The following skills should be limited to "advanced" in all classes, and "master" should only be available in subclasses:
Slashing Weapons:
Swordsman, Aggressor
Chopping Weapons:
Berserker, Reaver
Piercing Weapons:
Lancer, (NEW SUBCLASS - Assasssin type)
Bludgeoning Weapons:
Bruiser
What do you think?
Another alternative is to limit the top tier classes to non-karma subclasses.
Another alternative is to have a fighter/raider/enforcer specific subclass that increases their weapon skills to master.
Another alternative is to have every magicker subclass reduce the maximum peaks of combat skills.
I dig it.
This would reproach the balance of when full guild mages were weak without their magic (which was imperfect).
But having a master trained high tier combat class...with a subguild that supplements it...well...could be a much better balance if they couldn't get master.
Quote from: Dracul on January 24, 2023, 11:55:05 AM
I dig it.
This would reproach the balance of when full guild mages were weak without their magic (which was imperfect).
But having a master trained high tier combat class...with a subguild that supplements it...well...could be a much better balance if they couldn't get master.
Yeah, that's sorta the thing.. You want to be the best fighter, but you need to overlap a bunch of skills that are in the subclass.
or a 'Fighter' specific subclass - weapon mastery, where you get master weapon skills instead of any other subclass skills.
Nice try, Muk Utep.
It really just means they will all be scouts and stalkers, miscreants etc which they almost all are already (in the last stats).
This wouldn't really limit their danger level, at all.
Also Heavy combat would no longer exist.
I don't think this is very thought through.
I have said before that mundanes should get higher caps to all class and subclass skills than magickers. Say -5 to the cap for every single skill for magickers.
Quote from: Inks on January 24, 2023, 04:07:15 PM
I have said before that mundanes should get higher caps to all class and subclass skills than magickers. Say -5 to the cap for every single skill for magickers.
That's the intent.
How do you implement it? Can subclasses perform a "skill deficiency" on select skills, or is it a manual activity?
Instead of raising the skill cap on things, which really only affects a tiny fraction of the players, perhaps you could reflect the idea of a "master swordsman" with some sort of special ability linked to the subclasses. This ability would be directly tied to the weapon skill. So now you have one skill that does two things, which will provide a consistent benefit throughout the character's career instead of just at the end (or not at all).
Riposte would actually be something similar to what I was thinking of, except running it off slashing weapons skill instead of its own separate skill. Bludgeon might have a stance that occassionally knocks your opponent over if certain conditions are met. Axes could occasionally ignore armor. Piercing weapons might afflict the target with some sort of negative condition. I'm just spitballing here.
The key here is that by linking the ability to a skill that the character possesses throughout their lifetime you can reflect a "true master" without having the player wait for half a year of playtime to realize any of their potential. Mind that they'd be a better "true master" after that half a year still, but that's fine.
I do like the idea of putting ultimate combat mastery in the hands of the subclasses. It neatly sidesteps the "magickers are the true combat masters" thing we have going on now.
This seems legit.
Quote from: mansa on January 24, 2023, 04:19:58 PM
Quote from: Inks on January 24, 2023, 04:07:15 PM
I have said before that mundanes should get higher caps to all class and subclass skills than magickers. Say -5 to the cap for every single skill for magickers.
That's the intent.
How do you implement it? Can subclasses perform a "skill deficiency" on select skills, or is it a manual activity?
Simple -10 combat skill caps and -5 to all other skill caps for magicker's main class after picking subguild.
If you are asking me how to code it? You could always pick subguild first and a magicker sub sends you to identical looking classes but with the lower caps.Easiest way player understanding wise. The subguild warrior thing will make a silly world where every merchant is a battle god.
I legitimately know this would improve the distribution and the game in general.
I mean, this already happens? Just not for
all magickers. But we already have a mechanism.
https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58568.msg1082700.html#msg1082700 (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58568.msg1082700.html#msg1082700)
Quote2. To help alleviate powerful combat / magick combinations, sorcerers will codedly have a reduction in the max of all combat, weapon, and stealth skills they can achieve. For combat and weapon it is a fairly significant cap reduction and is relative to the class (i.e. it's percentage based). For example, a raider who could achieve "high" master in a combat skill will now max at "low advanced". Stealth skills (climb, hide, sneak) have a reduction, but to a lesser extent. More along the lines of going from "high" master to "high" advanced. You can still branch in all cases.
Quote from: Brokkr on January 25, 2023, 11:46:21 AM
I mean, this already happens? Just not for all magickers. But we already have a mechanism.
https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58568.msg1082700.html#msg1082700 (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58568.msg1082700.html#msg1082700)
Quote2. To help alleviate powerful combat / magick combinations, sorcerers will codedly have a reduction in the max of all combat, weapon, and stealth skills they can achieve. For combat and weapon it is a fairly significant cap reduction and is relative to the class (i.e. it's percentage based). For example, a raider who could achieve "high" master in a combat skill will now max at "low advanced". Stealth skills (climb, hide, sneak) have a reduction, but to a lesser extent. More along the lines of going from "high" master to "high" advanced. You can still branch in all cases.
Cool! My suggestion is to implement that to every magicker subclass.
Not all magickers are made equal in terms of combat capability, and certainly not equals to the potential of a sorcerer.
If this was done in isolation I feel like it would just make half-giants and muls even more glaringly over the top in instant-murder capability because there would be even fewer "normal" people who could attempt to deal with them.
Muls and rogue mages are the biggest buds on the block. Not really an issue.
Quote from: Inks on January 24, 2023, 04:07:15 PM
Nice try, Muk Utep.
It really just means they will all be scouts and stalkers, miscreants etc which they almost all are already (in the last stats).
This wouldn't really limit their danger level, at all.
Also Heavy combat would no longer exist.
I don't think this is very thought through.
I have said before that mundanes should get higher caps to all class and subclass skills than magickers. Say -5 to the cap for every single skill for magickers.
Not everyone is gonna sacrifice disarm/threaten/rescue/guard/blindfight/hack/etc. for a slightly higher weapon skills cap.
I like the idea.
I hate the idea of master combat skills being restricted to subclasses, warrior/smith style builds would suffer which, IMO, is one of the coolest mundane concepts left and already took a huge hit with recent weapon crafting changes.
Lowered caps for non-mundane subguilds seems better, doesn't inadvertently hurt concepts that are hybrid combat/crafter combat/stealth. I'd hope there'd be a few tiers of negatives, with sorcerers and psionicists being reduced the most and touched subguilds being nerfed the lease.
Quote from: lostinspace on January 25, 2023, 04:25:57 PM
I hate the idea of master combat skills being restricted to subclasses, warrior/smith style builds would suffer which, IMO, is one of the coolest mundane concepts left and already took a huge hit with recent weapon crafting changes.
Lowered caps for non-mundane subguilds seems better, doesn't inadvertently hurt concepts that are hybrid combat/crafter combat/stealth. I'd hope there'd be a few tiers of negatives, with sorcerers and psionicists being reduced the most and touched subguilds being nerfed the lease.
Just have a new weaponcrafting subguild that gives a bonus to weapon skills but has some other sacrifice. Bladesmith - Axes/Swords, etc.
I just don't understand why we'd nerf all heavy combat classes across the board, then provide a patch to fix it when the most problematic combinations can be targeted specifically and the code to do it already exists according to Brokkr.
Are people bothered by fighter/crafter or stealth/crafter character combinations? Or is the consensus that heavy combat classes are overpowered across the board? From what I recall from the last time there was a breakdown of class/subclass representation it was stalker/scout that was the most represented by a wide margin, but I may be misremembering.
Quote from: lostinspace on January 25, 2023, 04:51:08 PM
...Or is the consensus that heavy combat classes are overpowered across the board? From what I recall from the last time there was a breakdown of class/subclass representation it was stalker/scout that was the most represented by a wide margin, but I may be misremembering.
It stems from the idea that magick subclasses joined with heavy combat classes makes a character extremely powerful
(you could consider it game-breaking powerful)It stems from the idea that there isn't something "special" about mundanes because magickers are just mundanes+.
..So, there should be something
special about mundane classes that magicker characters cannot access - and there currently isn't anything like that. And the way the game is currently designed, you can put something
special in a subclass and the magickers cannot choose that.
Magickers wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Fuck 'em, keep mundanes as they are. Make magickers find a mundane crafter friend if they want something dope. Might keep them socially in line better.
eta: and yeah I don't like the mucking about with the class caps as proposed here, either.
Heavy combat classes are barely the go to for rogues, this whole thing is ridiculous. Just make magickers worse at mundane things no matter the class.
The problem stems from magickers being mundane +. Most of them are scouts and stalkers.
This is a fix for something that largely doesn't exist. Please circle back to lower caps for magicker main class.
Quote from: mansa on January 25, 2023, 05:04:20 PM
..So, there should be something special about mundane classes that magicker characters cannot access - and there currently isn't anything
Tuluk
Most Merchant Houses
Arm of the Dragon
Any Noble Houses
Open interaction with Tribals (most of them)
Allanak (if they're not gemmed)
Do these not count?
Quote from: Jimpka_Moss on January 25, 2023, 05:34:09 PM
Quote from: mansa on January 25, 2023, 05:04:20 PM
..So, there should be something special about mundane classes that magicker characters cannot access - and there currently isn't anything
Tuluk
Most Merchant Houses
Arm of the Dragon
Any Noble Houses
Open interaction with Tribals (most of them)
Allanak (if they're not gemmed)
Do these not count?
No.
Quote from: Jimpka_Moss on January 25, 2023, 05:34:09 PM
Quote from: mansa on January 25, 2023, 05:04:20 PM
..So, there should be something special about mundane classes that magicker characters cannot access - and there currently isn't anything
Tuluk
Most Merchant Houses
Arm of the Dragon
Any Noble Houses
Open interaction with Tribals (most of them)
Allanak (if they're not gemmed)
Do these not count?
no one has ever had fun in a clan that has a schedule and anyone who says otherwise is lying
at best they're begrudgingly tolerated for a fairly safe way to skill up
edit to say: ok sometimes awesome players/staff can make it fun but that's fun in spite of the overbearing restrictions people'd rather not have to deal with not because of
Basically, magickers get less "skills" and instead get spells.
Other than that the penalties are social and at least in most "civilized" areas, this works. Being a magicker in Tuluk or Allanak is quite restrictive and comes with either death if discovered or just a lot of social stigma and basically being sectioned off.
I think maybe part of this issue has been that a lot of the playerbase has moved away from cities and in some places away from cities you don't have those restrictions, basically.
The upside to being mundane is essentially boundless social access. If you're not a magicker (or at least not a known magicker and can pass off that way) you have the broadest range of "safe-ish" jobs and occupations possibly available to you almost anywhere you go. Is this enough? I don't know, but it felt like it used to be in the past. Now the game is less centered around Allanak and Tuluk, and it feels like it's having a lot of impacts that are felt around the game as a whole.
Quote from: Lutagar on January 25, 2023, 05:47:39 PM
Quote from: Jimpka_Moss on January 25, 2023, 05:34:09 PM
Quote from: mansa on January 25, 2023, 05:04:20 PM
..So, there should be something special about mundane classes that magicker characters cannot access - and there currently isn't anything
Tuluk
Most Merchant Houses
Arm of the Dragon
Any Noble Houses
Open interaction with Tribals (most of them)
Allanak (if they're not gemmed)
Do these not count?
no one has ever had fun in a clan that has a schedule and anyone who says otherwise is lying
at best they're begrudgingly tolerated for a fairly safe way to skill up
edit to say: ok sometimes awesome players/staff can make it fun but that's fun in spite of the overbearing restrictions people'd rather not have to deal with not because of
I have fun with schedules. I do. I love them in fact.
All this really accomplishes is ensure that 0 karma players don't have access to heavy combat and that older players/staff faves with karma do.
Quote from: Svalinya on January 26, 2023, 05:28:52 AM
All this really accomplishes is ensure that 0 karma players don't have access to heavy combat and that older players/staff faves with karma do.
I don't know that I'd call 'people who have played 6mo to a year' staff faves, but I do agree that if we did this we'd need to make all mundane subs 0k.
Quote from: Svalinya on January 26, 2023, 05:28:52 AM
All this really accomplishes is ensure that 0 karma players don't have access to heavy combat and that older players/staff faves with karma do.
My understanding is there's plans to do away with the difference between standard and extended subclasses. Elsewise, I'd agree with you.
Quote from: Narf on January 26, 2023, 01:13:27 PM
Quote from: Svalinya on January 26, 2023, 05:28:52 AM
All this really accomplishes is ensure that 0 karma players don't have access to heavy combat and that older players/staff faves with karma do.
My understanding is there's plans to do away with the difference between standard and extended subclasses. Elsewise, I'd agree with you.
I got kind of sidetracked by the karma change. And while goal is still the same on my side, approach may differ. Just haven't gotten time to get back to it.
Quote from: Brokkr on January 26, 2023, 02:02:07 PM
Quote from: Narf on January 26, 2023, 01:13:27 PM
Quote from: Svalinya on January 26, 2023, 05:28:52 AM
All this really accomplishes is ensure that 0 karma players don't have access to heavy combat and that older players/staff faves with karma do.
My understanding is there's plans to do away with the difference between standard and extended subclasses. Elsewise, I'd agree with you.
I got kind of sidetracked by the karma change. And while goal is still the same on my side, approach may differ. Just haven't gotten time to get back to it.
Would you be averse to just setting the ESG's to 0 karma in the meantime as a 'stopgap'?
Having come back, after years away, and seen the changes made to magic - While I thought it was neat that they were now broken up, I was largely concerned with the fact that magic users, other than their limited spell list pertaining to just their own specializations, are now on par with all mundane classes.
I really would love to see more strength to Subclasses and less to Main Classes, to balance it out. Not every soldier is going to be the same. One soldier may, in his free time, decided to continue to advance his mastery of a specific weapon and combat style while another soldier, on their free time, choose to dabble in crafting or hunting.
This way, a mundane Fighter+Swordsman may have a slight advantage over your run of the mil Fighter+Empowerment Rukkian because while one was learning to master Ruk to empower themselves, the other dedicated more time and effort to honing their skill with the blade.
Reducing the skill cap by one tier, for every combat class, and increasing the skill cap by one tier for every combat subclass would be an awesome step in the right direction.
I mean, for comparison, an old school 10 day Ruk+Aggressor vs a 10 day Fighter+Empowerment(Ruk) is gonna see the Fighter+Empowerment(ruk) win, 9 times out of 10.
Skill caps seem almost irrelevant, at least for me. In ~20 years I don't think I have ever hit 'advanced' with a single weapon skill (meanwhile combat skills routinely hit advanced/master), I guess I am doing something wrong.
Quote from: Dan on January 29, 2023, 03:20:01 PM
Skill caps seem almost irrelevant, at least for me. In ~20 years I don't think I have ever hit 'advanced' with a single weapon skill (meanwhile combat skills routinely hit advanced/master), I guess I am doing something wrong.
the amount of worry people put into master weapon skills is pretty funny considering how infrequently people have master weapon skills - which is a little off topic of me.
I really agree that ESGs should just be 0 karma today instead of waiting for more changes; not to replace the changes but as an interim measure. There's not really any staff trust or thematic hardship in having a master craft instead of an advanced, or riposte and combat/swords on a stalker.
I am against changing the caps or skills for magickers vs mundanes. Magickers already do give up their subclass stuff, and a heavy combat main drops a lot of versatility.
I would instead be in support of a system giving mundanes perks or boosts over time played that makes them attractive in comparison.
Mundane Only Grandmaster Perks (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58351.0.html)