warrior skill ideas and changes

Ark · Post by **Ark** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 1:58 pm

to the point

an advanced skill "2 lash" with a 20 second reload.

a basic swap out for enchant weapon

an advanced swap out for a "2 slick" with a 15 second reload

rage drop to advanced

defensive matrix changed and moved to master

weapon spec improved

the political swap out removed completly

Ark · Post by **Ark** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 2:52 pm

hmmm. it seems after i had a little chat with a few people i found out were the problem with "warrior" lies. it does not know what it is?

some people (myself included) see warrior as the best melee damage dealer, out there killing the hordes that threaten haven and taken names.

on the flip side i have been told "warrior is the tank" their job is not to deal damage but to take it and pretty much keep things busy.

if it does both awsome it becomes broken (lucky for us right now its doing both poorly) so before anything can be fixed, changed, improved, or ruined. . .

what is a FH warrior suposed to do? fight or tank?

Post by **GM_Chris** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 3:46 pm

We are a multi-class type of system so you could set up a warrior to be good at sustained damage or to mitigate damage. I would say warrior is best at mitigating damage. It does not do this poorly as it is superior to every other path out there.

Parry alone is an awesome skill. I personally hate parry with utter passion since it is used by default with absolutely no thought behind it at all, but that is just me.

I have played...yes played..a warrior with def matrix in FH. People sang
accolades to my uberness.

Wyrmwrath · Post by **Wyrmwrath** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 5:02 pm

Chris, while your warrior is great against NPCs while using def matrix ( having seen it in action first hand when the ex and I ran an event), against any character that THINKS like a PC, he would be crushed.

Def Matrix is a 2 out of 5 star skill at best.

A Warrior should be best at taking damage and dishing out frontal melee damage and best continous damage output.
A Rogue should be best at AVOIDING damage and dishing flank/rear damage.
A Wizard(Empath+Arcane) should be top dog on dishing out single shot damage in total, but burn out fast. They should also have the biggest bag of situational tricks to draw from
The Healer should be between rogue and warrior for frontal damage and behind the rest in every other way since they have skills elsewhere.
Sages should be the weakest in combat since they are essentially SUPER LIBRARIANS. This should be made up for in research and lore skills as well as technical discipline enhancement ability(reducing crafting time/making better quality items/xeno biology/xenobotany/etc...)

There should be SOME flexability so not all bulds are cookie cutter )warriors need to be sword and boarders to be effective/healers need to be nurturing pacafists/tec...)

We dont see many 2 handed weapon warriors because the draw backs are NOT made up by the advantages. think abough a 2 handed sword warrior swinging 4.....scary vs most professions. As it should be. Against a sword and board fighter, say nighty night. What about a healer that was so skilled in "essence manipulation" he could drain life from a distance (packet delivered "drain 4" instead of Heal 4?
Seems to me the game has so focused on force feeding cooperation that individuals become ineffectve and at times boring because of it.

Post by **GM_Chris** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 5:05 pm

Not all skills are meant to be awesome in all situations. Def matrix is great for the situations it is great in, and sucks in other situations.

I would definitely not use def matrix in a PvP situation as other skills would be stronger.

Marcus · Post by **Marcus** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 7:20 pm

I would definitely not use def matrix in a PvP situation as other skills would be stronger.

Well, yeah. If you are trying to kill another PC, then obviously Defensive Matrix is useless, because you can never damage them to kill them. But as the defender in a PVP situation? Hell yeah.

During normal combat, the game is balanced for PC combat versus NPC's, so small numbers of Players can use their skills to be badass against large groups of their foes.

I can say that (versus NPC's) I play Marcus as an effective combat healer. Even as a healer I have a 23 soak and I swing for base 2 and Crit strike w/ 5 seconds for 5 damage. I can swing magic, repel anything supernatural or one-hit kill it with banish. I can even stop them from swinging anything more then 1 for melee damage.

But the moment I come up against a PC or NPC using Defensive matrix, I would be royally screwed. Especially if they used a shield or a longer weapon/two weapons, I would never be able to kill them. They could hold me at bay forever while they call for backup.

If I tried to kill another PC that's a warrior, Defensive Matrix would be the one skill that saves them, bar none.

As for characters being cookie-cutters, the only ones that I can think of are the ones spec'ed out as combat monsters.

Ark · Post by **Ark** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 10:55 pm

GM_Chris wrote:We are a multi-class type of system so you could set up a warrior to be good at sustained damage or to mitigate damage. I would say warrior is best at mitigating damage. It does not do this poorly as it is superior to every other path out there.

Parry alone is an awesome skill. I personally hate parry with utter passion since it is used by default with absolutely no thought behind it at all, but that is just me.

saying warrior is better then the other paths at mitigating damage and therefore good at its role is not very good, a towel makes a better blanket then a napkin but that does not make it good at its role. warrior is just slightly ahead.

so are most resists, resist: magic, poison, disease, fear, sleep, etc. its all second nature to most people that have the skill.

weapon spec in particular is pretty bad. especially because it does not stack with weapon focus. options for this are:

-turn weapon spec into weapon focus any like dwarf, and make it continue to not stack with any other weapon focus.

-let it stack with weapon focus, and if you weild 1 weapon and no shield you can do 4.

P.S. drop critical strike back to 3, 6, 9

\/ \/ \/

Post by **GM_Chris** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 11:19 pm

Ark if the universe is only throwing enough weather at you so a towel does indeed make a good blanket then its a good blanket. If we turned warriors into blankets then we would have to correspondingly increase the power level of all the NPC's.

A towel is several deviations above the norm than a napkin. Basically, if a napkin is a C (school grade) on a bell curve then a towel would be an A and a blanket would be an off the scale improbability.

Marcus · Post by **Marcus** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 9:33 am

There is absolutely no reason to up the combat proficiency of the Warrior path. They already mow through enemies. If they were any better then the modified stats for NPCs to make combat challenging for them would make it pointless for any other characters that aren't warriors to be in combat situations. We "others" would get smashed.

Weapon specialization does not need to stack with other weapon focuses. Half the friggin' huge baddies or commanders we face don't even swing for more than three, and that's usually with some sort of weakness/telegraphed swing, and always without all the benefits of a full Warrior path's defensive skill set.

Remember this is supposed to be a low numbers game where swinging a constant "1" is considered being combat proficient, and constant "2" for any reason (rage/focus) makes you effectively an elite combatant with lots of experience. As my healer Marcus I am effectively using the Warrior Weapon Spec skill (swinging a two-handed hammer for "2" because of Undead Hunter's weapon focus), and I have an awesome time helping in combat without any other warrior path skills.

The only Warrior skill I could possibly ever see needing changing would be "Battle Tactics", for it's benefit is not worth the downside. A single 2 crush attack is not worth taking ten minutes and dropping any existing sage buff from anyone that wants to get the benefit of it. I've never seen anyone who would accept that over a Sage Buff, or a warrior that even has the skill.

A better use of it would be a ten-minute skill time, whereupon every recipient get's 2 Combat Reflexes for the duration of the next scene, but does not count as an Empirical Enchantment so Sage Buffs can be stacked. Or maybe even 2 combat reflexes that are single-use only for the next scene, so if they are lost through damage they do not come back. At the very least we should drop the Empirical Enchantment from the original skill.

I can't think of any skill Warriors can take that would need to be tweaked. Even Noble Reputation is a skill most players scoff at but is sweet for a Warrior character that is roleplayed with any political leanings. It's three benefits in one skill, which even includes the player starting the game with a force of 25 free troops of their own!

Ark · Post by **Ark** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 11:58 am

1 is a farmer
2 is your average bandit
3 is a combat warrior
4 was your badass elite

but most everyone swing "4" anyway. the base critical strike is taken by more then half of the PC base.

weapon spec is a horrid skill: +1 damage with 1 weapon (no duel weild, no shield) and it does not stack with weapon focus. rage was the least usefull bonus damage ability in the game till weapon spec came along. and this is coming from someone who only used one weapon.

****

Deffensive matrix: master level warrior skill. 5 count to enter, free to leave.
when you enter defensive matrix you gain 4 combat reflexes and reduce all damage by 2 down to a minimum of 1. you cannot use life point or charge up skills while in defensive matrix, but can swing damage normally.

the main problem NPC's face with DM is the age old debate that one warrior in DM in a mountain pass can hold up a million NPC's that swing 1, this eliminates that while still increasing in effectiveness against stronger opponents. the slight combat reflexes is so that you get some benifit if fighting 1 damage monsters

Post by **GM-Mike** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 1:59 pm

but most everyone swing "4" anyway. the base critical strike is taken by more then half of the PC base.

Not true, not even close.

Deffensive matrix: master level warrior skill. 5 count to enter, free to leave.
when you enter defensive matrix you gain 4 combat reflexes and reduce all damage by 2 down to a minimum of 1. you cannot use life point or charge up skills while in defensive matrix, but can swing damage normally.

We won't have a skill that necessitates subtraction during combat. I realize most of the time, this will just be one damage, but it still creates a mental moment during combat that makes things confusing.

I think Chris mentioned this before, but I will repeat it again. We have playtested a defensive matrix where you could swing for damage and mitigate damage. Some of the words used to describe this test were "broken" and "sick" and the like. One player could not in good conscience continue with the test.

Since this is an instance where we did our homework, you're unlikely to sway us. That said, I enjoy the banter as always so don't let me sway you from arguing the point either

Marcus · Post by **Marcus** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 3:12 pm

weapon spec is a horrid skill: +1 damage with 1 weapon (no duel weild, no shield) and it does not stack with weapon focus. rage was the least usefull bonus damage ability in the game till weapon spec came along. and this is coming from someone who only used one weapon.

It suits me just fine to swing 2 with a two-hander. I feel like a bad ass swinging twice what most non-warrior PC's swing in combat, especially as a friggin' Master healer. The only problem I have with two-handing a weapon is that my weapon is physically slower and heavier, and more unbalanced than all the latex fly-swatters that everyone wields with their wrist-flicking. Hell, it's as heavy as the latex shields.

*laughs*
Then you probably don't want to hear that I don't think Weapon Spec. should have ever, ever been added to Warrior, under the theory that if they want to swing more constant damage than "1" without an downside, then go into a full 90pt+ discipline like the rest of us.

Ark · Post by **Ark** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 3:51 pm

Marcus wrote: *laughs*
Then you probably don't want to hear that I don't think Weapon Spec. should have ever, ever been added to Warrior, under the theory that if they want to swing more constant damage without an downside, then go into a full discipline like the rest of us.

actually i agree with you, it was poorly implimented and is used as crutch to say "warriors can swing 3"

what the hidden text tells you is for a warrior to swing "3" they can only use one weapon (big drop in both defense and offense actually) and cannot use any skills (parry being the big one, but any other resists or skills as well)

to finish it up you pointed out something. for a warrior to do decent damage they still have to commit to a full discipline.

to recap: warrior
-offensivly the cost is too high to swing decent damage.
-defensivly parry is the only one with a decent ballance to it, but more and more skills are finding away to circumvent it (vorpal knockout, vorpal root)
-soak. . .yeah it does that okay, but the diference between a warrior and a healer/sage is 4 soak and 40-60 points

Marcus · Post by **Marcus** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 4:03 pm

what the hidden text tells you is for a warrior to swing "3" they can only use one weapon (big drop in both defense and offense actually) and cannot use any skills (parry being the big one, but any other resists or skills as well)

That's the downside of using rage.

to finish it up you pointed out something. for a warrior to do decent damage they still have to commit to a full discipline.

Sorry, no. Base damage of 2 with Rage available to make it 3 is certainly "decent" in my book. And if you think the weapon focus from a discipline is better than Spec, then don't take Spec, take the discipline. The other three skills that take you there will make your warrior different than other warriors.

Try playing a warrior beastman that uses only his mitts. Then you can't Weapon Specialization and there's no focus for fists. I played Rhul to level 60 without ever having a problem only swinging 2 if I used rage. I still felt powerful in every combat, and never even took any of the expansion skills for Warrior.

Ark · Post by **Ark** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 4:16 pm

Marcus wrote:Sorry, no. Base damage of 2 with Rage available to make it 3 is certainly "decent" in my book.

Try playing a warrior beastman that uses only his mitts. Then you can't Weapon Specialization and there's no focus for fists. I played Rhul to level 60 without ever having a problem only swinging 2 if I used rage. I still felt powerful in every combat, and never even took any of the expansion skills for Warrior.

if you didnt look at any of the negitives it does seem that way doesnt it. (hey we can give your car an extra 100 horsepower and you can therefore go faster. . .ignore the lack of brakes, seatbelt, roof, good suspension, all wheel drive, etc. . . .but you go faster!!!

no weapon focus for claws or fists is on my list of things to complain about (dwarf in theory get it but meh, that restricts it to racial)

5x5 is better then 4x6, a good ballance is wonderfull, no warrior abilites give a good ballance with the others.

****EDIT****

let me be clear, i dont want warriors to have more soak, i dont want them to necessarely do more damage then anyone else. what i do want is their skills to synergise with one another. a warrior should be able to swing "2" well while still having access to their other skills and weapons. im going to look over the entire warrior path, and see if i can think up some cool simple alterations to present.