branoven

stepstomarrow
When granddaughter, Jada, was born with leukemia, a donor-match was located and Jada made a miraculous recovery. In honor of her grandaughter's health, Jeanna has decided to walk across the country (in the dead of winter) to raise awareness and build support for the bone marrow registry (all that's required is a cheek swab). Follow Jeanna's remarkable journey as she travels the United States by foot.

What, another poll? But wait, this one's important!

I'm trying to solidify our CP policy. I am considering a number of possible policies in order to make sure that everyone can start out functional and become nice and flashy and heroic by the end of the campaign. Some options include offering more CP to start or more CP over the course of the campaign. I'm not taking suggestions on our CP policy from PCs, BUT I would LOVE to collect some data from you, since your plans will give me a much better picture of our needs than my own projections will.

So... for the first question, take a look at current skill costs, stat costs, header costs, etc... remember to factor in open skills, racial stat minimums, header costs (3 for an add on, currently 10 for a second Core), raising stats, etc. What bare minimum CP would you need to have the headers & race to define your character concept at the start, and to have enough skills to feel basically functional at your first event?

For the second question, think about the end of the game. How many CP do you need to fulfill a satisfying percentage of your campaign-long wishlist, get your Virtue Ring skills for a reasonable number of rings, raise your stats to the level you need to take advantage of these skills, have all the add-on headers you (reasonably want), etc? Bear in mind you probably couldn't get EVERYTHING you want without someone else having nothing left to buy, so please give the MINIMUM amount you'd want to feel satisfied at the end of the campaign, with the understanding that a few more would be just lovely, too. :)

Thank you for your help! Having these numbers will help me make sure that I can come up with a good policy for you guys.

Poll #1499498 CP Poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 47

How many CP do you need to have the bare minimum skills you would want to start?

How many CP would you need by the end of the campaign to see your character concept fully fleshed out and to feel you had the skills you needed to be a proper hero?

Yeah, you totally knew this was coming. :)

Please select only the add-on headers you're really interested in taking in the first question; the ones that tickle your fancy but you're not sure can go in the second one. People who aren't PCing can do the second but not the first. I figure that way we'll naturally separate a rough representation of actual header spread from perceived coolness factor... both of which I'm interested in!

Poll #1499117 Add-On Header Poll: The Return
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 58

I am planning to PC 7V, and I will probably take the following add-on headers:

If I had extra CP, I might also take: (This one you can answer even if you aren't PCing)

Thank you!

Okay! Thank you for all the feedback on my Warlock quandary. I have at least a tentative solution, as well as an assortment of clarifications and tweaks to various other Warlock skills, below, in the revised Warlock header.

WHEW!

( Here it is: )

[EDIT: OK, so I reread my own skill and realized you already can't use the damage version of the skill on an unconscious target. Duhhh. Am editing the post below to account for this fact.]

[EDIT AGAIN: Crap! Someone pointed out that with Soliloquy, someone can be at 0 Vitality and conscious, which I think was where I got the idea that I needed to change this in the first place. Editing this back. Sorry for the head-spinny confusion.]

Okay, guys... I hate to open up a can of worms I thought I had closed, but...

I'm working on revising Warlock, and I'm looking at Consuming the Spark. I am considering raising the healing effect to 3, depending on what I decide to do with the rest of it. But I have a quandary about the damage aspect of it. ( Here's the current text: )

The effect that I want with the damage is that it comes off Vitality, not armor. Waste 1 Vitality seemed like a good way to get this effect. However, there are problems with that call:

* Aralis uses it in a different way, so Aralis players might be confused
* Even non-Aralis-players might well be confused about what exactly Waste Vitality does
* Characters using Soliloquy could be Wasted without taking damage (though Wasting your Soliloquizing friend rather than helping them is harsh!)

My plan was to just have it do enough damage to cut through armor (3) and heal you to full, but then it occurred to me that this would lead to a really terrible healing ratio given Vitality limitations. (Duhh. Math is hard.)

I have the following options (that I can think of):

a) Get rid of the damage option entirely and have it just work off the Drain (in this case, the healing might go back down to 2, since you are most likely using it either on enemies or when there is time to rest off the Drain)
b) Keep "Waste 1 Vitality" and just make an effort to remind players how this works
c) Come up with some other creepy effect instead of damage
d) Do a combination of Waste & called damage to keep everyone honest

I lean towards B, but only if it seems like it would not cause massive confusion. So... Aralis players, how confused would you be if I used Waste Vitality (to mean that it goes straight to Vitality but can be healed in normal ways)? Other players, do you find the Waste Vitality call confusing?

Other thoughts also welcome, so long as they don't involve varying interpretations of what Waste Vitality really means, since I think that subject was killed dead in the comments on the original Warlock post.

Thank you!

taste_buds
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naturesbeauty
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Scholar's cost is now in line with all other add-on headers at 3 CP. I also tweaked the cost of Enchanter, folded Well Read into Research, and clarified some stuff here and there.

( Scholar )

Now with Shadowstep!

I also slowed down Unfettered to make it less appealing to non-rogue types looking to splash for it, and to avoid duplicating Ranger & Skirmisher skills.

( Rogue, New and Improved! )

Once again, there were very few suggested changes to Skald, so mostly I tried to clarify the flavor to make it clear that there are many genteel and/or scholarly Skalds and that it hasn't been all just boasting in the mead hall for hundreds of years. ;)

Here it is if you want to read it anyway: ( Skald )

OK, so I made virtually no changes to Mystic whatsoever. They have the "go to the Court of Doors with your dead friend" skill now, and I think I may have clarified, like, one or two wording things. And as with Monk & undead, the packet version of the anti-Aetherial attack now does 8 instead of 5.

Here it is if you really want to see it that badly: ( Mystic )

Here's the revised Monk. Not too much in the way of changes... basically, some very minor tweaks & clarifications, and I added the 2 skills I said I was going to add to all the religious headers (tarot reading & free ticket to the Court of Doors).

( Monk )

...And here's the revised Duelist header.

( Duelist. Revised! )

I revised Soliloquy a bit more, when I found some comments about it under Courtier as well as Bard; the changes will affect Bard as well.

I mostly clarified stuff, and replaced "But Wait!" (which seemed redundant with the many other skills focused on allowing the Courtier to roleplay rather than die) with a new skill called "Influence," because CLEARLY WHAT THIS GAME NEEDS IS ANOTHER BETWEEN-EVENTS SKILL. (The first step is admitting I have a problem...)

Also, I went back and tweaked "In Song and Story" under Bard because I found a comment about that under Courtier. It now has the same option of maybe getting you stuff in your envelope and maybe not that Gossip does. No promises in either case!

OK, now ( Here's the actual header... )

Because I'm incredibly curious to see if this has changed over time!

( Core Header final popularity poll )

backpacking
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OK, here's revised Bard. Enjoy!

Also, all Add-On Headers will now be 3 CP.

[EDIT: I realized I forgot to cut the "limit" line from Epigram, which is now no longer once per Focus reset. Fixed now.]

( Bard )

After spending hours revising Assassin and coming up with a way to actually make the poison skills work only in the kind of careful-setup situations I want them to work in, I have decided that I'm better off just getting rid of Assassin as a header and letting people who want to play that kind of character take Rogue (and I'll give Rogue Shadowstep, so nothing will be lost except the poisons, which weren't working anyway).

The poison solution I came up with did (I think) exactly what I wanted to, but involved about a page of explanation and was waaaaay too complicated. Also, really, there is no reason that a good assassin shouldn't be able to take out a target with their regular skills... and if they really need something unusual, then they can probably work some kind of plot angle to get it. And if it's NOT designed to be a regular combat header, well, how often are you going to actually do an assassination, anyway? Especially at the good guy school?

So, basically, fond as I am of the archetype, I am going to give Rogue Shadowstep and get rid of Assassin as a header.

WHEW! I feel better now. :) On to Bard!

Hello there! I'm hoping for your feedback on a couple of Wizard design issues.

#1:

So... Wizards have all these cool gesture "incants" that I'm hoping will look awesome and flavoriffic, and really make it a fun header to play.

However... they also have blade spells (Wizard's Blade). This is not necessarily a fantastic combination, in that the gestures by design require both hands free, so the Wizard would need to switch

In my original draft of the caster headers, Sorceror had the blade spells, with a sword for a token. I switched it to Wizard when Wizard was looking weak and seemed to really need something. Now, blade spells don't seem like such a great match for Wizard, while Sorceror could use a little flavor boost.

I'm thinking of making this change:

* Switch Wizard's Blade to Sorceror (tweaking the flavor and available effects to match Sorceror better), AND
* Replace it in Wizard with a spell allowing you to do a ritual in advance to charge up an incantless spell or two for those "AHH GET IT OFF" moments (basically very similar to Wizard's Blade, except without the sword to juggle)

I'm thinking that this would provide a spell to Wizard that would be more practical & useful than the blade spell.

#2: Wizards can't use gesture spells while Maimed. I need to figure out how Silence affects them:
a) Not at all
b) Only for spells with a verbal component
c) Stops all casting (or all except for any logical exceptions) as with other casters

I am leaning towards B, but this does affect how well Skirmishers & any other mage-killer types will be able to quickly take them out... they may need to make a split decision on whether to use a Maim or Silence. Of course, it should be pretty obvious when you're facing a wizard, so maybe that's not a problem.

I'd love your thoughts on both these issues! Thank you!

Here's Wizard, which has more substantial changes.

( Wizard )