New Special Moves - Designs needed!

Fury, free actions, can be spamed endlessly as long as you can pay for it's cost.

Xel Unknown wrote:Perosnally what bugs me and what I belive is why I'm not giving great feedback is because I'm fearful to what Crit-Talents will do the metagame of the combat system. And in my opinion the only thing it will do is make critfisher builds what will feel like the only way to get the best out of the crit-talent. It's a can of worms that might not work the way you think it will. While I do personally love the idea of this "Token" mechanic (It's basically the craft talent, but can be used for more then one talent, which is cool)... Paring it up with Crits, might not be the way to work it, because they might make such talents appear too strong, or make people feel the only way to work them is with critfisher type builds.

Shouldn't be an issue. Fundamentally, all you're doing is having the option to save the effects you'd normally get for triggering a crit for later - like crafting acidic addendum. The longer you wait, the more time-delay there is and the less valuable the crit gets. Letting you save it for later and have some options on what to spend it on should be a huge issue - if done correctly.

Also, we're going to seriously limit critfishing in the new system. Too high variance for most DMs. You'll be able to do it, but not rely on it. Meaning there will be ways to build around crits, but they won't be as hilariously OP as before. Or reliable. If you want to take a chance on crits, awesome. But right now you can almost guaruntee they show up reliably.

Sorry Fury, I missed the 1/round bit.

The survival of Critfisher's roll 5 option is currently up in the air. Also, if somebody wants to sit still and critfish to be productive in a battle, I say let them do it. When they get lucky, it'll be awesome, and when they don't, they'll be unproductive.

Also, Xel, if you don't like token ideas, then suggest other crits. Anything is fair game, here.

And lastly, he labelled it once per round in the text. But it is probably better to put it somewhere clearer, like right next to the name (like they do for weapon granted talents).

I like the idea of a special move that conjures creatures. Weapons would probably be too hard to balance.

Why not give the move unique conjurations? Or perhaps one conjuration that you can upgrade if you roll higher crits.

I've been balancing the assassin's crit for a little while and man, damage-dealing tokens are painfully expensive. This is what I have right now. I still haven't put a cost on ignoring resist, but that could be worked into most of it.

Hunter’s Strike
At the start of each turn, Choose a creature. That creature is your Prey until the start of your next turn.
[0] Hunting Strike - Interrupt Utility
Trigger:You deal damage to your prey or cause your prey to lose life.
Result: Spend X Hunter tokens. That attack does an additional Xd8 damage.

8: You gain 1 Hunter token. Target creature loses 1d4 life.
10: You gain 1 Hunter token. Choose a creature. That creature gains vulnerability 2 to your attacks until the end of your next turn.
12: You gain 3 Hunter tokens. Your Prey loses 2 life.

It feels really underpowered to me. Making the hunter tokens deal damage in d6s is an option, but it makes mathematical manipulation obnoxious (Vuln is also very costly, compared to most status effects).

sunbeam wrote:I've been balancing the assassin's crit for a little while and man, damage-dealing tokens are painfully expensive. This is what I have right now. I still haven't put a cost on ignoring resist, but that could be worked into most of it.

Hunter’s Strike
At the start of each turn, Choose a creature. That creature is your Prey until the start of your next turn.
[0] Hunting Strike - Interrupt Utility
Trigger:You make an attack that only targets your Prey.
Trigger: Spend X Hunter tokens. That attack does an additional Xd8 damage.

8: Deal 1d4 damage to target creature. You gain 1 Hunter token.
10: Choose a creature. That creature gains vulnerability 2 to your attacks until the end of your next turn. You gain 1 Hunter token.
12: You gain 3 Hunter tokens. Deal 2 damage to your Prey.

It feels really underpowered to me. Making the hunter tokens deal damage in d6s is an option, but it makes mathematical manipulation obnoxious (Vuln is also very costly, compared to most status effects).

I think having the d12 for this be 2 loss of life would be better... Or have it's damage at least bypass resist. And maybe have the D10 move just be +X damage to attacks.

Well, having ALL three... They'd seriously step on one another's toes identity-wise and thus dilute the uniqueness of one another.

Okay, when I said using d6s was obnoxious, I was apparently lying. Here's the d6 version:

Hunter’s Strike
At the start of each turn, Choose a creature. That creature is your Prey until the start of your next turn.
[0] Hunting Strike - Interrupt Utility
Trigger:You deal damage to your prey or cause your prey to lose life.
Result: Spend X Hunter tokens. That attack does an additional Xd6 damage.

8: You gain 2 Hunter tokens. Your prey loses 1 HP.
10: You gain 2 Hunter tokens. Target creature loses 2 HP. That creature gains Vuln 1 to your attacks until the end of your next turn.
12: You gain 3 Hunter tokens. Target Creature gains Vulnerability 2 to your attacks until the end of your next turn.

Which one of the two looks stronger to people? Does either one looks particularly strong?

@Xel. Good point about the d12 bypassing resist. The idea with the crit is to pound one enemy really hard, so I think it's better to give an enemy vuln than to empower yourself.

For the record, anything that lets you use your normal combat talents would be very limited in terms of cost. (a d8 crit is worth less than a [0] move, so most summons outside of the rabbit/energy spark are off the table if you want the d8 to be: use a summon X combat talent.) So it might be best to just have a special move that makes more conjurations.

I changed the Assassin crit so that it makes people lose life, and reworded Hunter's Strike so that it can activate off of losing life.

Personally I find "get vul for only your attacks" is very lame effect. And makes one feel like they're not a team player.

this crit is for Assassin's specializing in obliterating 1 creature at a time. It's not much of a team player to begin with. Also, +X to damage, which you suggested earlier, is either:
a)+X to attacks (way more powerful than vuln)
b)+X to attacks against this creature (effectively the same as vuln, but with slightly less focus on one enemy being targeted)
Neither of which are very team oriented either.

I need to get some mathematical minutiae from Dan (who's studying for a final right now), but you can probably grant a conjuration 1 pip with a d8 crit. If you limit that to Conjurations (which you should, because otherwise it's just a general utility crit), then it should work fine, but it also looks kind of sad. I suppose most conjurations really only need 1 pip...

It's in that awkward zone where you look at
8: target conjuration gains 1 pip
And after some strategizing/contemplation, you look up stuff like the celestial avenger, and realize what it's good for, but when you first see it it looks super depressing.
Also, we need three effects. Target conjuration gains 1 pip is one, but making them all "target conjuration gains X pips/may take a standard action" really doesn't make for that interesting of a crit (and granting a standard action is already part of Inspiring Word, the newly made Offensive support crit, so putting in a similar effect dilutes the awesomeness of both of them).

I don't think a crit that requires you to actually have ways to summon your own conjurations makes sense - as it'd be odd that the most dedicated conjurer builds (unless they take that one trait) almost never trigger special moves.

Or it's like most of the conjurer builds I've seen, including several ones I've run. Special Summon isn't always as powerful as other options.