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Given what little they've done on UPDATING the GM guide, I don't think this game is in any way GM friendly... Like at all... Basically it expences to be played by a sessoned GM who can understand systems as a whole to build their own monsters and not kill the the party when they didn't mean too, and somehow be able to build powerful and challangeling monsters that still can be won aganst...

Also, there's magecraft... The GM's bane...

Xel Unknown wrote:Given what little they've done on UPDATING the GM guide, I don't think this game is in any way GM friendly... Like at all... Basically it expences to be played by a sessoned GM who can understand systems as a whole to build their own monsters and not kill the the party when they didn't mean too, and somehow be able to build powerful and challangeling monsters that still can be won aganst...

Also, there's magecraft... The GM's bane...

All serious issues, which is why we're stopping the expansions to focus more on it (and school of course)

Was originally going to try a reworded resubmit for my fourth entry but I just now came up with this.  Simple but not currently in the system.

Utility Talent - Measure Twice, Cut Once:

For the sillies:

[-10] It's Under! - Standard Attack
When you use this talent, choose one:
A) Deal 4d12 damage to target creature
B) Deal 2d12 damage to up to six creatures

@Zamuel - Not sure that I buy the argument, "Hey, this game doesn't have much DM support yet and DMs lives are already harder than they have to be - so let's not worry about making their jobs even harder". Also, there are many, many materials out there for DMs to improve themselves (will likely include a lot of information in our custom DM's guide eventually - but there are all sorts of resources already out there). Any DM that wants to get better can learn universal leassons from those sources. We don't want our system to make the DM's job harder in the hope the DM will get better in response to the added work. More likely, they'll just make mistakes (like the countless seen with Magecraft) and get into arguments with their players about it. That's not at all what we want. There's lots of design space in combat without having to step into something with design problems - like pip destruction.

All these design goals will be made clearer with the release of the How Things Work thread (on hiatus until I can stop working on my back-to-college stuff and my current campaign prep). But it's in a good draft now, and you'll get to see another portion of it in this expansion.

EDIT - Forgot this was the New Expansion thread. Doesn't need a whole discussion here. If we want to continue a discussion on why we think Pip Destruction is more trouble than its worth, feel free to make another thread for it and include the link to it here.

Wont disagree... Pip destruction can be a MAJOR kick in the groin to PCs. But for monsters it might be a total non-issue to have been done to a monester and when done to a monster, we don't have a clue if it did anything worthwhile to ruin the Monster's day.

Well, for my two final submissions, I guess I'll submit the following:

Enchanted
Prerequisite: Enchanting
After each extended rest, you may choose four Enchantments. You have access to those four Enchantments until your next extended rest. This replaces the four you chose when you took Enchanting, although you may select the same four if you like.

Gravitic Anomaly – 5/Day
Preparation Time: 5 seconds
For the next 2 minutes you may freely reverse the pull of gravity on yourself at will. The reversal process takes 5 seconds. At the end of the duration of this talent gravity defaults back to normal. You may expend multiple uses of this talent to extend the duration by the appropriate amount.

Philadelphus wrote:Well, for my two final submissions, I guess I'll submit the following:

Enchanted
Prerequisite: Enchanting
After each extended rest, you may choose four Enchantments. You have access to those four Enchantments until your next extended rest. This replaces the four you chose when you took Enchanting, although you may select the same four if you like.

Gravitic Anomaly – 5/Day
Preparation Time: 5 seconds
For the next 2 minutes you may freely reverse the pull of gravity on yourself at will. The reversal process takes 5 seconds. At the end of the duration of this talent gravity defaults back to normal. You may expend multiple uses of this talent to extend the duration by the appropriate amount.

1) Worried about something that would require that much re-choosing, runs into similar problems as the old Evolution level 4 by possibly slowing stuff down. Still, it's pretty cool, and it doesn't have that problem to the same magnitude, so we'll keep it on file. But for now, we're ready to go....

2) Why would you not just take flying?

1) I love it, but has the problems of slowing things down after an extended rest. Avoiding session speedbumps is huge design point of ours. Pacing is so hard to maintain and it's key to an adventure's enjoyment. Don't want to come close to risking slowing stuff down.

2) Playing with gravity is fun and profitable. I think flying probably would work better though, unless you could do this on willing creatures too.

So...
Avatar the Last Airbender is a thing>
Which is Ironic cause I'm just finishing watching it(For the first time)
Well... time to make my Avatar Bloodbender

Form of the Avatar... Proof that you guys just enjoy braking your own game. That's the only logical reaction to that madness....

*laughs* I was worried that we made it look too cool. It's definitely open to changes, but here's the current reasoning.

1) It makes sense to us that if something costs a *magic point* to use and is only available to you 1 hour of the day (which is workable if you sink 6.5 talents worth of stuff into it, with full power ups) the form it turns you into should be at least 3x stronger than your normal form... As you'e far below normal strength the other 15 hours of the 16 waking hours of the day. Since the three avatar talents + derp + spellchild (a utility talent is worth about 1.5 racial points, long story) puts us at nearly 7 utility talents... Need to multiply that by 3 then factor in that you're dealing with derp when not in the form. Is the fully powered-up version of the Avatar form worth about 21 utility talents? Considering that many of its abilities are more situational, I don't think it's worth that much. 

2) For the initial version, which lasts only 5 minutes, it should be dramatically more powerful. The Born traits are cool but often situational and more stylish than overpowering (and more than one will rarely be useful at a time) and there probably won't be many 1s you need to reroll in 5 minutes anyway.

3) The attribute boost isn't as big as it looks. Big attributes are best paired with specific utility talents to make them count more (like Magecraft) and this only adds 5 extra points on top of a min/maxed single-attribute-focused build (with 10 in one attribute).

Compared to other magic talents, like The Rainbow Dash and Spectral Tsunami - the effects of Form of the Avatar are tasty and bedazzling. However they shouldn't break campaigns by any means. Sadly, we might need to make them *look* less sparkly, because the perception of balance is as important as actual balance. Also, we could just be plain wrong on the numbers. We don't have a great precedent for Magic shapeshifting and we're excited to be exploring something new and explosive for the finale expansion.


TLDR; I think FotA is an example of something that LOOKS utterly insane, but is actually quite reasonable when you dig into it. However, even if I'm right, the fact that it might LOOK broken can be just as damaging to morale as it actually BEING broken.

It's base form... It's not that bad... I"ll agree with you there... But I see how you can upgrade it. And more then just the two upgrades you gave it to work with... Also you can turn it three per day uses... By just getting Spellchild and Derp... Which if used get you too powerful... Also there is the issue of training and cutie mark also still are in effect... So you get a few stats to 23 if trained, to 25 if cutie mark, and to 28 if both, along with every non-trained, non-cutie marked stats being 20...

Just really... I don't you getting an hour total a day for this type of thing would be anything but broken. Just looks like WAY too much for just a little min-maxing cheese.

TLDR; We love Form of the Avatar as a concept. It opens a new build possibility and looks wicked-awesome. However, we also want to make sure that it isn't overpowered and, even if it isn't, doesn't feel overpowered (the perception of unfairness can be just as damaging as genuine unfairness). It's a fine line between something looking awesome and something looking too awesome.

In either case, it's past 2am here and we're going to hit bed. Looking forward to developing Form of the Avatar with everyone. It's an experimental talent that's sure to stay in the system in some form or other. Looking forward to figuring out the best possible version with everyone.

EDIT- Ninjaed by Xel. Great feedback but still need to crash for the night. I do worry that it's the increased duration that makes it look *too* powerful. 5 minutes is just enough time for a few crucial actions. 20 minutes, possibly multiplied by other magic point costs to an hour, is a whole lot of time spent being far stronger than your allies.

Yeah... thing looked at a glance to be EVEN MORE BROKEN then magecraft...

It's balanced by the fact that if you get caught in combat with this ability up, you die. It locks your combat talents.

Pingcode wrote:It's balanced by the fact that if you get caught in combat with this ability up, you die. It locks your combat talents.

Stealth Avatar Joke is stealthy...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lS57STRW2CQuYHC6dXfBxT5FvGVSbqVSGQSXX4TkW4Q/edit

I'm just going to leave this here.

It really has no down sides.. as I pointed out not having combat talents is kinda meh when you can just go stealth stuff and beat it over the head until it dies. But I sorta see where you were going with it? I think it could be a fun addition to a shape shifter build. The Big problem I have with it, is that it is essentially 3x a day get you and everyone else Get of Jail free card. Especially if my thing with Personal project works(Which I assume it doesn't but I wasn't sure so I put it in alternate).

But yeah...
You have a 28(Potentially with a +5 to every stealth roll if you take Heart of Courage) stealth character with immunity to pretty much everything and the ability to TK creatures a bunch of creatures at once and pretty much just destroy them and whatever else it feels like destroying due to the fact it can pick up to 200lbs of stuff which seems like a decent amount of things.

And then if the PP works you essentially add magecraft into that by taking Magical Tricks instead of Instant Party(And you can get your allies to take that. Which is probably why you can't do the PP thing.) Or if you don't want to be broken(For whatever reason), take Lead by Example and let all your friends use your awesome powers to be awesome.

broken?
Maybe, maybe not. I'd have to see it in game, but I'd certainly hate to be a DM facing this. Been there, done that and it's not really fun.

Edit: sorry should be 28 not 27

Ah yes... THINK OF THE GMs!!! I think one the biggest things for me was seeing something that'd only cause a newbie GM only major headaches after talkin' about how you wanted or thought of the game as "GM Friendly"... Which this talent is anything but hostile to a GM and anything the GM could plan for their campaign.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:*laughs* I was worried that we made it look too cool. It's definitely open to changes, but here's the current reasoning.

1) It makes sense to us that if something costs a *magic point* to use and is only available to you 1 hour of the day (which is workable if you sink 6.5 talents worth of stuff into it, with full power ups) the form it turns you into should be at least 3x stronger than your normal form... As you're far below normal strength the other 15 hours of the 16 waking hours of the day. 

2) For the initial version, which lasts only 5 minutes, it should be dramatically more powerful. The Born traits are cool but often situational and more stylish than overpowering (and more than one will rarely be useful at a time) and there probably won't be many 1s you need to reroll in 5 minutes anyway.

3) The attribute boost isn't as big as it looks. Big attributes are best paired with specific utility talents to make them count more (like Magecraft) and this only adds 5 extra points on top of a min/maxed single-attribute-focused build (with 10 in one attribute).

Compared to other magic talents, like The Rainbow Dash and Spectral Tsunami - the effects of Form of the Avatar are tasty and bedazzling. However they shouldn't break campaigns by any means. Sadly, we might need to make them *look* less sparkly, because the perception of balance is as important as actual balance. Also, we could just be plain wrong on the numbers. We don't have a great precedent for Magic shapeshifting and we're excited to be exploring something new and explosive for the finale expansion.

1) For the 15hours of low power, that is relative - you don't spend every single of those 15 hours doing adventuring things - only when it's required. An entire adventure or day's worth of happenings can happen over the course of an hour, in-game (if you spend the rest doing boring stuff, or traveling, etc...). And that same drawback is applied to any 1/day ability (even more so, since it's difficult to regenerate x/day uses!), or to any other Magic Point ability with a lesser duration (or instantaneous effect).

2) Borne traits get their power out of giving you immunities to practically any hazard and non-combat influence (the throwing fireballs and such is an extra of course). The nat1 reroll benefits pretty greatly from derp (or not - it's not clear whether derp's drawback still applies during form of avatar) and stops bad luck from being a factor. Both are good for the nature of the talent (and stops it from being wasted, lacking use, being boring, or relying on luck), but it's a question of how strong it is when combined with the other stuff.

3) It's not big as it is, but paired with training and/or CMs (in athletics/acrobatics, for example, which benefits the flying as well), you can match and go above pretty much every possible stat, simultaneously - capable of being equal or better in skill checks than anyone without cutie marks. With racial applied, you can have +12 max in a stat attribute by default. With a training, that's +15. Avatar matches every such skill by default, and applies its own trainings and CM on top of that. With the utility talent upgrade, that climbs up to +20, matching a stat with a cutie mark, racial, and training. It's also an on-demand stat boost: Your previous character's flaws and stat weaknesses are instantly nullified and you become great at everything at once.

The talent, from a glance, really does seem unfair to most other characters - massive flexibility of options (and easy to "utilize" the given time), huge gain for okay investment, potential upgrades, lots of immunities, potential for extra uses with investment, stackability with some destinies... Hard not to feel dwarfed by all that, especially if a lot is achieved in those 5 minutes, or something nigh-impossible by every other character or build is easily achieved by this one player.

If this power is seen in the eyes of a DM, it can turn a potentially versatile talent with high cost into one that gets blocked/stopped regularly (which makes the player incredibly frustrated, I imagine) to prevent game/campaign/challenge breaking, or that makes the DM incapable of challenging the party, or forces a whole different level of "challenges" that are exclusive to the avatar (so he doesn't get bored winning everything), or have to somehow exclude the avatar (to allow the others to "shine" and not get bored). It really doesn't seem fun to face or have to balance around as DM, or to be with in a party. It turns one into Superman, and there's no "Kryptonite" or weakness or drawback to speak of that others don't get from using a similar MP ability.

@ Hayate build: Proof of min-maxyness, I'd say.

You can also use the element of magic with spellchild/derp to give you a use of avatar for pretty much any / multiple characters on demand, and get a utility talent spot freed up. A full party of unicorns with element of magic can use their own avatar modes pretty much whenever.

A good question should be: What incentive does a player have to not take this utility over other MP ones, from a mechanics/benefits gained standpoint? It, for instance, pretty much trumps Element of Loyalty in power (immunity applied!), in a selfish sort of way.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:@Zamuel - Not sure that I buy the argument, "Hey, this game doesn't have much DM support yet and DMs lives are already harder than they have to be - so let's not worry about making their jobs even harder".

That comes as mildly condescending since I constantly make comments about rewording things to be more easily understood and often things don't change. Simply don't feel like it's worth the effort to continue any discussion about pip-destruction. The bigger issue is that with the addition of Form of the Avatar it comes off incredibly hypocritical. As a GM, I'm exponentially more terrified of what a player can do with that, especially with its upgrades, than I am with pip-destruction since one of those I can plan for it with math. It feels like Focused Evolution all over again. Basically, the best question to ask can simply be summed up with:

Zarhon wrote:A good question should be: What incentive does a player have to not take this utility over other MP ones, from a mechanics/benefits gained standpoint?

ZamuelNow wrote:The bigger issue is that with the addition of Form of the Avatar it comes off incredibly hypocritical.  As a GM, I'm exponentially more terrified of what a player can do with that, especially with its upgrades, than I am with pip-destruction since one of those I can plan for it with math.

That's because you're forgetting the all important rule- Combat and noncomabt are entirely separate, and this bleeds into their design decisions- In combat, they are always concerned with making things easy on the dm- no pip drain talents, no random effect talents, nerf everything so the monsters last longer and seem better. Outside of combat, its the exact opposite- Crazy overpowered and breakable things are introduced, and instead of "balancing against the worst case scenario", like for combat, they ignore all of that and make the DM deal with it. Magecraft- everyone kept coming up with ways it could beat out every other build, and instead of changing it, "its the DM's fault for letting it happen." I imagine we'll get the same thing here,

"Oh, the Avatar player is flying around destroying a village, but at the same time convincing the villagers he's doing it to help them and they should assist him in building a new castle? Well you shouldn't have let him do that. The Avatar character walked through every death trap ina dungeon because he was immune to them, and then when he found one that he wasn't immune to, he just picked up the floor and went around it? Well you should have had some magical railroad tracks to keep that from happening."

The thing is stupid overpowered when done right, and no one's going to do it wrong, so they get to do all this unfair stuff, and either the DM is wrong fopr letting them do it, or he's wrong for saying no and disregarding or houseruling away its effectiveness- or just saying, no you cant do that right now, and railroading.

Kindulas wrote:1) Worried about something that would require that much re-choosing, runs into similar problems as the old Evolution level 4 by possibly slowing stuff down. Still, it's pretty cool, and it doesn't have that problem to the same magnitude, so we'll keep it on file. But for now, we're ready to go....

2) Why would you not just take flying?

1) Hmm. Fair enough. I don't think the choosing would slow stuff down all that much myself, but as I mulled it over I realized the bigger problem is you still often don't know what you're going to need for the day ahead. Then I had an epiphany: the whole point behind the suggestion, after all, was so that you could get access to niche Enchantments at the appropriate time. And I realized you could have a sort of mini-"Element of Magic" just for Enchantments:

Multi-Talented – 1/Day
Prerequisite: Enchanting
Pick an enchantment that you do not currently have access to. You now have access to that enchantment until your next extended rest. You also gain a single additional use of the Enchanting utility talent.

2) Um...I got nothin'. It irks me slightly that you could just take It's Almost Like Flying and rename it Gravity Spells, but I must concede it's mechanically preferable (except you'd still be rolling Athletics or Acrobatics to "fly"...hmmm). I don't think I can think up a form of gravity control that's cool, fun, and useful, without it also being dangerous and prone to causing strife (cf. all the arguments when it was first brought up). It is also a very specialized power that even I can't see coming up in a lot of situations, so I am forced to the conclusion that it's probably best just to leave it as something for Magecraft to do. Perhaps it could be added to Sorcerer Supreme as an example of things you can do with Magecraft under an appropriate DC?

I'm mildly sad because I thought that was one of the coolest things Twilight has done – and even cooler, as an astrophysicist, that "gravity spells" were a plot point in a show marketed at young girls.