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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster » Wed Sep 09, 2015 7:14 am

So, now some talking about where defense bonuses are at THIS time, talking which helpfully prompted me to reign a couple in by a few points, but is still tempting me to be a bit more stingy in a few areas...
Big McLarge Defense
Defense, specifically physical defense is at this stage perhaps the biggest single set of potentially stackable bonuses in the game. At least for now if someone is going to get off the RNG by any large margin PDef is where it's going to be happening.
To some small extent it's OK for a PDef specialist with many points to sneak a bit of a ways off the RNG from an attacker who has invested NOTHING in countering that, but only to a limited extent.
So, there are basically the following strategies a character build could go with to boost their defenses up into the stratosphere.
1) Collect All The Bonuses
Get yourself all the bonuses, grab armour, obfuscating and evasion, and you can probably make at least two of those "good" and the other at least "ok", get all the incremental stacking bonuses you can, marginally rare but they ARE out there, and then drop on some rarer bonus types like Magic and Oil.
This WILL get you off the RNG compared to a character that doesn't have any attack bonus. With the right Good Trait it will get you into the low or mid twenties, higher if you combine this with strategy 2.
The counter to strategy 1 is... well you've piled on ALL THE KEYWORDS, well ok, a lot of them, whatever, onto your PDef, and that means basically just about everyone will have an attack bonus vs you just by picking up a weapon or an element, and if they have a second or more keyword targetting attacked bonus... they will be much more likely to get that against you too.
2) The 2 Stop armour/clothing OP shop
This one is probably the problematic one, because as long as some relatively simple items exist it is REALLY cheap to jump into.
The best "single defense type" armours probably rack in at about +7 defense, IF you have an extra keyword on it like Heavy or something.
But the thing is you can drop on an Heavy Plate Armour for 7 Armour bonus, and thanks to the way layered bonus stacking works you can put a pure Obfuscating cloak layer on over that and get all your obfuscating bonus too... which is also about a potential 7 Obfuscating bonus. Now I hardly think Heavy Plate Armour is going to be a rare option, and pure obfuscating cloak layer options, well, the mechanics are certainly there to create them with Illusions or giant Puffy parachute suits and junk.
And even if they weren't you could drop down to lower layer items and only lose a point or two here and there.
And that gives you like 14 Defense BEFORE your base 5, your 4 or so from good trait, your 3 from skill, and maybe a further one or two incremental bonuses and maybe a further 2-4 from picking up Oil or Magic.
That might be bad, even WITHOUT excessive investment in more keywords on your defense, or indeed even without investment in a basic defense skill option, you are hitting 21 and going off the scale from the +0 attacker JUST by not having a shitty defense bonus good trait and putting on two (admittedly VERY slightly expensive if we are comparing to +0 attackers) items.
And it means that any incremental stacking on top of this strategy moves into more troublesome territories faster.
The potential "out" for this is "Ignores(X)" attacks that could let you ignore Armour or Obfuscating bonuses on target PDefs (even while still getting an attack bonus vs those keywords if you would). And indeed the big weakness of this (or a more "normal" and less problematic single main defense bonus strategy) is that an Ignores X attacker can come along and blow a solid 7 points off your PDef at low cost dropping you from nigh untouchable to probably pretty touchable.
But Ignores(X) attacks are marginally rare, I'm intending to include some more, but I don't know how common they will EVER be. At some point I MAY have to do something to reign in the Armour/Obfuscating layer stacking issue at a more fundamental level.
3) Suitless Defenses
Accessories, particularly shirts and pants for simpler mixed clothing/armour type options, bracers, helmets, long gloves and boots, stuff like that has a potential to contribute to defense without being a suit.
Generally these items won't contribute MUCH to defense. The usual idea is you get maybe 1-3 points of Armour or maybe Obfuscating out of them, and then rely on your suit option for your main defense, and maybe you wear light clothing or something that mostly just gives evasive 5 or 6 from your suit that stacks with the 1-3 from the accessories.
But with enough of all the best of the accessory options you could up to maybe 3 or 4 points of Armour AND 3 or 4 points of Obfuscating on accessory items that explicitly specify that they do not limit Evasive bonus.
If you were getting your base defense from just a suit item that granted all three major defense bonus types you would be getting about 7, and as an outlier at best maybe 8 points in total from them.
If you do it with a pure evasive suit (or naked evasion) and a couple of high quality accessories of both types you get all three bonus types as a "disadvantage" sure, but it's the same disadvantage and you get maybe up to 14 out of it.
But this IS a marginally more complex setup. You'll probably need more skills, more items, weirder rarer items, and more types of items. So it's not as bad as the straight up Obfuscating/Armour 2 item layer stacking issue, but then again it's also harder to counter with marginally more spread out investments if an Ignores(X) attacker comes along.
I may need to drop accessory defenses a little.
4) The Defender with 100 Gauntlets
So, gloves, boots and bracers can be worn on limbs and can grant an armour bonus based on how many pairs of limbs you wear them on.
You can get more pairs of limbs on your character with a variety of mutant powers.
You PROBABLY have between 4-6 limbs and get between 1-3 bonus armour (which can't stack with suit armour bonus, but you probably don't wear a suit with armour bonus if you care about this) from those items that count limb pairs to determine bonus armour.
But if you WENT A BIT MAD on purchasing extra limbs... you could have rather a lot of god damn limbs. I mean we have extra arms, extra legs, extra heads (for extra necks which DO count as a bracer location), tentacles (probably can wear bracers? Maybe?), tails (?), useless vestigial limbs (how useless, can they wear bracers?).
Even if we JUST stuck to arms and legs, well, you are looking at something like basically +1 armour per Skill point. You get, whatever however many skill points. And ostensibly there are other potential exploits surrounding attack options that might well make it a reasonably good idea to walk around with as many arms as you can as the foundation of your character build.
I don't think this one does anything you couldn't do cheaper by other means at any price low enough to be all too concerned about, but limb stacking IS potentially infinite and I think that right now this is the only potentially open ended defense bonus stacking build there is, so you COULD just stack out to forever with this and whatever the system might consider the acceptable limit of going off the RNG the only thing this build would need to do to exceed that is stubbornly stick to the same thing for longer and keep on growing moar arms.
Also you could stack it with strategy 3. If you got like, I don't know, a Heavy Puffy Confusing Helmet or something along with your many armoured defense bracers. So there is that too.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Wed Sep 09, 2015 7:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster » Tue Sep 15, 2015 6:35 am

Well I've filled in a few more things in Clothing and Armour, including a couple I just tacked on for Bells and Whistles (noisy gear), and Perfumes, which both seemed useful.
Now it's just Shields, Spikes and "fill in Misc later".
A Role For Spikes
Is going to be interesting and I'm considering holding off until I've done more with weaponry.
Armour spikes, blades, whatever need to fill a slightly different role to just built in armour/worn weapons. Those are their own thing, spiked armour suits and similar need to do something more.
The "more" is very likely to be contact damage in grabs and stuff, explosive spike attacks, and possibly spike shooting treated as an ammo/projectile weapon setup rather than single thrown item setup (one of the reasons I might hold off until more is finalized in the weaponry materials).
Spikes are also important for spikey monsters, may need tie ins with feathers and scales, and there may need to be some decisions about whether spike explosions fall into skills that used spiked suits or a spiked suit item upgrade option, or a mix of both for the best benefits.
A Place For Shields
A role for shields to fill is a harder thing to decide.
Shields previously filled roles like...
A small armour bonus (only with the skill AND the item), but skilled defense bonuses mostly don't work like that now... (shield skill will now be the same as the 100 other non-stacking Skill 3 defense type bonuses, and is just a dense bonus skill tax choice rather than the thing that will define the role of shields).
A small armour bonus per limb for lots of limbs with shields (only with a few skills too). Which... is sort of where bracers are at now...
A small armour bonus that doesn't necessarily stack with the rest of your defense... which is where inserted defense modifying accessories in general currently are at with the new system.
A small armour bonus that DOES stack with the rest of your defense... But I'm feeling I'm already now at the limits of what I'm happy with on potential stacking PDef bonus sources, so I really don't want "and fine stick a shield on top for +2 more or whatever" to be a thing.
A modifier for the Weapon Block skill. Weapon Block let you expend your (ready) weapons for blocks, but made you spend them all in one go, unless they were Shields in which case you got to spend them more selectively. But... with "improved" versions of skills floating around it's highly likely that Weapon Block will now let you selectively block with a minor costed Upgrade to a higher skill tier.
Shields also could be shields and weapons at the same time using hybrid weapon options. Hybrid weaponry isn't what it used to be so that will have to work differently now, but it's totally still going to be a thing... but probably not enough of a thing to give Shields in their own right a reason for being.
So shields are left a little bit... hanging. A lot of what they used to do either is now marginally redundant, or will soon be marginally redundant. They could cover the same ground and be marginally interesting with some small variations and other additions, but they are going to have a LOT of overlap with just wearing bracers or a bonus chest plate or a helmet or whatever, and they sort of need to be more/different to that SOMEHOW.
Maybe I should just go and work on finalizing the god damn weapons/fighting styles section and get back to these two once some important related material is covered. But at some level here the hangup is coming up with a new unique thing for shields to just DO.
NOTE: Just in case to save confusion. These are shields as in Sword and Board type shields, not the energy shields already covered in the magic section.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Tue Sep 15, 2015 6:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by OgreBattle » Tue Sep 15, 2015 7:22 am

With how detailed other parts of the game are a shield just granting +defense is kind of uninteresting.
A large shield (Romans, pavise) you can rest on the ground acts as a portable obstacle/cover.
A medium shield (vikings, knights) gives you a passive bonus against ranged attacks and parrying against melee attacks.
A small shield (buckler) would be more like an off-hand parrying dagger that does blunt damage than a passive piece of armor.
A shield strapped to your arm has a bonus against being disarmed, but a penalty to being grappled because it's a large rim for opponents to grab and twist your elbow with.
A shield strapped to your back can give a boring passive bonus to getting flanked.
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Post by PhoneLobster » Wed Sep 16, 2015 5:12 am

Shields Got Done
I took a shot at shields with three general classes of shields, Light, Medium, Heavy. The light and heavy tie ins will be useful, but in the end it amounts to Buckler, Other and Wall/Tower Shield.
Bucklers (with a skill) get some disarming stuff. Mid size (with a skill) get some redirecting deflected attack stuff. Tower Shields get some deployment and hide behind and vanish away stuff.
Shields DO get to apply as an inserted accessory for PDef, because it seemed weird if they didn't, but that is just a minor and largely unimportant secondary role.
The primary role intended for shields is delivered by a simple Shield Block skill which is a very nice for it's cost Block source, which is better with heavier shields (but if you take the light shield specialist skill it mitigates the disadvantage of the use of light shield with shield block along side it's disarming bonus junk).
Shields also get some shield bashing and some pretty good parry options. There are item modifiers and a skill for running around with shields on your arm that keep your hand free, or at least somewhat free.
Weapon shield hybrids get their minor tie in point, but the rest of there stuff is really just the relevant weapons material.
Multi-Shield users get a minor questionable shield armour bonus stacking hack of a shout out that could use work. But they can just use the various standard shield skills that can among other things expend shields as costs for lots of benefits for a fair amount of fun and profit WITHOUT using the specific multi-shield stacking option (and probably would be better off doing that with a bunch of shields along side a reasonable base Obfuscating/Evasive suit.)
I have decided to move Spikes over to the Weapons/Unarmed section instead.
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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster » Thu Sep 24, 2015 3:48 am

Bites and Claws and Junk
So the big reform this weak is mostly monstrous attack options getting their item related stuff moved over to the cultural document to sit next to some expanded learnable skills that would enhance their use. Giving a larger selection of things to do with your claws and stuff.
I still need to do all the tentacle like stuff and then get Fans/Wings in order.
Then it's onto weapons.
Oh, and I added some more general Unarmed options for fists, kicks, body slams and wrestling.
And made a few hacky additional templates to make the foot/hand weapon substitutes have some hacky bullshit that lets them more properly be boot/glove/hoof items as well as just monstrous upgrades for your bare hands and feet. It's poorly written but does the job well enough for me to be assed with for now.
Mission Moar Weapons and maybe Fighting Styles
Anyway when i do get onto weapons things are going to be "interesting".
Weapons need several main things...
1) Moar Weapons. Tridents and other marginally obscure things need to get their shout outs.
2) Sword Mastery. Needs to be a thing that does stuff. So far generally skills are all "with weapon attack" or even "with weapon/unarmed attack" or "with thrown/projectile attack". There needs to be at least SOMETHING which lets you go "screw you, we may have all the same generic weapon skills but I have the god damn sword specific skill that makes me better than you at SWORDS SPECIFICALLY!". For now the plan is to just flat out have a generic "[Weapon Type] Master" skill that flat out gives you attack bonuses and defense bonuses against suckers using your weapon type while you are using your weapon type... but I'd like to add in just a handful of weapon type specific maneuvers too, it's just that's a specialization can of worms and a bunch of potentially wasted material that could have been written up with less narrow requirements and been more widely used.
3) The Upgrade Options go into typed sections with more options and relevant skills Right now there is a modest, but almost playable selection of "cool upgrade abilities for your weapons" all jammed in a pile in the "weapons section". But I could use moar item options and more related SKILL options for things like chopping characters up or disarming them, and it would probably be best done by going the full split up and elaborate route. Also entirely new (or newly ported from old material) sets of stuff like Light Weaponry and Heavy Weaponry options need to be added.
4) Barbarian Rage And less directly weapon related aspects of fighting styles like assassins and stuff need to go SOMEWHERE... and here is very probably the best place to put them...
I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time I've talked about the weapon section, and it isn't the first time I've done a pass on the material. But it still needs doing, and this time I'm pretty much already in process at the front end with the kicks and claws and stuff.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Thu Sep 24, 2015 3:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster » Mon Sep 28, 2015 9:50 pm

The Problem With Destruction
Well, it's not the first time I've noted this problem. But there are some issues with "destructive" attacks. And while working with the brief destructive options in weapons I'm thinking about them again (last time being some destructive magic in Acid, Sonic and Destruction elements).
The "Destructive" keyword when stuck onto an attack means the attack, well, destroys things. If you get defeated by a destructive attack, you are pretty much gone, if your arm gets severed by a destructive attack, it is pretty much gone, if your item is damaged by a destructive attack, it is pretty much gone.
The primary game play result of this is that damage dealt by destruction is harder to heal/repair. Also destruction of items, if done with crack/rip/break is timed/processed as an effect not as an injury so it happens before blocking and potentially prevents you from blocking with your destroyed armour (this is something inherent to Breaks in general, not destructive, but destructive has a problematic interaction with it).
Problem One: Disintegrating Your Clothes
Problem one is (sort of) a minor one, but only sort of. Targetting armour/clothing with breaks/destructive attacks, or if you block with torn shirt against a destructive attack... is going to see your armour/clothing destroyed outright.
That's kinda strippy, and more so than I might like as destruction is supposed to be more a "scary heavy consequence hard to remedy" themed attack rather than a "haha your clothes are gone" attack.
And targeting armour/clothing with breaks is usually a good idea because those are major sources of defense bonuses and blocks, and you want to get rid of those if you can, so if you do have a breaking destructive attack it WILL be hard to pass up. Worse even for the victim if they get hit with say a severing destructive attack and are about to lose a limb they ARE going to throw torn shirt at it... and that will disintegrate the top layer of whatever they are wearing instead...
But, there are some mitigating factors, mostly by accident and I think perhaps not mitigating enough...
A) Most of the time the top layer is armour and that's ok because you have clothes and then underwear and stuff under that anyway. (but this is undermined by problem 2
B) Because of problem 2 targeting armour isn't the best idea so you might target other things anyway.
C) Some destruction options already have some "penetrating destruction" skill tricks that let them bypass upper layers and destroy other stuff anyway, but the options are too specific and need to be more wide spread if they are supposed to be a solution to this or problem 2.
Problem 2: Yeah, you have another layer with defense bonuses
So if you DO destroy someone's armour you've removed their main block and defense source.
And IF they were a character that runs around with only ONE defensive layer (and yet somehow doesn't have a plan for what to do if they lose it) then mission over, they are (barring non-clothing/armour related options) defenseless, also unfortunately naked, and that throws us back to problem 1, but at least mechanically it's mission achieved.
BUT... most of the time that isn't what happens. Thanks to the layered defense mechanics, generous bonuses for all clothing types to keep as many variant character archetypes as possible viable, and the way torn shirt refers to top most layer... what ACTUALLY happens most of the time is...
You burn off the top layer, they lose their armour bonuses and ability to block with it. But actually they probably have a minimum of 2 layers below that, and those layers might not be their BEST defense options, but they still have at minimum a torn shirt block and some pretty reasonable base defense bonuses, if you are LUCKY you maybe knocked "Skill 3" off their defense and some access to specific armour typed skills and that's it.
To some extent in many cases you just DID THEM A FAVOR because normally if an armour is for whatever reason is damaged it puts them in a worse position with no remaining blocks, no base defense bonus and no way of easily removing the damaged layer if they haven't invested in options that do that. Your destructive attack conveniently removes it FOR them, for free! Making destructive attacks, to some extent LESS scary than non-destructive ones.
Got to run, contemplated solutions next post...
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Post by PhoneLobster » Tue Sep 29, 2015 1:39 am

Destructive Problems Continued
OK, so anyway, in the end, mostly because it's a major resource manipulation thing, I don't mind if there is a build that strips armour and clothing off targets for fun and profit.
But that being fine with it comes with heavy provisos. It can't be cheap, it can't be common, it's can't be easy, it can't be an accident while trying to achieve something else.
And on the mechanical side, I can tolerate Destructive attacks having some disadvantage, I can tolerate or even appreciate some interaction that encourages targeting non-defensive items like weapons instead. But again, the thing where you are pretty much giving away extra torn shirt blocks for significantly less advantage than a vanilla non-destructive break effect is just too much.
So this needs SOME sort of fixing.
Rejected Solution: Can't Torn Shirt vs Destructive
Yeah, sure it makes for some scary attacks that you can't as easily mitigate. But having "destructive" attacks LESS able, or even unable to break your armour doesn't feel very "destructive" it feels more like pin point accuracy or armour penetration/bypass.
Rejected Solution: Can't Torn Shirt vs Destructive unless you have strong armour
ALSO dumb for the same reason, but dumber because then at the end of combat with destruction in it the heavy knights have their armour burn't off and the guys in civilian clothing and whispy underwear have their equipment unscathed. Which is just plain counter intuitive for destruction.
Potential Solution: Skills that help out
Putting some skills that alter the interactions a bit into a generic destructive techniques set in the weapon section that would be accessible for destructive sword/fist/magic beam attack/whatever characters/cultures/whatever could help... certainly more so than having mitigating options limited specifically to disintegration magic or something, but at best it ends up being a tax on making destruction options work if they don't have some sort of basic foundation fix.
Potential Solution: Irreparable Damage Re-Fluff
Currently damage/expenditure of items is "unusable, repairable, not destroyed", but destructive damage of the same items is "gone".
There is a (tiny) bit of conceptual space in between where destroyed items could be "Irreparably damaged but not actually gone". And destructive attacks could deal THAT sort of damage instead of "just plain gone" damage.
The problem with this is that it is a small conceptual space. Conceptually and intuitively players frequently enough struggle with differentiating "expended/damaged/torn shirt" and "gone", having an extra level of "MOAR expended/damaged/destroyed" which is ALSO not "gone" is going to be... more of a struggle.
And even successfully I don't think it entirely solves the "I'm disintegrating your clothes off" problems, because conceptually it's a struggle to tell people that their merely ruffled up and mildly damaged clothing is "not remotely the same as clothes being torn off", trying to tell them their clothing is still at least marginally modest when it is "irreparably damaged with no salvagable function or components" is just not going to succeeed, once your clothing is cheese clothed enough people WILL regard it as conceptually pretty "strippy" and they will be pretty much in the right to do so.
BUT. It can solve a lot of the mechanical issues. If destruction leaves SOMETHING there on a mechanical level it leaves something that PREVENTS the next layer from being used for defense bonuses and blocks. And THAT also means that it then helps with the "strippy" issues, because in most cases what that means is that a character gets lumped with a layer of useless nothing much that USED to be their armour, and they still have their clothing and everything it just can't benefit them because of a few lumps of slagged armour stuck on top that will be a huge hassle to get rid of.
You would still have the issue that when someone jumps into combat with nothing but a skimpy combat bikini that if THAT gets hit with the new improved "massive irreparable damage" version of destruction they are going to be left pretty much exposed, but whatever, we are just going to assume that's an acceptable outcome for that character and assume that if it wasn't they would just wear a totally acquirable extra layer of marginally heavier combat bikini.
What I will Probably Go With
Massive Irreparable Damage and maybe some extra skills/rewrites to accommodate and improve on it is probably where this is going. It's about the only productive looking way to unpaint out of this corner and I'm reasonably pleased with it's outcomes.
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Post by PhoneLobster » Tue Sep 29, 2015 6:28 am

Yeah, so I just went with massive irrepairable damage, chucked in some generic Destructive Technique skills, checked existing destructive related options for compatibility and made sure to add options such that destructive attacks COULD destroy items THROUGH the now remaining destroyed items, but don't have to and the destroyed top item still inhibits function of lower items.
I probably still have some hooks in skills that let you somehow use expended items for something which should now be modified to say "non-destructively expended" but it seems to have been a relatively painless fix.
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Post by PhoneLobster » Fri Oct 09, 2015 6:14 am

Moar Weapons
I've been slogging through more weapon stuff. There is now more of it. That is about all I have to say off the top of my head. But there is still more to be done. More on more sometime more later. More.
Moar Style Reforms
So I've been making a few NPCs here and there, and whipping up some clothing/armour items for them... aaaand I've not altogether been liking the results.
The style system was a bit finicky and obviously flawed. While you couldn't stack SOME of them if you shopped around in a really annoying way looking for oversights in the over long requirements lists you COULD stack enough of them to be problematic.
But on reflection, just adding a style keyword like Plate or Chainmail didn't really justify getting an extra bonus point, it lets you qualify for skills, including potentially the 3 point skilled armour/clothing defense bonus, and it pays (barely) by opening you up to things like rare lame plate armour targetting skills.
So just stripping the accumulating bonuses from the vast majority of styles and then opening them up to be combined as much as you like seemed a better option, less work if you want to throw together a hybrid Chainmail/BandedMail/Skirted/Robed whatever, and no accumulation of too many +1s in the process.
Only a few very obscure styles you probably shouldn't be combining and which potentially have their own weaknesses (like pure illusion, or a style that forces all three basic defense keywords) get bonuses and if you DO let someone have a pure illusion shiny banded armour oily jelly armour you deserve what you get.
Light and Heavy styles still get a bonus, but they are exclusive to each other and Light and Heavy are intended to be much more important broader negative match up keywords than the "just a style" keywords like Plate or Skirt. There is a probably issue I have likely cocked up somewhere since SOME default item profiles are already heavy or light and they may or may not properly incorporate the light or heavy bonus (which cannot be added again) into their profile. But I can fix that later if I stumble across it.
Skimpy, Partial and Translucent have LOST their potential bonuses through styles. For the same reasons that plate and chainmail did. But more so, Skimpy and Translucent are really just skill requirements for things like chameleon skin and seduction shenanigans, they don't deserve to ALSO net you a BONUS, if anything I should probably have them net you a PENALTY. Similarly Partial is there for layer exploiting shenanigans and doesn't deserve to give you a BONUS just for putting a keyword on your suit that exists mainly to let you ALSO get whatever bonuses you can muster from suits in layers underneath that suit. Again if anything it should probably net you a penalty.
Giving penalties to skimpy, translucent or partial has been refrained from for now, but remains under consideration. In the mean time they've lost their bonuses.
So now if you want to you CAN put almost any combination of styles together and make skimpy translucent puffy plated skirted partial light something or others, and you don't get incremental bonus explosions and don't have to jump through stupid hoops to do it, and assuming you have enough skills to actually CARE about getting ALL those keywords AND you don't mind the potential additional rare weaknesses in match ups you have opened yourself up to in the process, well, screw it, good for you.
I do get annoyed that I find I keep coming back to the clothing/armour and basic defense profile stuff, but making the interesting descriptive items you wear important is one of the primary goals of the system and because of that invested importance there are a lot of things to go wrong and a lot of things to attempt to correct and improve.
Moar Google Docs Issues
The "opening and misc" first cultural document is now getting Juuuust large enough to start causing performance issues. I might have to consider splitting it to "1A" and "1B" if it grows any further...
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Post by PhoneLobster » Sun Oct 18, 2015 1:02 am

About the Moar Weapons and Attack Techniques
So I've been distracted by preparing various game materials for play, and work it's the busy time of year again, but I'm taking a shot at finishing up on weapons and attack techniques, so here are a few things...
Moar Mobility
I've chucked a few things over to Mobility, like Stealth stuff, so the stealthy aspects of the old Assassin skill set will end up over there, while the attack aspects are being covered in the current attack section. Similarly a number of things reminded me and several extra titles have been chucked over to mobility so that there will be some potential options for improving your flying or swimming combat and so on. For whatever reason charging related mobility/attack options fell to the attack options section, for now.
Interestingly stupid set of weapon names you have there, and then suddenly Katar hey...
Well, it was always going to be an arbitrary selection, I tried to lean away from traditional culturally specific names and go for more descriptive names relating to basic descriptive features and mechanical bonuses so as to leave the system fairly open to describe a range of weapons and let people stick on the specific historical or bullshit fantasy names they feel like onto them...
...Buuuut... there are limits, and in avoiding "katana" you are really just avoiding saying "sword" in a different way and saying "sword" is actually not all that better than saying "katana", and saying "scimitar" was probably just as bad as saying "katana", but still.
Then I got to punching daggers and some related oddities with similar sorta descriptively interesting perpendicular punching grips I felt deserved to be in... and I couldn't bring myself to say "punching dagger, punching scissors dagger, punching axe" etc... and went with "Katar" as a cludge.
Anyway, in the end if you feel bad that "Halberd", "Bastard Sword", "Guisarme" and "Katana" didn't make the list, sorry, it was never intended to be a list of that sort, and I think the resulting material can adequately cover the descriptive and mechanical ground for things close enough to that for all the game can or should care to differentiate them in anyway from axes, swords, and spears.
Still could add Moar
Many technique/weapon sections remain a touch bare. But, it's points based and cultural/organisational/individual skill sets are meant to be built by cherry picking all over the place so that is OK, as long as there are enough options over all, and to represent the things I want them to.
And I think there are enough now (or at least as of filling out the last few bits) to actually call this section pretty much at least initially complete. And the skeleton of it, though in some ways flawed (attack techniques and weapon upgrade option specifics and keyword/special rule specific sections all sorta just hanging around and getting mixed up with Unarmed and Projectile stuff too...) it is better than it was, and easier to add to later.
Double Headed and Double Edged sections are sorta shit
Yeah, I'm not too happy with those. Having a sword with two ends or an axe with two sides is certainly a nice descriptive thing I want to do something, but I feel like I have perhaps picked some poor somethings on several levels. Without better ideas though they are going to be like that for a while.
Ornamental Weaponry was a flop
Sounded interesting, but in practice I'm pretty sure Fancy items and social status marks and stuff already cover a lot of ground there and while I would MAYBE like to do more... not right now, I'm leaving the heading as a stub in case I feel like reconsidering later.
To Do...
Stun dealing stuff, some accurate and innaccurate stuff, the VERY important Light and Heavy weapons/techniques stuff, weapons you stick onto your elbows and stuff, and finally at least a brief revamp/going over of Projectile Weaponry stuff, which SHOULD be significantly expanded and split, but will probably just remain a few additional things and it's own base template list that somewhat runs back to the weapon option and techniques stuff to get the upgrades and extra stuff. Though that IS problematic for a number of reasons...
...yeah there is going to be some thinking about what to do with projectile weapons...
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Post by OgreBattle » Sun Oct 25, 2015 6:46 pm

On double-ended weapons, there's various real-life polearms where one end had a spear point and the other had a big blade, like:
How would that work in your game. And would a plain ol' staff count as 'double ended' too? Just that both ends are the same.
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Post by PhoneLobster » Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:11 pm

> OgreBattle wrote:How would that work in your game. And would a plain ol' staff count as 'double ended' too? Just that both ends are the same.

Currently Double Ended weapon is a "Special" item upgrade, which means that without a specific skill it has a penalty, in this case -3 to it's attacks, it is fairly cheap, but then you basically buy two weapon profiles and attach them to the same weapon item, you may use EITHER profile during each turn, and if the item is damaged or expended it is damaged or expended together.
You may take a skill that grants you proficiency, upgrades to permit you to use both weapon profiles in the same turn (assuming you have the means for the extra attacks, such means do readily exist), then upgrades again at a notable price to permit you to treat each end of the item as a separate expendable item for damage and resource costs.
There is another skill you can take that gives you an extra attack with the other end if you use another hand, and upgrades to let you stack damage in the same turn from attacks from the same double ended weapon (at a price).
I should probably include a less costly version of the basic item upgrade that incorporates an increased hand slot cost rather than a large special attack penalty.
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Post by PhoneLobster » Mon Nov 02, 2015 3:55 am

Slow Going
NPCs and campaign materials and stuff are slowing me down, along with work and things, again. But regardless.
A game with some spectacularly fumbled low rolls on the part of players got me thinking maybe I need to be more generous with attack bonuses. Or something, you know, just for those guys who REALLY REALLY need to be able to hit on a god damn consistent roll of a 5. But I'm leery of doing so before getting the full existing quota of bonuses into play. This may require a custom play aid document collating existing available options for the players in that game, but it ALSO led me to reform one of the major existing attack bonus sources.
Enhance Options, one off exclusive options to enhance your attack. Previously existing in the form of adding an element option to your sword attack with Magic Strike or a special elemental material, and in the form of some hacky little "special metal" type material options that did similar... but less.
Well I moved them, rewrote them (the non-elemental special material things that is), added some related support stuff. They are still not quiet as large and nice as a adding a full element option on, but now they do more than JUST a conditional +3 bonus, and are more generic for applying to a wider range of potential special materials or item designs.
Raging and Guarding are going to be problematic because I need to merge them into existing similar options from the new good trait sets rather than just blindly lifting and converting them from my old Barbarian and Knight skill sets. But that's where I am at for now, Inaccurate and Accurate attacks might get a skip and then it's an attempt to reform Projectiles before going back to NPCs and campaign notes work for a while, but I kinda feel the need to complete more of the basic attack options stuff before I can complete the weapons and attack skills of setting X things I have planned for that right now.
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Post by PhoneLobster » Tue Nov 03, 2015 2:49 am

OK so Guard and Raging stuff done, and Projectiles got what I'm going to call a cursory pass processing all the weapon skill options for compatible reprints, things to remove and things to alter for ammo resources etc...
Now, the resulting thing is what I'm going to call a mess the content isn't all that bad, though there are issues in need of reform on wording, but the layout is horrendous. At SOME point in future I will most likely reform the whole section to start out with the main weapon types (unarmed, weapon, projectile, maybe blaster guns) then combine as many of the other sections together so that for instance "damaging techniques" clearly and explicitly will contain options for some and all of the main weapon types, including the newer projectile weapon options. But with the content largely settled for now the structural layout reforms lack priority.
I kinda need to do Siege Weapons. And the next priority after that is likely the Social Development options to throw in some additional/improved sources of social defense and attack match ups. Certainly some cheap inflation on SDef bonuses is called for at the moment and that's a place to put it. But campaign materials, a scheduled Paranoia one off, a long road trip in two days and a possible torrential flood tomorrow may result in another large delay.
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Post by PhoneLobster » Wed Nov 25, 2015 3:20 am

Long gap on the update here. I've done an, exceedingly short but hopefully adequate, Siege weapon section.
I've made some changes to (and moved) the generic basics of the social development stuff, which grants a fair amount of potential additional SDef bonuses for characters at various low, and for the entry level one even borderline free, costs.
I've mined old materials and cut and pasted a bunch of so far unmodified skill options for the more flavourful SDef keyword specific abilities... but they need serious changing to the point that some might only end up providing a title (or less) to the finished product.
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Post by PhoneLobster » Fri Dec 04, 2015 3:22 am

So anyway. I got Disgeae 5 the other day, and in what I'm sure is a totally coincidental occurrence all progress on the rules set and prep work for the next actual game has ground to a complete since then.
Anyway, going to make an attempt to get back to it, though game prep may still hold precedence I plan to try and alternate some minor rules work with pieces of game prep.
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Post by PhoneLobster » Thu Dec 31, 2015 3:26 am

Well. A while ago I threw together some vehicle stuff. And the beginning of the social development options I'm now working on.
And hey look. It's nearly 2016 and the 2015 edition is still unfinished. Well. To be fair, it's the biggest most stupidly ambitious version of this mess to date, and over all I'm thinking I'm more likely to labour on and slowly finish it than I am to decide to completely rewrite it from scratch this year. So this can now officially be the 2015-2016 edition. Wooh.
Anyway. Social development is coming out a bit lopsided, I've got limited ideas to fill out the fields, I'm thinking I'm hitting a bare minimum of some fun options for each, but some could use more filling out than others with future material. Oh and there are some bat shit stupid trivial options in there. But that's fairly fine.
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Post by PhoneLobster » Tue Mar 08, 2016 4:04 am

OK so after a long hiatus in which I was totally doing important and productive things, lots of them trust me I've come back to poke at this a bit.
I've filled out most remaining stubs with at least minimal shells of functional materials, threw in a few more stubs for some potential extras, mostly got the mechanical powered items/buildings stuff dealt with (barring potential later expansion) and I'm maybe half way through traps.
For convenience and to avoid the larger page counts that seem to give google documents serious performance issues... there is now a fifth cultural document. Cultural Document 5 Covering stealth, mechanical powered thingies, traps and the few additional "oh yeah that thing" stubs.
Right now though my questionable plan is to maybe get traps done, maybe not, and to focus a bit on putting together a small but useful "starter" setting/campaign that I might put to use for a couple of upcoming events. And ideally to try and "do things properly" and use the rules as they are intended to generate little secondary documents of cut and pasted material covering specific cultures, peoples, organizations and characters and stuff. Depending on results I might share that stuff. Also, with the intention of running this possibly outside my more familiar players I could really ding some additional play aid/reference materials useful too. You know, common action cheat sheets, a printed quick to reference drift table, a printed "phases of a turn" thing, maybe a few "quick introduction to X, or How to Y" for new players, maybe even a better character sheet.
But right now I'm just going to go back and plug the fifth cultural document into the original links up front of this thread...
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Post by PhoneLobster » Sat May 21, 2016 1:09 am

So anyway. I ended up throwing together a bit of a hack job on the tutorial game for that event, which itself was delayed an extra month due to scheduling things. Mostly because I spent way more time than usual on some very distracting computer games and didn't end up investing enough time to make the tutorial stuff to the sort of quality I wanted to.
Despite that, I have just about completed a "premade peoples" document. It contains a lot of preselected sets of people options for stuff ranging from the endless elf subtype wars to marginally more interesting things like parasites and naga. Many of the options are still presented in a customizable kit form (build your own zany elf sub race with several selections) but hopefully now with sufficient preselections to make that a very quick and easy process.
Over all the document may still have too much content to present directly as a component of an ideal (quick) tutorial/introductory adventure/collaborative campaign build, but I think it is the right TYPE of material for that and portions of it could be readily lifted or referred to by such an introductory adventure.
I'm considering moving on to a similar premade cultures/organizations/npcs thing, then maybe some premade monster npcs. These are relatively useful tools regardless so... yeah.
Oh and at some point I messed about with traps in the cult5 document and have decided I've gotten them to a relatively OK place right now.
So anyway...
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