[0.10] Constant Damage Scaling

What is a problem about the 1.3 scenario described below?

  • There is no problem. The 1.3 level of constant damage is just fine.

    Votes: 3 6.4%
  • +Damage (Slayer, Damage Aura) Magic Items are a problem and should be toned down or removed.

    Votes: 38 80.9%
  • "double damage from" Vulnerabilities are a problem and should be toned down or removed.

    Votes: 15 31.9%
  • Weapon Proficiency and Backstab are a problem and should be scaled somehow (maybe not 0.10's method)

    Votes: 18 38.3%
  • High Level Characters are a problem and build should be capped so there is an absolute maximum.

    Votes: 19 40.4%
  • Fighter/Rogue skill choice is a problem; if there were more options people wouldn't buy so much dmg

    Votes: 28 59.6%

  • Total voters
    47
Slightly off topic...but man, I am so glad that I don't need OOG skill to pick locks in game. I do not have the most nimble of hands (and sometimes still struggle with the screws)

That's the chapter spefic lco rule that your chapter has decided to use. If you played at a different chapter you would need your oog skill.
 
Which are very frustrating when you are well aware you could just kick the thing to pieces if you were allowed.
 
As someone who takes legerdemain, I actually hate having shatter bypass legerdemain. What's the point of locks--a large build expenditure, and (in some chapters) OOG skill requirements--if someone's existing spell bypasses it? And a spell that's useful for a ton of other things at that (shatter, not magic key)? Mitigates the feel of team and needing rogues. Pet peeve. Agreed that we don't want the situation that every mod needs XYZ skill, but we do want ways for skill choices to shine, not be viewed as total wastes, because every caster can do it cheaper.

Legerdemain is a skill that covers both traps and locks and doesn’t need to be memorized. It’s usable unlimited times per day. It’s useful against rendered locks and is far more efficient in a situation involving multiple locks than using Shatter. Sure, you could keep Scrolls on hand specifically for locks, but that’s solving a problem by throwing money at it, one of the core principles of Alliance.

Shatter is one way to solve a lock, sure, but literally every caster ever would much prefer having someone with Legerdemain solve the problem for them.
 
So I'm curious. A level cap has been brought up a couple times. What is the highest level non-owner character playing?
 
The highest-level PCs also aren't necessarily the owners.
 
It also depends on if you're counting former owner, ARC vs non-ARC, etc. Suggestions from metrics matter a ton on what the data is.
 
It scales. Constantly.

Only Celestial Build-Free Wand Damage scales at a constant rate.

But there's been plenty of "why not others" questions asked to that effect.
 
So I'm curious. A level cap has been brought up a couple times. What is the highest level non-owner character playing?

Someone on the forums recently indicated they play a 60th Level character (a fighter, I think?). I know of people in their mid 50s.

Additionally, it’s entirely possible that the highest level character isn’t played by someone who frequents the forums, and I doubt anyone from National Logistics is going to volunteer that information.
 
Someone on the forums recently indicated they play a 60th Level character (a fighter, I think?). I know of people in their mid 50s.

Additionally, it’s entirely possible that the highest level character isn’t played by someone who frequents the forums, and I doubt anyone from National Logistics is going to volunteer that information.

That sounds about right
 
Someone on the forums recently indicated they play a 60th Level character (a fighter, I think?). I know of people in their mid 50s.

Additionally, it’s entirely possible that the highest level character isn’t played by someone who frequents the forums, and I doubt anyone from National Logistics is going to volunteer that information.

I’m that someone, I might be 61 at this point, but I couldn’t tell you for sure.

Not to out anyone, but I was told I was in a race to 605 with someone a few months ago, so there are, most likely, at least two of us. I know he still plays.

I heard rumor of someone hitting 60 a few years ago, but she has largely stopped playing to my knowledge. I’ve also been told a few times that there are (were) several higher level (when I was mid-50s) characters playing in Traverse City or Kalamazoo, but nothing I could verify for sure.

I would guess there are some out on the west coast, but that’s purely a thought to keep myself from feeling too lonely late at night.
 
I would guess there are some out on the west coast, but that’s purely a thought to keep myself from feeling too lonely late at night.

There are at least a few. By husband's main character is in the mid to upper 50's.
 
Here is the thing about damage as it currently exists...it might be high, it might vary across your player base, but you know what it is. That means you can adjust to event attendance (a one time thing) whereas proposals for momentary burst values will mean that you have to be ready for even more damage, and scaling your preparations is absurdly hard. Think about those situations where you had to adjust for depleted life spells or healing in town so as not to end your game. It's that, but exponentially more difficult.

As it currently stands there are so many options, such as objectives where "kill it" is not answer. If it is go into a room with no exits and fights some stuff, well sure, but then I would look to the writers and say they are the problem, not the amount of damage raining down.

I am still trying to process these rules mind you, so I will reserve some judgement, but this question is an easy one and gets to a false narrative I hear driving far to much of what seems to be a train-wreck effort.

Joe Siegel
 
momentary burst values will mean that you have to be ready for even more damage, and scaling your preparations is absurdly hard.

Yup, I was going to make a fighter for the playtest, which unfortunately isn't happening, with no weapon profs, but with something like 50 crits and a bunch of empower warrior rituals. so static swing would be 2, then 10/12 for burst, then 17 just when i felt like it. Good luck trying to figure out what's coming. Add to that some powerful blows and a dozen disarms just for shits and giggles.
 
Yup, I was going to make a fighter for the playtest, which unfortunately isn't happening, with no weapon profs, but with something like 50 crits and a bunch of empower warrior rituals. so static swing would be 2, then 10/12 for burst, then 17 just when i felt like it. Good luck trying to figure out what's coming. Add to that some powerful blows and a dozen disarms just for shits and giggles.

This is why I am not a fan of the 2.0 melee changes, the entry level class to the game, being fighter, becomes a lot more complicated and daunting for new players.
 
Yup, I was going to make a fighter for the playtest, which unfortunately isn't happening, with no weapon profs, but with something like 50 crits and a bunch of empower warrior rituals. so static swing would be 2, then 10/12 for burst, then 17 just when i felt like it. Good luck trying to figure out what's coming. Add to that some powerful blows and a dozen disarms just for shits and giggles.

As someone who has scaled for combat for years, I can confidently say that I don't need to "figure out what is coming." This is a roughly 20th level character (based on 50 crits + 12 disarms + handful of powerful blows). Sure, in the course of a single battle you can well surpass the average output of a 20th level character (approximately 8 constant damage assuming crits are replaced with profs and leaving the rest the same), but that doesn't really matter for two reasons.

1) The way our system works, just about every 20th level character can well exceed the average output of a 20th level character in a single battle, unless they built purely as a prof or backstab character with NOTHING else (extremely rare at 20th level and above). Dailies literally exist to allow people to burst beyond average output.

2) Weekend scaling matters much more than encounter scaling. And across a weekend those 2s and 17s will even out to roughly the average. Even if every character was built like that, you would see a bell curve of characters going all out vs. characters taking it easy, with the vast majority of encounters having close to a 50/50 split. The end result is not meaningfully different than if those characters were all prof users.

That is the main flaw I find with the majority of arguments I see people making against these changes. They are focusing on scenarios that are not particularly meaningful to the way our LARP is run. The two main specious arguments are those that focus on PvP and those that focus on the ability to max-out for a single encounter. Alliance LARP is group oriented, primarily PvE setting that is almost always run over 2-day weekends. That has to be the standard by which rules are judged, with other scenarios offering some weight in the analysis, but not being used as the primary means of judgment.

-MS
 
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You're right. There are no such things as Saturday Night Fights, and there are never Big Bad Guys. And players certainly never save the bulk of their most powerful skills/spells for those fights/times. Oh, and all chapters run Wave Battles every single event too, forcing them to use their skills in a bid to stay alive from too many waves. And formulaic weekends aren't boring, either.

I never said any of that. Of course some battles are more important than others. Those types of battles literally represent the ends of the bell curve I mentioned. Those are the types of battles where you know everyone (or almost everyone) will be fighting beyond their average power level. And you literally plan for that. It is part of the scaling strategy for the entire weekend. Those types of battles are intentionally made more difficult because they have plot significance and will draw out bursts of dailies.

But again, that is all part of weekend scaling. And again, you don't need to know the exact strength the PCs can bring when pushing the limit, as long as you plan for the extra hard push. Or heck, you can even choose not to plan for it and let the PCs feel really awesome as they mulch a BBG more quickly than normal.

Weekends don't need to be formulaic or packed with wave battles or anything else. But, if part of your purpose in scaling is to provide a weekend long challenge (and that should usually be part of the plan) then the totality of the weekend should tax PC resources by the end of the weekend. Wave battles are just one of many tools in the toolbox to do that, but I have helped scale weekends with almost no wave battles where PCs were still tight on resources by the very end.

I will reiterate my past point. Individual encounters should have some sway on the rules, but weekend viability and effectiveness should dominate the discussion, because that is the primary play style of our game. I don't care if one player shows up, unleashes everything Saturday night, and then hides in a ward until reset. That isn't the norm and that type of play shouldn't define the rules. The average player who participates in 60%+ of encounters, uses roughly half their resources on one or two big encounters (modules in particular usually drain resources hard) and spend the other half in dribs and drabs spread out among the remaining encounters. That should be your starting point, no matter whether you run a formulaic 8 wave weekend or a wacky 70 mini-module weekend, or something else.

-MS
 
Mike,
You have been away for a while so I'll allow for a certain amount of "this is how we used to run things" point of view, but from what I have been seeing behind the scenes lately your analysis has its axis skewed. The biggest problem forcing these considerations to be constantly accounted for has to do with thresholds A#1, and general BBG body and defense formulations. PC resources are also not "per event" as they are in games where the players determine when to reset themselves (it exists for folks who are unaware) and cannot be considered that way. Finally I do not think there is an appetite to see the multiple town wipes that would be necessary to train players not to burn resources on an unplanned basis during an event. moreover, earlier encounters might not go how you think causing more resources to burn. My understanding is it is the job of plot and desk to accommodate these things on a rolling basis these days, so really your assessment is off and the concerns must be accounted for, making this rule-set problematic. In order to make it work you would have to create a shift in culture AND PAYING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS which is hard to do by rule-set, and foolish in the most arrogant degree.

Joe Siegel
 
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