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Font Redux [WIP]; Empowering the powerless
Topic Started: Dec 23 2016, 05:44 PM (1,567 Views)
Nobody Important

My thoughts on Potential and Current:
I like the names. If you want them to spend a lot of resources, they need quick resource regeneration or the Font will be incentivized to hoard it. Perhaps 10 resource cap (power stat + one attribute), and you regenerate one Potential every round? That would be the fastest regeneration in the game, but they'll also be spending a LOT.
For Sudden Insight: be VERY careful with spell combos. That's not going to compete with current Promethean or Atlantean, but it is going to save you a lot of experience in buying the combo itself. Plus, it's unclear if you can add spells that are already in the combo with Sudden Insight, since it doesn't follow standard Spell Combo rules.
Illusion of Normalcy seems fine. That being said, you may want to add some way for the Font to 'push through' high levels of fatigue, since that seems very in-theme.

Power Stat Powers
Overcharge Item: Basically allows you to add bonus dice to stuff you couldn't normally spend resources on. Perfectly fine.
Exalted Battery: I take it this means you can pay for other people's resource costs as well as your own. I foresee potential problems stemming from 'what happens to Tempests and Time Lords', but you balance around core.

Giving 200%: This can quickly lead to rather outrageous numbers of dice being thrown around, since you can already spend twice your Current in Potential. We're talking +20k0 to spell tests. This is dramatically better than any other power in the game, best as I can tell, as long as you're willing to dump a huge amount of your resource stat into something. It makes the Promethean's Transhuman Potential look like chump change when you're giving +0k10 to any skill-based or item-based test. I shouldn't have to say how obscene a roll of 10k10+50 is. Throw a Disjunction on someone and there's no way they can stop you. You'll be able to hit the literal cheese halfling dodge build with ease, since they can muster at most 90 and your average at the moment is 111.
Basically, what I'm saying is that compounding benefits sound fun, but break the game over their knees.

Open the Floodgates: If this power works with Giving 200%, oh god. Forget 10k10+50, we're now at, at minimum, 10k10+80. This number is too large. While venting all your resources at once might be a bad idea, with a Full Auto Burst, you're dealing eye-watering amounts of damage to your target. At this point, you're probably dealing ship-level damage.
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GuardianTempest
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+8:00 GMT || Unlucky & Miserable
Doc
Nov 1 2017, 11:00 PM
Overcharge Item: A Font may spend Potential to temporarily enhance an item or object they are touching as a Free Action. These enhancements last until the Font’s next turn, granting +Xk0 (to rolls) or +X (to flat values), where X is the amount of Potential spent. If X exceeds the Font’s Current, than the item will need to rest for (X – Current) rounds after the enhancement wears off, lest the item break or otherwise cease to function.

Just a quick redo of Overcharge Item for clarity (hopefully).
Hold it. Normally the Font would use it to boost the weapon's damage roll, increase the accuracy in Attack Roll, sharpen Penetration or perhaps just increase the Blast radius (if applicable). However, you might want to limit it to only attacks, damage and penetration or something since Proven is a core mod, and it would break the universe if it got boosted to Proven(10), which would result in..a total time crash.

I'll edit in my responses to Nob after lunch.

EDIT:

Nobody Important
Nov 1 2017, 11:22 PM
Illusion of Normalcy seems fine. That being said, you may want to add some way for the Font to 'push through' high levels of fatigue, since that seems very in-theme.
That's a fair suggestion, my addition would be that it should be something in Supercritical Mode.

That's it. Welp.
Edited by GuardianTempest, Nov 2 2017, 12:00 AM.
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Doc
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Just a Guy
Nobody Important
 
I like the names. If you want them to spend a lot of resources, they need quick resource regeneration or the Font will be incentivized to hoard it. Perhaps 10 resource cap (power stat + one attribute), and you regenerate one Potential every round? That would be the fastest regeneration in the game, but they'll also be spending a LOT.

If I did that, I feel I'd have to have their regeneration shut off during Supercritical Mode so as to make sure the time limit actually sticks.

Nobody Important
 
For Sudden Insight: be VERY careful with spell combos. That's not going to compete with current Promethean or Atlantean, but it is going to save you a lot of experience in buying the combo itself. Plus, it's unclear if you can add spells that are already in the combo with Sudden Insight, since it doesn't follow standard Spell Combo rules.

Without looking, I kinda just assume that Spell Combos in general stop them from doing multiples of a single spell in a combo, and Sudden Insight doesn't explicitly mention that you can break that rule. All the same, clarification's always important.

Nobody Important
 
Giving 200%: This can quickly lead to rather outrageous numbers of dice being thrown around, since you can already spend twice your Current in Potential. We're talking +20k0 to spell tests. This is dramatically better than any other power in the game, best as I can tell, as long as you're willing to dump a huge amount of your resource stat into something. It makes the Promethean's Transhuman Potential look like chump change when you're giving +0k10 to any skill-based or item-based test. I shouldn't have to say how obscene a roll of 10k10+50 is. Throw a Disjunction on someone and there's no way they can stop you. You'll be able to hit the literal cheese halfling dodge build with ease, since they can muster at most 90 and your average at the moment is 111.
Basically, what I'm saying is that compounding benefits sound fun, but break the game over their knees.

Okay, first off: Without some weird stuff I'm currently unaware of (or using Overcharge Item on a spellcasting item I'm currently unaware of), you can't get +Xk0 to Focus Power tests, as none of them are skill tests. They're all (Spell School) + Characteristic tests.

Secondly, even if that we're the case, "I throw an overkill amount of dice at a test by shooting myself in the foot for 5 HP and all of my resource points" isn't quite the master stroke I think you think it is. Outside of setting thresholds to dispel and such, there is no functional difference between getting a 111 to cast Energy Meteors compared to just getting the 30 that's actually needed to cast it - and it's not even a trick you can pull off on the round after.

So really, you need to lay out the tests that actually care you can throw 10k10 + 50. If you could use them in this example, stuff like Animal Power or Lightning Ring would certainly care, as they actually get enhanced effects on raises. But since magic doesn't really work here, you have to default to stuff like Accurate weapons (or Full Auto, but you're probably just hitting the bullet cap instead in that case), or carrying a bandoleer of disposable laspistols so you can use Overcharge Item for devastating single shots before switching to the next laspistol.

Now, admittedly, I care enough about that to figure I should probably limit it somewhat. I've two ideas in that regard:

  • The simple one: Turn it into a 'may' ability, where you can choose whether the expenditure counts for double. If you double down, you immediately lose a hit point.
  • The sorta complicated one: Base your maximum amount of points you can spend off of the bonus instead of the points themselves. That is, spending 1 point to get +2k0 counts as having spent 2 points towards your maximum-resource-per-turn and Push the Limit, though you still only spent 1.


Nobody Important
 
Open the Floodgates: If this power works with Giving 200%, oh god

Well, you're not actually spending Potential when they do it, so no, they don't get the benefit of Giving 200% when using Supercritical rounds instead of Potential.

GuardianTempest
 
Hold it. Normally the Font would use it to boost the weapon's damage roll, increase the accuracy in Attack Roll, sharpen Penetration or perhaps just increase the Blast radius (if applicable). However, you might want to limit it to only attacks, damage and penetration or something since Proven is a core mod, and it would break the universe if it got boosted to Proven(10), which would result in..a total time crash.

Putting aside that I'm trying to account for items other than just weapons with that (like vehicles, for instance), Proven (10) isn't an infinite damage loop. In reality, it just says that you add 10 damage per kept die, because it's making the actual minimum damage 11 per die. Which is certainly powerful, but you can do better by just dumping all that in to a single deadly shot instead.
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Nobody Important

You can use Overcharge Item on any Focus spell or Material spell.

>There's no functional difference between getting 111 and 30
Spell combos. With 111, you can literally put every single Combo-OK spell in one combo and still get it off with room to spare. This number remains too high. And you can still do it, because there are combo-okay spells that involve a Material component.

>and it's not even a trick you can pull off on the round after.
If they're dead, you don't need another round. Them and everyone in the zip code.

>Full Auto
You can use it with a vehicle weapon to deal outrageous amounts of damage. Or hit literally any target. Or dramatically increase damage on a Blast weapon and remove a Blast 10 radius from existence with 10k10+5 damage.


>Well, you're not actually spending Potential when they do it
Mind you, it says 'whenever they spend a point of Potential in their Supercritical State, they can instead subtract two rounds from the duration of the Supercritical State.' To me, this indicates that you are spending Potential but are instead paying an alternate cost. It's still spending a resource point.

>proven 10
Or you can just use it with Twice-Bound Spirits and do an outlandish amount of damage. At least 11264 damage.

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Doc
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Just a Guy
Nobody Important
 
You can use Overcharge Item on any Focus spell or Material spell.

By your reading, which is on me. It should be +Xk0/+X to any bonuses or roll the object in question already has or provides, of which foci and materials do neither. So, uh, yeah. Wording of the whole thing continues to be a problem.

Nobody Important
 
If they're dead, you don't need another round. Them and everyone in the zip code.
...
You can use it with a vehicle weapon to deal outrageous amounts of damage. Or hit literally any target. Or dramatically increase damage on a Blast weapon and remove a Blast 10 radius from existence with 10k10+5 damage.

Doc
 
Now, admittedly, I care enough about that to figure I should probably limit it somewhat. I've two ideas in that regard:

  • The simple one: Turn it into a 'may' ability, where you can choose whether the expenditure counts for double. If you double down, you immediately lose a hit point.
  • The sorta complicated one: Base your maximum amount of points you can spend off of the bonus instead of the points themselves. That is, spending 1 point to get +2k0 counts as having spent 2 points towards your maximum-resource-per-turn and Push the Limit, though you still only spent 1.


Nobody Important
 
Mind you, it says 'whenever they spend a point of Potential in their Supercritical State, they can instead subtract two rounds from the duration of the Supercritical State.' To me, this indicates that you are spending Potential but are instead paying an alternate cost. It's still spending a resource point.

As fun as a semantics discussion on what 'instead of' means, opting to explicitly spell it out is probably the way to go.

Nobody Important
 
Or you can just use it with Twice-Bound Spirits and do an outlandish amount of damage. At least 11264 damage.

To quote myself from the Discord:
Doc
 
How would you write a power that can give +Xk0 to damage or be used to give +X to the speed of a vehicle?

And to refine on that, how would you write it to fit in the Current Powers table?
Edited by Doc, Nov 2 2017, 01:55 PM.
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GuardianTempest
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+8:00 GMT || Unlucky & Miserable
Doc
Nov 2 2017, 01:53 PM
Doc
 
How would you write a power that can give +Xk0 to damage or be used to give +X to the speed of a vehicle?

And to refine on that, how would you write it to fit in the Current Powers table?
Use an example clause (or the tooltips you added in this forum :P).

The Font may spend Potential to add +Xk0 or +X to an object's basic parameters, equal to the amount of Potential spent. These basic parameters are something common in all objects of a particular category, such as a weapon's damage roll, a vehicle's Resilience, a suit of Armor's AP, etc. These enhancements cannot apply to unique parameters like a Void Shield's rating or a weapon's Blast radius.

basic draft obviously, I posted this at midnight

EDIT: Oh, as for the table...ehh welp. Just look at the Daemonhost's Black Miracle and the Werewolf's Sacred Hunt in the vanilla books. Fairly lengthy (especially when squished like that in a column). My above paragraph isn't as long as Black Miracle but that's because I haven't fully locked down its functions yet.
Edited by GuardianTempest, Nov 3 2017, 11:06 AM.
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GuardianTempest
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So,when do we add what we have to the OP? What else is left?
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Doc
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Just a Guy
It is done. I left the old Alternate Paragon version in a spoiler, and haven't made any actual alterations to the most recently discussed powers on account of wanting some more talk on those matters, but it should otherwise all be in order.
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GuardianTempest
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Thanks, although the thread title's still Alternate Paragon so there might be some misunderstanding.

Since we don't have much in the way of unique abilities, how about my earlier suggestion of spending Potential on all tests that follow the XkY format instead of just skill rolls? It's very much placeholder until we come up with something better.

Also, have you seen my draft of the Overcharge Item ability? I suppose restricting it to non-trait parameters would stem it down.
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Scrapyard_Dragon
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Hastened dynamo doesn't need to specify once per turn, you can only make a specific free action once a turn anyways.

For the current resource scheme, why not copy the promethian formula until playtesting indicates whether it's too much/too little and if it charges fast enough for all the powers these guys have that demand use of resource. I honestly don't know if that would be enough, but might as well make them playable to get basic feedback right?
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