Warriors VS. Mages

[Rocket!]

So.

Mages are too powerful.

Still.

There's a proposition in the works, and we'll need the whole forum to put their two cents in before we put this into effect, or toss it out the window:

Physical abilities are worth twice their normal HP.

A Weak Physical Ability would be worth 4 HP point, then, while a Weak Magical Ability would still be worth 2 HP.

The idea behind this is that mages are squishy, plushy, easy to beat up characters. Macho warrior types, though, they can take a few more hits before going down.

What say you, Dream Sequence?

[NiNeLiVeS]

I am totally for this.

Remember, everyone, you don't have to stick strictly to this one suggestion. Pryth has already suggested that warrior-types just get double hp. There are plenty of other ways to balance this, the above is not the only way.

The main issue is that mages appear to be overpowered in comparison to warriors, especially at higher tiers. This, I realize, may not be the same experience for everyone, so if you have a problem with this, speak up!

[prythian]

Should be noted that Rocket already edited the announcement, Niner. XD

[Spring [Complex]]

Warriors are sadly underpowered versus mages, true facts. Mages in higher tiers receive more spells and things to assist them, it's not even just the HP. If you look at the ranks for the more physical guys, they get "Pick three" or "Pick one" Mages are getting "Pick 3 + Pick 2 + Pick 3" so that's giving them more abilities to get more HP and these are good stuff let me tell you.

[00Penguin]

I would think this is a good idea... If you take into account that "mage"-based character have more 'flavor' to their arsenal. In reality think of a character with a 15 Cunning, they could have a Fire/Ice/Lighting combo plus support spells giving them a better advantage over a character with maybe a 15 strength and can only get access to just maybe at best two things that could be useful.

Now I may not be accurate when I say that but basically that's the end result, if you took out a player's creativity and just had the two duke it out with no strings attach, at best the Mage would win a majority of the time.

[The Squeak]

While my experience here is relatively small, I've done some scrummaging around. From what I see, DSA brings up a really valid point: it appears that characters heavily geared towards magic are getting more out of it than warriors, and it's not just limited to HP. A lot of the Skill Ranks seem to heavily favor magic-users: a good amount of them shell out a fair chunk of free abilities, mind you, whereas Skill Ranks geared to physical combatants get, like, say two or three, select skills—whether or not they're useful doesn't seem to be the case; spellcasters are still getting more out of their Ranks. Further reinforcing it with the first half of Penguin's observations, warriors are limited on the skills they can learn at earlier stages in comparison to mages.

In the long run, spellcasters are getting "more bang for their buck".

My suggestion (as weak as my voice on this may be) is to increase the amount of physical skills a warrior-type character can possibly learn at earlier stages. Because a lot of the weak-leveled magic spells can be obtained so early on (especially with the Discount options), it gives mages an easy advantage over those geared for close-range combat; whereas warrior-type characters have to exert more effort into their fights, just to get a decent, solid hit on a mage-type character who can possibly negate their efforts with a few, strategically-learned spells—with the added, detrimental handicap of having only a small handful of skills in comparison to the mage.

Having physical skills dole out more HP in comparison to magical skills would be a good idea, too, as far as the "squishy mage" stereotype goes, but I guess I'm looking at "quantity vs. quality" at this point. It seems as though mages are getting more for less, and it's bothering a lot of people from what I see. Herp derp. 6___6

[Raphus Cucullatus]

Well, I didn't relly notice since I distributed my points for Kyril so I got a lots of discounts and hence, a LOT of extra abilities, but I started noticing how feeble they can be when up against something like the Bougar Anomaly, whereas Kairi (she's supposed to be powerful thugh, she's the Princess of Hearts, duh xD) is kicking it's ass right now. D:

So yeah, I think us warriors should get a bit of a bonus, because mages are WAY powerful right now. Maybe a few, more powerful abilities to start off with since a lot of them are actually based on accuracy of your hit.

Speaking of hitting, mages seem to get more damage in because weak magical abilities do the same as a weak physical ability, but we don't even have many of those, and you can get 5 actions per post so they could be doling out ability after ability, while we can either dodge or sit there and take it like a ninny (or let our actually quite expensve armour take it for us), because we don't have anything else to protect ourselves with, while mages get a slew of protective spells they may or may not choose to cast on someone else.

So what I'm trying to say here is give us a few more offensive-based abilities, because a lot of the abilities seem to be focused on accuracy. Maybe even some defensive abilities, because mages seem to have enough of those for themselves, haha. And like the original idea was, raise the hp we get for each weak ability from 2 to 4 OR (my suggestion here) raise the attack power we get for regular attacks, because mages will mainly be focused on abilities, so we, doling out physical attacks, will be no match for them at 2 damage per attack to our 1. So either focus on making us stronger, or give us more defense against the mages spells.

While we can choose to be both mage and warrior, at the beginning you don't start out with much so either you get very weak as both when you are able to take your next rank, or you're forced to choose. Most of us choose and climb up that tier, beause we'd never win with how weak we'd start off as if we chose. We'd be focusing on building up two tiers. And then we'd never be able to build up and become that demigod we all so long to be. xD

Has anyone noticed no one's complaining about other classes? =P

That, and I might have stated some irrelevence somewhere in there due to not being yet used to the battle system. XD

[00Penguin]

I should've taken note of it first, but I can understand the idea of bettering the abilities Hp increase. But if this thing is pasted then that would involve a lot of people having to go back through most of the active character sheets just to readjust the Hp.

I'm sure I'm just wasting a post here stating something that the staff knew should it be approved by the rest of the community, but I thought I'd just say this much.

[prythian]

Ok, going to go and counter some points made here:

Magical abilities as a whole have a LOT more choices, because there are so many variations on their abilities. In essence, one magical ability can often be repeated in another form... or another four forms. This is why mage tiers get more abilities; mages are known for their arsenal and warriors have much less of a selection to be offered; we really don't HAVE much more to offer the fighting tiers.

Secondly, there IS theoretically a balance between magical and physical abilities... namely, that the physical ability route leads to hitting less BUT doing a lot more damage. Look at the advancement spells for proof of that. (Note that we recognize mages are a lot more powerful due to specific spells circumventing that; we're going to be nerfing quite a few abilities soon.)

We will also be CLARIFYING a lot of abilities as to whether they're offensive or accuracy or what. For example, Flash of Fists appears to be accuracy, but deals Weak Specialty damage on its own. With Unarmed Combat Student, that's 9 damage, which is something mages are hard pressed to match in a single strike.

Reducing the damage that mages do compared to warriors is pointless if this goes through; more hp = greater defense.

Oh, and a final point; given that mages require only cunning, and warriors require two skill point types, the doubled hp makes sense in that regard; it's harder to get these abilities, and therefore you get more health.

If it wasn't clear, I support this. My only concern is whether or not this will lead to giant health bars that lag the page, and that's always been a danger with this code. XD

(And if it is passed, then, much like when the health system itself was first passed, we staff would be going through those profiles to do those adjustments.)

[mrcrazycakes]

I support making fighter-type people who don't do much of magic stronger.

[Spring [Complex]]

I think at the very least, those more physical tiers (particularly Fighters and later Defenders) do need to receive a bit more per skill rank than they get now at least. Yes Magic has lots of variations and awesome repitoire, etc but as it stands right now...it's so unattractive. You hardly gain much it doesn't give you a proper leg up as you grow. In essence, their growth is extremely limited. Yes a warrior has the potential to do more damage in one strike but they cannot guarantee the full 9 by any stretch. A mage has a bit more chances in that sense.

Either way,it certainly doesn't feel "right" which I think we're all in agreement on that at least. Perhaps the HP gain will indeed just be enough, I'm uncertain if that alone will really help heh. As for the massive HP bars, heh, that sounds like an interesting dilema. From what I see of the code, it should handle it fine up to a certain number (thousdands is when issues will come up).

[Rocket!]

CLAP
CLAP

The system is a liiiiiittle more balanced than you guys give it credit for. Kairi is outlying data-- she's been RPed with from Dream Sequence's first day-- she's gotten up to 67 total Skill Points, and that's with DSA's spastic schedule of old. Kairi knocking around the Bouger like yesterday's trash isn't all too much of a surprise. xD

Similarly so, warriors do have a lot of options in their arsenal. Though true that physical abilities are typically split between Strength and Agility, given most people favor their Primary weapon, there is a relatively straight and easy path along a single type of Skill Point-- a good long look at my own Beast is proof of that, at 70+ HP from the getgo.

But it took me 3000+ Munny to get Beast up to that count, even with 28 Strength in a vy for Discounts, and heavy Average purchases.

Accusations of few Weak Physicals are very much accurate if you take into consideration that physical abilities are largely limited to weapon types-- there's few for individual weapon types, though many if counted overall.

Doubling HP from physical abilities wouldn't increase the amount of abilities purchasable to a character with a single weapon type.

Individual weapons need more variety of abilities, especially at the starting level. That, I think, is what we're going to gear for to fix the issue.

Assuming we can come up with more of those kind of abilities without delving into custom territory. XD Perhaps Birth by Sleep Commands for that might make for good inspiration, hmm...

But whatever you do, don't worry about the HP code! xD When we start to get characters in the 200's, I'll make the amount of HP per bar greater-- instead of 16 HP per bar, it'd be 32, for example. It'd involve little editing, and only some slight image cropping to work, no fretting involved. ^^

But yeah. Though doubled Physical HP might help buffer a bit, I think compared to more abilities for Physical-types.... perhaps doubling Physical HP is a bit duct-tapey?

[prythian]

The problem is that mages start out with lots of Weak abilities they can get, and their Strong abilities are much EASIER to get with fewer skill points.

I would counter your points, Rocket, by noting that it is difficult to make a lot of different Weak abilities; most physical abilities that aren't generic would be on the upper range of Average... and it should be noted that unlike magical abilities, it CRIPPLES a fighting character to have them focus all their skill points in a single stat. There are too many abilities they need to pick up in the other stat to truly be useful.

Adding more abilities would leave those abilities too lackluster AND make it even harder for people to make customs that don't fall over one thing or another.

That, and BBS Commands in general are a lot more powerful than Weak, so looking at them won't help.

And the last benefit of doubling hp, the one I've mentioned in the cbox... even with us nerfing some magical abilities, mages still have a high damage output at higher levels. Doubling physical ability hp would result in that high damage output being still high, but it would leave warriors able to actually stand up to them. We wouldn't be crippling mages against high-Tier enemies if we chose this route, and we wouldn't be crippling customs even moreso than we already have.

[NiNeLiVeS]

I hope it's not too big a segue but-

Suggestion for more physical abilities:

1. Combo Attacks
These attacks would have, as a pre-requisite, any advancement ability (trainee, student, ardent, master) making them flexible in terms of character progression. They would also act as a sort of one-post Haste spell (not stackable with the actual haste spell) giving fighters some fun with extreme speed. It's less flexible than haste though since you can only attack normally but on the other hand... wooh! Haste!

2. Hp-dependent attacks
Alright, so mages have these rather brutal area of effect spells, right? Well, fighters - with their greater HP - can sacrifice some of their HP pool to deal devastating attacks to a single target. (Totally riffed the idea off of persona.)

3. Synergy
Advancement abilities are kind of iffy to take multiple times - they don't *really* add anything to your character but you may feel obligated to take them just to fill your allotted munny credits. However, with synergy, your fighting style gets an added bonus!

Bonus to be determined. I have honestly no idea if synergy will completely mess up game balance. >_>

[prythian]

Synergy could completely mess up game balance, to be honest.

To be fair, it would have to apply to all multi-level abilities that replace weaker versions of themselves. Right now, the reason to do it is for HP.