you're probably trying too hard to work in something that just doesn't work well with the system.

Anyway, those were just my quick opinions. In general I think it's best to avoid official names for status effects that are so hard to balance that we'd only probably see one or two attacks that even used them under normal circumstances. If they're there and named people will try harder to find ways to use them. Which tends to result in cheese with a lot of those kinds of effects. Sure, we can just go "no, that's cheese" when they show up but, that's assuming we'd notice every single one and it's still kind of a waste of time to encourage (even accidentally) using those kinds of things when people could focus instead on making new things that work better.

So, if something is to be an officially named status effect I prefer those things I can see being widely used without a lot of problems involved.

Ramsus wrote:Uh.... Hmm. Well I really don't like that power still. Mostly because, yeah dropping you to 1 HP is dangerous but...not if you know the next person in the initiative order is the party healer.

Precisely. Every effect can be balanced. You might not enjoy every combat talent (and I'm sure that one could be much better designed - I'd be worried if it couldn't after only 3 minutes of work on it) but then again, not every combat talent is designed for every player. Serra's Avenger is a magic card that has a similar turn delay and is very popular with a lot of players. Many players don't like the card, but the ones that do really like it. Luckily in a game system like this we can design different talents for different tastes.

Regardless, I think the example shows the point. Everything can be balanced.

And again, I really like the OP's ideas.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:Oh stop whining AlicornPriest.

Haha, sorry. I'm such an attention horse. You'll notice I didn't get rid of it like I threatened, anyway. This is just one of the few places where I can actually get people to listen to me... I like getting recognized for my thoughts now and then.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:We don't really want to have too many keywords in the game.

Now that I think about it, that's true. It's one of the things I found really confusing about Magic: the Gathering once they stopped explaining every ability. What's the difference between Haste and First Strike? Is Islandwalk based off of your land or theirs? How exactly does Regenerate work? But I also like the fact that, once you do know what they mean, you can use them as a shorthand. That's why I was so interested in having more of them. I wanted to be able to shorthand "player loses an ability".

SilentBelle wrote:I'm just wondering if the attacks are meant to be random amongst the enemy combatants, or all the combatants.

The original basis was from the Final Fantasy Berserk status, which basically just attacks the closest character, enemy or not. Since we don't have "closest," random had to do.

SilentBelle wrote:[...]being more of a combat talent than an actual 'keyword' condition.

My thought, though, is that we'll eventually make more attacks that work like it, and we'll just say, "Create an effect like the Berserk attack."

Ramsus wrote:I did think that some of the effects were unnecessary and possibly even bad ideas[...]

Oh, absolutely. I just wanted to prime the pump, and that certainly involves more bad ideas than good. Mirrored was probably the dumbest one I made, and it was just a way to make a Zombie-type ability for PiPs.
Which, speaking of which, reminds me of another reason why I wanted more status effects. My sphinx has an ability called Word of Life, which allows the Sphinx to give itself any buff. I would have liked to have more abilities for it to choose from.

Ramsus wrote:I don't particularly like PiP drain. It certainly shouldn't cause damage if it can't. Blinding or weakening or stunning don't.

I kinda like Drain, actually. It may be a bit too strong, so maybe only Drain 1 or 2 would be feasible. I agree about damage, though. It was just a thought.

Ramsus wrote:[...]though Shell might want a different name.

I suppose. I couldn't think of a good name, so I just threw one together. "Heal Wall," perhaps?

Ramsus wrote:Also needs to say what happens if they do an area effect/hits everyone on X team attack.

I'd say it hits as expected, rather than be randomized.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:Every effect can be balanced.

I think I have to agree with this. Magic gets away with it too. Stronger spells cost more to play. Monsters, no matter how strong, can usually be easily removed. During early design, it can be easy to make something too strong. Therefore, we just rebalance the cost until it's more fair. I do think "qualifiers" are a little confusing, because then you have to keep track of extra stuff. (Have I been hit at least four times? What turn is it? Which abilities have I used so far? Did I get hit three turns ago, or was it only two turns?)

Heh, I completely understand wanting people to acknowledged your ideas.

Magic stuff: Haste means it can attack the turn it's played (assuming it can normally attack then. You can certainly manage to summon things on other people's turns with haste. Doesn't mean they can attack though since it's still not your turn. Unless for some other reason they can.)

First strike just means the thing with first strike has its damage resolved before the other thing's damage is dealt. So if you have a 3/1 First Strike vs a 5/3, then first one kills the second and doesn't die because the second never got to apply damage. Basically first strike only means anything when you can kill the opponent with that hit, otherwise it works out as normal.

Islandwalk is based off their land. It allows you to bypass their defenses. You can't actually attack yourself voluntarily in most cases.

I can't recall the exact details of Regenerate. It's a bit more complex than you'd think at first glance. The vague notion is that if it dies, it just ends up tapped instead. But yeah, really a lot more complex than that.


Heal Wall sounds like a better move name than a status effect. Names aren't exactly popping for me either.
Edit: Now that I think about it...doesn't resistance basically cover the effects of that anyway? It's not like it can heal more than the total damage being dealt right? So it would never actually result in healing, just negating the damage. Which is what resistance does. Or am I missing some combo that would result in that actually healing more than the damage taken? (I'm sure if there isn't one now, eventually there would be.)

I know this topic hasn't been posted in like two months but i've made up a status effect as I was working on a set of moves.

Slow: Pushes the inflicted target back in the initiative order. Does not stack unless a stronger slow effect is inflicted, in which case it will be as if the stronger version was used in the first place (Example: Attack A causes slow 1 and then an ally uses Attack B that causes slow 2, the effect will then be treated as if A had B's slow 2 effect.)

Note: Can push the target back in initiative straight up or would just add a -X modifier to the initiative after the fact and is determined from there.
Latter option might become useless some of the time if enemies end up being lucky and get a much higher number on their rolls than the players.

Might need the opposite sort of effect, haste, just to be fair.


I know some moves already do something like this but it might be more reasonable to make it an actual effect instead of just "this thing does this"

I've already made up a couple of example moves that uses this effect, also consider it a preview of this huge list of things i'm making

[+1] Spike Trap
1d6 damage to a single enemy. The player may choose to add 2 ongoing damage or slow to this attack, not both. If an effect is added, the pip cost becomes -1. Can be set on multiple enemies for a pip each, even if there is no effect. (As in, it'll cost 0 pips to set it on two enemies with no extra effect).

[?] Tar Trap
Causes Slow 1 effect on a single target. The player can inflict Slow 2 instead with an increase in pip cost.

I couldn't decide on a pip cost for the second move as I don't exactly know how powerful slowing an enemy in this way is.

I really like the idea of monkeying around with initiative slots. However, one reason we haven't done it much yet is that it's kind of counterintuitive. Interestingly, if you do an attack then drop lower in the initiative, your turn comes sooner than if you waited all the way for your turn to come around again. So such initiative slot things are hard to juggle to make sure they work as intended. It can also be a pain for the DM to move initiative orders around constantly and can slow things down.

So, like the idea - just need to find a slick way to execute it. =)

Maybe Slow shouldn't mess with the order of turns... But with how fast the enemy's attack moves take effect? Like mabye they don't take effect on their turn but after it or something?

What if only one creature on each side can be slowed at one time, that would lessen the initiative juggling by a bit. It can also be made so that after an enemy recovers from slow, it cannot be slowed again until it takes 1 or 2 turns. As for the "attack, get slowed, go sooner in order" thing, well im not sure what you mean. Lets go back to A, B, C, D, E. If I understand you correctly this is what happens:

A attacks B
B slows A
Turn order is now B, A, C, D, E

In the original order, it would take 5 turns for A to go again when the round starts over. But after B slows A, the round continues with C, D, E and then the round starts over with B then A. That would be 6 turns before A goes again while B, being the one who slowed A in the first place, goes sooner with 4 turns. I think you might've not spoken clearly enough or mixed up what you meant. Plus half the point of slow is to make one go sooner than an opponent, even ones self.

That might be a little too complex for status effect... But personally I love your Spike Trap Combat Talent. That one looks awesome.