The first is that all the skills you listed are lvl 4 skills. Are they still going to be levl 4 skills of specific disciplines or paths (ie Swashbuckler, Man At Arms, etc)?
Second,
Level 4: Weapon Focus—Blades
is this going to be a full path warrior only skill?
Dead pirate betrayed by Corbyn...ah well least I made him do his own dirty work when he killed me.
Only the wording of the particular skills have changed nothing else. The disciplines that get weapon focus are: (knight, undead hunter, and beaster hunter). Rage is still 3rd level warrior while vorpal and crush are swashbuckler and barbarian respectfully.
Make sence?
As for what changed specifically look at how rage is used with those skills.
Chris
Chris
I be one of the gamemasters so e-mail me questions if you have them
I kind like the new changes so far. It makes a warrior think if they want to use a 2-handed weapon for that extra point of damage or a shield for the protection. I thought everything was spelled out very clearly.
The only question I have is, when one uses crush or vorpal, do they loose all the passive skill benifits and buffs? Or is that they can only use the active skills listed in the discripition, but the passive skills are still active? If that is so, does weapon focus apply? Does one lose their utlize armor ability, endurance, determination, etc...
Crush and vorpal should have a statement similar to: You cannot use any skills that have a charge up time or take a life point to activate except for the rage skill.
The rage skill then should have this statement: Thus, they cannot use any skills that have a charge up time or take a life point to activate while raging, unless otherwise stated in the skill description.
Also please make note that there is no retroactive skill use in our game.
What we mean by that is if you are raging and are hit by magic you cannot then drop rage, resist the magic and then institute the rage again. This does not work and it is considered cheezy if you are obviously raging and a person hits you with say magic and you resist it while responding "I turned rage off a second before it hit me because I saw it comming." This does not fly either.
Basically you can rage, but it removes alot of defensive options.
Chris
Chris
I be one of the gamemasters so e-mail me questions if you have them
GM_Chris wrote:Also please make note that there is no retroactive skill use in our game.
What we mean by that is if you are raging and are hit by magic you cannot then drop rage, resist the magic and then institute the rage again. This does not work and it is considered cheezy if you are obviously raging and a person hits you with say magic and you resist it while responding "I turned rage off a second before it hit me because I saw it comming." This does not fly either.
Basically you can rage, but it removes alot of defensive options.
Chris
I think this idea should be high-lighted because as far as I knew this was common practise and there fore we would want everyone to know about it. I also think it makes alot of since and leads the game where I understand you want it to go, ie low damage game. Not that Lambic could do any of that fancy dancy stuff
Oh yeah and they already asked all of the questions I had after reading the new rules soooo.... good job!
ah...just read the skill descriptions, i was reading new posts from the bottom forum up...ignore my last post.
However, and I say this with the utmost respect to the plot team, I am vehemantly opposed to this two handed paradime you have adopted and felll it harms the game play and has correlation to any facet or "real" combat. I in fact makes me less likely to continue participation.
This is not meant as a threat or attempt at coercion. Just my opinion stated openly and honestly.
Grand High Chancellor of ROBUST UNPLEASANTNESS
...and the 11th commandment is:
Have any other two-handed rules been adopted besides the addendum to the Rage skill? I didn't see any, and I don't think that tweaking the only skill-based method of doing more than 2 damage per swing is all that much of a paradigm, but I may have missed something. I'm sorry you don't approve, Brian. Care to elaborate further as to why?
One should rather die than be betrayed. There is no deceit in death. It delivers precisely what it has promised. Betrayal, though ... betrayal is the willful slaughter of hope.
Eric and I talked for an hour + last night on the rules changes. It is my belief with the changes in weapon focus and rage, that rage has become vastly underpowered as a 3rd level ability.
My points why rage is not very useful!
1. You must have a 2 handed weapon and weapon focus to swing 3 damage
2. You lose all defensive type abilities. (Why would a fearless knight suddenly become fearful when they rage? It makes no sense)
3. It cost you a life point to activate and you can only attack while raging. Very limited for the extra benifit of +1 damage.
If one compar's rage with any other 3rd level ability it is under balanced and in my opinion has 2 many negatives for the benifits.
With the new rules a tyipical warrior will only be able to swing 2 damage unless they use a 2 handed sword and not use a shield. By the way, to stop the chesse effect, both of your hands where not on the weapon when you hit, so I only need to take 2 damage instead of 3, i suggest the focus weapon skills should say
"You can only use rage with weapon focus while only using 1 weapon and you can not use a shield"
or something like that.
I do not see why a warrior would lose all defensive abilities while raging. It just does not sense to me and really limits rage. Heres my suggestion for rage in the new rules
Penalities
1. Takes a life point to activate
2. Takes a 5 count to deactivate or cool down
3. Can only attack enimies while raging
4. Can not use any charge up/ time based skills
5. Can not use any life point activated skills expect see below
Benifits
1. get +1 damage while raging
2. Can use the following skills while raging
Crush, Vorpal, Press, Parry, Resist posion, Resist fear, resist sleep, and resist magic.
3. Can use any resists while raging
Note: If that seems overpowered, than have the skill cost double to use while raging. 2 life points to parry, etc...
A warrior should be able to defend some while raging. He angry, not stupid.
As for 2 damage without a shield I dont understand since a warrior can use rage and a shield together.
Rage and a shield =2
Weapon focus and a shield =2
Weapon focus and rage no shield =3
rage and crush and no shield =2 crush
Crush and shield =1 crush
So we will see how this holds up over the course of the year.
------------------------------
As for basis in reality you are correct Brian there isnt any, but then again we are not tring to mimic reality or we would be SCA. We are trying to mimic fantasy games and novels which in the realm of fantasy 2handed weapons were more powerful than 1 handed weapons.
In any case though that isnt the reason for the change. We decided to make this change as a means of smoothing out the peaks on some max/min character types. Currently, the knight, barb, and undead hunter can put out more damage per second than any other combo without much of a penalty. (vorpal damage while crushing is not too bad when you have a huge shield)
Now a knight can swing 3 doing MAX damage in the system with the potential of killing anyone very quickly, but it comes with a weakness which can be exploited
--------------------------------
Oh and I should add I played rage with Dueger the way it was suppose to be played which is why you rarely saw Dueger swing 2 damage since I enjoyed resisting stuff.
Crhis
Chris
I be one of the gamemasters so e-mail me questions if you have them
You also have to understand that you are only getting pieces of rule changes at a time. As we iron them out we send them to you, so you may see only half the reason at a time. For example, rage becomes better again when life point and armor point totals are reduced. Nobody jump on that sentence--wait for the rules. It is only meant to illustrate the unfortunate fact that you guys are seeing only part of the picture. Still, we want to hear your concerns and appreciate your feedback and definitely want your help, so keep responding with those concerns. Just understand that our madness may be explained in future posts. We need your concerns though in case our madness is real.