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Post by Dashing Inventor on Jul 18, 2014 1:00:10 GMT -8
The resolution deck will feature a new distribution of pips, in order to ensure more consistent gains from turning up your attempts/upgrading your skills.
Here is the distribution, not including critical results:
Blue: 1(15x) - 2(15x)
Green: 1(10x) - 2(10x) - 3(10x)
Yellow: 2(15x) - 3(15x)
Red: 2(10x) - 3(10x) - 4(10x)
The means the average damage inflicted by each color (again, not counting criticals) is:
Blue: 1.5
Green: 2
Yellow: 2.5
Red: 3
Critical Successes will now have the following pips:
Blue: 3
Green: 4
Yellow: 5
Red: 6
Critical Failures will not have any pips.
Thought you'd like to see the changes and discuss any potential strategies this will create for play. Cheers!
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Ziphion
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Resident Mathematician
Posts: 132
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Post by Ziphion on Jul 18, 2014 6:12:26 GMT -8
Nice! I like the addition of pips to the critical success cards. Speaking of criticals - I'm not sure if you've already answered this question somewhere, but how many "checks" worth of damage do critical success cards contribute? Is it just 1?
Some thoughts: I noticed that with this distribution, Green and Red damage are both "swingier" than Blue and Yellow, meaning there's more variance in the damage of those two colors; using the population standard deviation as the error, [pushes glasses up nose] Blue average is 1.5 ± 0.5, Green is 2.0 ± 0.816, Yellow is 2.5 ± 0.5, and Red is 3.0 ± 0.816. There's nothing wrong with that, I just thought I'd point it out. It's actually not possible to make the swinginess exactly equal while keeping the average damages as they are, but you can get close; for example, if Blue has 1(18x), 2(9x), 3(3x); Green has 1(7x), 2(16x), 3(7x); Yellow pip values = Blue pip values + 1; and Red = Green + 1, the error becomes 0.671 for Blue and Yellow, and 0.683 for the Christmas colors. One downside of this is that for Blue, criticals lose a little bit of specialness, since a few regular cards have the same number of pips.
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Post by Arcanet on Jul 18, 2014 10:46:01 GMT -8
Currently a Critical hit reduces the target to one hit point, and another crit/ hit after that incapacitates it.
I'm not convinced this isn't too strong, as when a targets hit points and armor increases, the value of a crit against them increases if not exponentially atleast sharply.
A proposal: Critical hits deal 4 + your weapons color pips damage, still automatically hit and bypass all armor/other damage reduction, unless specified it works against crits. (Think WH40k Invulnerable Save)
Thoughts?
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Ziphion
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Resident Mathematician
Posts: 132
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Post by Ziphion on Jul 18, 2014 11:07:52 GMT -8
Oh wow, I actually never noticed that line in the demo rules about critical damage. That makes hit points and armor almost meaningless. No matter how crappy your attack power is, you have an 8.3% chance of bringing down Tiamat, Queen of the Dragons to 1 HP with one hit? I think your proposal is much more reasonable, Arcanet... as it is, criticals seem way overpowered. And besides, why even have weapon pips on the critical cards if they always deal (target's max HP - 1) damage?
[Edit: Maybe criticals should only do 3 + weapon pip damage, since they're already bypassing armor and have higher weapon damage... 4 might be a little too much]
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Post by Arcanet on Jul 18, 2014 12:04:33 GMT -8
You're right, currently using even just a sharp stick grants you 6 damage on a crit. An unarmed punch will net you 3, the extra pips on crits could be overkill considering they already ignore armor.
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Ziphion
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Resident Mathematician
Posts: 132
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Post by Ziphion on Jul 18, 2014 14:39:50 GMT -8
Do you mean a sharp stick would be a blue weapon (3 pips), and the crit would give you 3 damage, so 3+3?
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Post by Arcanet on Jul 18, 2014 15:15:43 GMT -8
Hm, actually no. An improvised melee weapon increases your attack by one, but I think it doesn't actually count as a weapon for extra pips, for now: "Improvised melee weapons If wielding a object that is not a weapon but is potentially harmful as a melee weapon, turn up your attack by one" On one hand this could be/likely is old data. Do I need to make a Git repo for this, as the rules are still being rapidly formulated and polished?  I'm only partially joking, I have a github account from when I bugfixed the DnD 4th ed character sheet for Roll20. |
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Post by Dashing Inventor on Jul 19, 2014 8:28:51 GMT -8
Yeah guys, I am going to change this rule. I did it that way originally because critical results didn't feature pips, but now that they do I can make criticals a little more "balanced".
From now on critical results will be treated like regular attacks, but automatically bypass armor. You are still guaranteed more damage than otherwise possible (since critical results have more pips) as well as activate any special weapon effects, and the more skilled you are the more damage you can do. This could still result in one hit kills, but that's part of the game and makes for interesting stories (think Iron Man and the tank).
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Post by Arcanet on Jul 19, 2014 9:00:13 GMT -8
What kinds of HP numbers are lvl 6+ players/NPC's balanced around?
I'm still not entirely sure if 9 armor piercing damage isn't a bit too strong, as Ziphion noted criticals are somewhat common. 6-7 maybe?
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Post by Arcanet on Jul 19, 2014 9:22:43 GMT -8
How about instead of extra damage on a critical hit, it would result in a guaranteed Prolonged Complication, which would stack incase of another crit? Would make subsequent combat harder for the target of a Critical hit, and give players a nice 'Aww yeah!/Oh crap!' -moment.
In addition, a critical hit could activate all skill/weapon effects, instead of just one.
If it would still be desirable that a crit should do extra damage, how about +1 over the regular pips? 3/4/4/5 respectively.
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Post by paulooshun on Jul 19, 2014 11:25:08 GMT -8
How about an "exploding" attack on a critical, in that it gives you a second attack (which gives you a third if that results in a critical and so on)? That way you just need to balance the mechanics for regular attacks but the somewhat common crits can still let you land impressive damage (Tiamat, Queen of the Dragons, probably has a lot of Hits still, but this could make a bigger dent).
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Post by Arcanet on Jul 19, 2014 11:48:45 GMT -8
Basically crits would be like the old multiflip? Interesting, could still result in an impressive 3+3+3+3+4(last card red pips)=16 damage, but require a bit more luck. And it would still bypass 'normal' armor/damage reduction.
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Post by Dashing Inventor on Jul 19, 2014 13:02:31 GMT -8
Interesting stuff. Keep in mind that you can always make an opponent immune to criticals, or at least resistant.
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Ziphion
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Posts: 132
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Post by Ziphion on Jul 19, 2014 13:12:22 GMT -8
I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time following this thread. Could someone explain to me how criticals would work in this new scheme? If you're making an attack with a blue weapon and flip a critical success, you deal 3 blue pips + [check value?] worth of armor-piercing damage? DI, what did you mean when you said "the more skilled you are the more damage you can do"? If you're flipping a crit, what does it matter what color you're on?
I like the ideas of adding complications and extra attacks to crits, but to me those sound like bonus effects you'd get from equipment or abilities. I feel like the base mechanic of criticals should be as simple as possible. (The "exploding attack" thing reminds me a lot of the Harmony Blade in D&D 4e; whenever you get a critical hit with it, you can attack with your off-hand weapon.)
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Post by Arcanet on Jul 19, 2014 13:40:09 GMT -8
A critical hit would be 3 + [Weapon color pips] of armor piercing damage, which could be good enough even with just one extra pip per color in my opinion. Even just that would be 6-10 points of guaranteed damage, depending on your weapon/skills/abilities.
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I'm only partially joking, I have a github account from when I bugfixed the DnD 4th ed character sheet for Roll20.