Opinions/Comments

Please use this page to voice comments and opinions on anything pertaining to War Torn. I am going to encourage this because it will, in addition to the Proposed Changes page, allow editors and users to give input on whatever.

I hope that this will encourage those with ideas which they are unsure of how to implement or develop or just came up with to get those concepts out there so that everyone can see them. All in one place, not scattered between Hangouts, Skype convos, and everything else, as much fun as remembering and recompiling those are.

Formatting will more relaxed in this, just write whatever you've got in the section below and sign it with four tildes.

Here Thar Be Dragons
Comment first, then sign second, like so. Lazrcat0 07:34, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

On The Diseases
See Plague Magic. Simple change, but the diseases should all say that they "must" be used with Plague Wind. Also, in response to Beep, I do not agree that there should be fewer free abilities as there is only one truly cost free one. The others require a mana cost. That said, a powerful enough mage will easily be able to pay those costs at any time, and thus I believe that it would be in order to nerf those abilities not in their mana, but in their actual effect, be it via delay or speed to spread, etc. Logically, unfortunately, the range of plague wind cannot be decreased because, well, it's wind (and I'm also working with global "wind" effects with my enhancement magic). Rest assured, having seen Plague, I know what my next moves in spell design for Enhancement will be. Let me spoil the surprise. They will be direct affliction counters. Lazrcat0 07:58, October 18, 2011 (UTC)

Kevin pretty much hit my concerns on the head. Changing the diseases to say "must" would fix the imbalance. RAW, right now, a mage with 20 mana draw (7 mysticism) and 4 spells in the school can cause all opponents to take one damage, reduce defense by one until end of round, reduce Mana Draw by 5 until end of round (which will nullify any relics being used by a non-magic user), and reduce their TP by 4. Assuming the caster has two will, they can use this four times, making anything they can hit (especially other characters) useless until the end of round. This could be accomplished on character creation. While Wartorn isn't designed as a PvP game, PvP concerns should still be considered Earthsavior 02:10, October 21, 2011 (UTC)

The thing about "must" is actually a relatively minor change, simply because the wording implies the type of disease can be used by itself, which it cannot. Wording it "must" changes the implication that the base has to be cast first. I don't see where the -4TP happens between Plague Wind, Pox, and Delirium, but that's not quite my concern here.

In my last post, I said that ways to decrease the power of these abilities would be to delay them or make them spread slowly. Having reconsidered and looked at the abilities a bit more, I thought of two other things. First, diseases could effect all units, not just targets. This is a functionality that I'm looking at for World magic (which is one of the alternate names for enhancement, which I don't like as a name) so if you did not want to implement that, ok. But consider that a plague magician is not necessarily attuned to making wind move in a certain way other than PW. They want to spread disease and destroy the workd that way, so why would they care who it hit. I feel that it is within their lore that it might hit all targets. Now, on the other hand, I feel that LETTING the diseases on plague wind hit all targets is way too overpowered; whether or not the effect is on chosen targets or universal. To remedy this, I think that targets should roll against will, with each affliction having it's own threshold, to determine whether the effect takes place.

Oh, and -4TP (Pneumonic Affliction) would require 7 points in the school.

Red Death should be clarified as to what infections count for making the target take 10 additional damage. Also to clarify, what infections the adjacent units get when red death explodes.

Lastly, a new idea: Plague wind may be cast in only one direction and it bells out. i.e., the caster chooses north gridwise. Wind happens in the first sq north on grid, then 3, then 5... pretty much a perfect triangle on the grid, but would have an infinite forward range and side-to-side spread as it traveled. This would also make it so that, at least the mage would have to properly place himself on the map and also so that there would be a safe zone.

Just a few thoughts. Lazrcat0 20:12, October 21, 2011 (UTC)

As for the "must" wording, it was intended that the diseases cannot be used outside of their interaction with plague wind. We can fix the wording if necessary, but it wouldn't be an actual mechanical change from the intended function.

I think Red Death is fairly clear if we're talking CARDNAME style clarification. One can safely assume that the ability refers to itself and that the infection does not refer to any infection other than the Red Death itself. Remember in this case that there really is no perfectly clear wording, and it will save us a lot of work if we rely on players to interpret things reasonably.

I'm gonna have to disagree with making the wind bell in a direction...if only because it's bloody complicated. The wind was balanced (I hope) for the whole infinite range thing, and I feel the flavor of requiring sight for the spell (one can take shelter from the wind, no?) reduces the surgicality of infinite range sufficiently.

On the abilities and their costs, the 0-cost ones are 0-cost because they are weak as fuck (comparatively: Their equivalent debuffs in, say, shadow magic don't even require rolls! This one says you have to hit with plague wind first). And furthermore, with this school I'm trying to really make the mana draw matter. If you've crunched some of the numbers thus far, you've probably realized that plague-casters are mana whores, even more so than any other school yet created. They want mana to reduce TP cost with careful magic to keep the plague winds up. They want mana to increase attack roll with empowered magic to keep the plague winds up. They want mana to stack diseases to get the most out of a single plague wind. THEY CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF IT. So in this case, the mana costs on the diseases are not just freebies; they are very real costs that will force the caster to make decisions in combat.

And as for the Pneumonic Affliction, I don't think it's quite tier-3 material. It's strong, sure, but it completely ignores a character's ability to burst people down before that disease even gets stacked on them.

Also, I'm replacing Contagion in tier-3 with a new version of Waves of Entropy. Contagion seemed really difficult to balance, and in general I don't think it really worked all that well anyway. So I'm replacing it with a non-disease weapon-killer. That seems like it can be worked around. Talk to you guys more Sunday.

Eelic 07:47, October 22, 2011 (UTC)

Umm... right. Forst off, the "must" wording isn't really meant to imply or change the functionality of the ability in any way. That much is reasonably interpretable.

HOWever, "If this spell would hit an infected target..." does NOT do so. The reason I bring it up is because I could not interpret it completely. It is NOT clear that the infection refers to itself, it could reasonably be interpreted as being infected with Pox, Delirium or anything else. There IS a clearer wording and it is "If this spell would hit a target infected with Red Death...", the way I interpreted it was "If this spell would hit a target infected with any disease...". Furthermore, and note well, that we can not assume that all players will necessarily know what all wording means just because it makes sense to one person. The only reason I'm not changing it personally is because I don't want to alter the functionality unintentionally. This is something I especially like to be sure of because I know I write things that make complete sense to me but which, in reviewing them, really make limited to no sense to others. My point here is that you should not make any assumptions nor take anything for granted in wording or implying certain things.

Next thing; besides the tower-llista in the keep, when was the last time you put actual cover into a combat situation such that a character could actually hide behind it? I expect a response to this would include something about how you would just include cover into combats with plague mages. Ok, fine, then.

I don't actually have a problem with the costs plague spells.

The thing I said about 7 points to Pneumonic Affliction was just from my misunderstanding about the way training works. More on that in the post below.

And yeah, "contagion" kind of implies different things than what the ability did, so right on. Lazrcat0 08:10, October 22, 2011 (UTC)

The Training System
For Mysticism spells specifically. How about, before I go on about why I don't like it, I give you the opportunity to make me understand why you made it the way it is (Basic, Advanced, Spec., Mastery) and why I should not let my group get all of the abilities in a school of magic. Thanks. Lazrcat0 08:13, October 22, 2011 (UTC)

The Masterwork System
I was (am) tuning one of my players character sheets before we start our sessions. He is using the Soldier of the Old World kit which, as we know, gives the Repeating Crossbow and Empower Relic to use it. I'm not requiring him to have a mana draw to use it because because.

As a really base level, I though I might as well change stuff around a bit. I changed Empower Relic to an ability called "Masterwork Knowledge." Right now, the effect this ability would have is to make all masterwork weapons accessible to anyone that has this ability. It also effectively replaces Empower Relic with a non-Relic-themed name though it of course serves the same purpose, save that it does not require a mana draw, as Empower Relic ought to as a prereq.

I though about expanding the Masterwork concept a bit more (this change I decided not to give my player, but if you all think it's cool, then I will). What if it worked like  Specialization except Masterwork ? So in this case, the Soldier of the Old World kit would be given the Masterwork . It could be that level of specificity, though you could go all the way from "Repeating Crossbows" to "Bows" or even "Ranged Weapons." Lazrcat0 22:39, November 20, 2011 (UTC)

I have a couple of opinions on the real distinction between Masterwork equipment and relic equipment, most of which I intend to discuss with you guys over skype, but here are a few main points: -Masterwork items should be fundamentally different from relics, as opposed to just a different flavor of the same thing. -They will not require mana, and I tend to like the idea that a single character point enables the use of all (or at least a broad category of) masterwork items (however, I also tend to think that they should be, at least mostly, premade if this is the case). -Relics, as it stands, are statistically augmented weapons and armor, or they are itemized buffs. Masterwork items should be mechanically augmented rather than just statistically, and they should rarely, if ever, be just a strictly better version of a weapon. Also, just as a clarification, Empower Relic no longer exists. It is just a game rule now that the use of a Relic requires a nonzero mana draw. Eelic 02:04, November 21, 2011 (UTC)