[.11] Denver | November 16-18 | Thoughts and musings

Cedric

Rogue
Marshal
We had our playtest this weekend. I'm not quite put together to list all my thoughts but I wanted to give other Denver players a chance to post there thoughts. I did really enjoy rogue this weekend, there is a good chance that is what Kendrick will spirit forge into.
 
  • Played a version of my usual low-level crafter/triage healer, so didn't see a lot of direct combat.
  • Healing: Flex casting is great, prepared almost no healing spells but still got by. Not fighting undead today? Still get some use out of this Sanctuary. It was nice to be able to prepare niche spells and know they wouldn't be completely wasted if we didn't encounter that thing. Putting an XP tax on it seems unnecessary but otherwise I like it.
  • Crafting: Didn't see any particularly valuable use of flex crafting this weekend, but that's okay! At one point we did get attacked by a bunch of undead with disease carriers, so I made a point of spending some PP on Cure Disease potions, but we didn't see them again so it wasn't directly useful. All of the crafting plot this game revolved around our LCO crafting system, though there was a crafting mod I didn't go on so I can't say for sure what happened there. I will say that it seemed important to put the flex crafting station somewhere close and easily accessible and have multiple marshals for it, though. Having to track down our one logistics person and ask them to hike across sheet ice in the snow just to make a couple of potions was suboptimal.
  • Qualifiers: Saw lots of ranged Weapon Strikes from monsters, damaging and otherwise, which was probably a little discouraging to our shields. It also seemed like some players were a little confused about apparently magical effects coming off of weapon attacks with blue packets ("Can I counterspell that?"). In general I'd like to see the use of weapon qualifiers restricted to effects that are believably mundane, like the various martial/rogue skills are (if you stretch the imagination a bit). 10 Flame, my sword is on fire. Weapon Strike Bind, I'm throwing webs or bolas or something at you. Weapon Strike Charm - ???. Also, rules clarification on whether weapon effects should be considered (RP-wise) to be in their respective groups would be nice. Should a waylay offend Sylvanborn? If someone somehow produces a Weapon Strike Wither, is that a skilled attack on your pressure points or a form of necromancy?
  • Packet Colors: <Edited out for clarity, as this was mostly hypothetical and moved to another thread>
  • Unknown: This playtest also involved a brand new LCO carrier effect called Unknown. I initially felt like this was a poor time to introduce that, but since it had no in-combat effects to think about and resulted in fun plot stuff I think it went pretty okay.
 
Last edited:
  • Packet Colors: The weird place where the qualifier system gets edge-casey is when the defender has to know what color the packet that hit them was to determine what happened (good luck at night, especially when the NPCs can't even see what they're pulling out of the packet bucket). 5 Spell Flame against a shield? Depends on whether it was blue or not. Can I evade 10 Poison Doom? Depends on whether the packet was blue. PCs can only throw blue packets if they're holding a ranged weapon so there's at least a clue if you see them make the attack, but monsters with "natural" ranged weapons don't necessarily work that way (or at least, I as a PC have no way of knowing if that's true).


I dont really follow why you would need to know the color of the spell packet in these examples.

5 spell flame against a shield is a spell carrier, therefore shields dont block it.

10 poison doom via packet, is a weird call but I dont think you can generate that attack without a weapon, as there is no damage poisons in alchemy. So it Should be evadable or resist poison, or resist curse. That said it maybe a plot made effect for your game so they would know, but I dont think it is in the monster db.

Also from the 2 playtests I went too. Weapon effects do fall into there groups and can be cloaked or resisted as such. Our MWE didnt do the command ones. But they are not spells, because they lack the spell qualifier so they cant be counterspelled.

Counterspell (General, Body / Item [Any], Daily) - Counterspell allows the user to, once per Logistics period per charge, protect herself from an incoming spell effect. Upon being struck with an effect (which must be delivered via the Spell qualifier) that matches a spell in the user’s memory, the user may expend the Counterspell charge to Guard against the effect
 
Last edited:
5 spell flame against a shield is a spell carrier, therefore shields dont block it.

Qualifier (weapon, spell, etc) has no effect on what determines a valid target, only the delivery type and presence of the Strike keyword. Per the packet:

Valid attack zones depend entirely upon the delivery. If an attack is swung by a weapon (i.e. the Physical delivery, which includes arrows and bolts), it only works if it is not blocked by the target. If an attack is thrown with a (non-arrow/bolt) packet, it works so long as it lands on the target or their direct possessions, including weapons and shields.

So technically, a Spell qualifier attack with an arrow packet is a legal thing and is blocked by shields because it uses physical delivery. I don't know of any way that a PC could generate that specific call with that packet (though things like Imbue Magic make similar attacks at least plausible), but there's no PC-visible rules that say an NPC can't generate it. Part of my critique was that I can't know what combinations of qualifiers, deliveries, and effects are valid for NPCs to use, and don't want to have to ask every NPC throwing things in the dark what color their packets are.

10 poison doom via packet, is a weird call but I dont think you can generate that attack without a weapon

Likewise, a PC can't, but I don't know if NPCs can because I don't know what calls they can and can't generate. The monster db is opaque to most PCs, so all I have to work with is a set of deliveries and keywords that can all theoretically fit together.
 
Sure if those things are coming out in those forms, they are likely not in the standard monster DB. So it sounds like a local issue, not a issue with 2.0, so much. At least that is my guess, in the 2 playtests I did at Oregon and Seattle, we saw neither of those type of things. It was always pretty clear what was happening with packet, night or day and what defenses you could call.

I dont think it is really reasonable to expect them to list all the things that cant be done in the rules. Meaning if you are hit with a packet that is 5 spell flame it is safe to assume it was a spell attack and cant be blocked, if you see it is a blue packet you might inquire if that is the correct packet type as it doesn't follow the known rules in the packet. Again, local stuff may vary, but I would expect they would announce those LCO effects at the start as to avoid confusion.
 
I didn't see any of those weird hypothetical calls (except maybe the Weapon Strike Charm, not sure if I hallucinated that). I just have no way of knowing how hypothetical they are. All I know is that monsters can make calls I can't (like "Arcane Fear") and that I need to be mechanically ready to deal with valid calls from monsters whether or not a PC could make them. Assurances that there are no weird qualifier/delivery combinations like elemental arrows in the monster DB is better than nothing, though.
 
As an example of a weird call that a PC can generate, United Blow + Imbue Magic allows a call like "90 Spell Body" to be made with an arrow, so the defender probably wants to be clear on whether they can block that. Though the packet seems weirdly indecisive about whether it should be "United Blow" or "United Strike", so that may be related. But this is a digression and not related to anything that actually happened in this playtest, so I'll drop it here.
 
As an example of a weird call that a PC can generate, United Blow + Imbue Magic allows a call like "90 Spell Body" to be made with an arrow, so the defender probably wants to be clear on whether they can block that. Though the packet seems weirdly indecisive about whether it should be "United Blow" or "United Strike", so that may be related. But this is a digression and not related to anything that actually happened in this playtest, so I'll drop it here.

From the playtest packet:

Any time you hear “Spell”, it means something’s being delivered via a magic spell or some other similar magical source like a monster’s innate pyramid or a Ritual effect. Applicable defenses (Magic Armor, Spell Shield, Resist Magic, etc.) have all been reworked to trigger based completely on the qualifier of the attack.


"blockable attacks (for example, not using the Massive carrier or the Spell qualifier) "
 
From the playtest packet:
"blockable attacks (for example, not using the Massive carrier or the Spell qualifier) "

I suspect that last bit was either from an older packet or intended to say "Spell Strike", since if "Spell" by itself is equivalent to "Spell Strike" then we wouldn't bother using that keyword. That's the entire point of Strike, to make physical deliveries unblockable.
 
Shrug, I am just reading what is written there. You could post in the Playtest forums asking if you think there is a mistake or typo. I know they want to weed all that stuff out and would like to fix any errors players find.
 
Can I evade 10 Poison Doom?
I saw (and safely ate) quite a few "Poison Dooms" I don't recall hearing one with a damage call attached, but please keep in mind we had some newer NPC's and they might have just merged calls through human error.
I also don't recall any "Weapon charms" I did see a ton of shuns delivered that way though (and that is just super annoying). I'll do my full post mortem when I get home today.
 
I saw (and safely ate) quite a few "Poison Dooms" I don't recall hearing one with a damage call attached, but please keep in mind we had some newer NPC's and they might have just merged calls through human error.
I also don't recall any "Weapon charms" I did see a ton of shuns delivered that way though (and that is just super annoying). I'll do my full post mortem when I get home today.

Yeah, I don't think there were any "10 Poison Dooms" or the like, that was just a hypothetical. I've removed the hypotheticals section out to a different thread for clarity.
 
"10 Poison Doom" cannot be Evaded; Evade specifically says it can't be used against any Qualifier other than Weapon. (Makes contact Poisons a little stronger than they might be otherwise, since they change your call to "[X] Poison [Effect]".)
 
Or Parry them.

Packet said:
Some defenses – like Parry and Riposte or other weapon-specific defenses – have changed to specify that they work against any attack with either the “Weapon” qualifier or the “Poison” qualifier (only if the attack is made with the physical delivery). This helps eliminate some exceptions.

I really wish they'd put the new versions of skills in the packet and not just off-hand references to changes of them in random places.
 
So if I'm a fighter with raging blow, poison trigger and up to a 70 slay. I could combine all those and do a 70 poison strike enfeeble and just have to hit their shield? Is a coating a weapon swing? The only defenses for it would be poison shield, poison block, phase, dodge, cloak alteration? Just trying to understand some combos here.


Raging Blow (General, Item [Weapon], Daily) - Raging Blow allows the user to, once per Logistics period per charge, add the Strike keyword to a single numeric weapon swing. This may be used in conjunction with skills or other rituals.
 
Ahh never mind. In the playtest packet they said that parry (and thus evade) work against coatings.


Some defenses – like Parry and Riposte or other weapon-specific defenses – have changed to specify that they work against any attack with either the “Weapon” qualifier or the “Poison” qualifier (only if the attack is made with the physical delivery). This helps eliminate some exceptions.
 
Some defenses – like Parry and Riposte or other weapon-specific defenses – have changed to specify that they work against any attack with either the “Weapon” qualifier or the “Poison” qualifier (only if the attack is made with the physical delivery). This helps eliminate some exceptions.

Huh, well now I am confused. I guess they mean those defenses work against anything weapon delivered, not just weapon qualifier.

So if I'm a fighter with raging blow, poison trigger and up to a 70 slay. I could combine all those and do a 70 poison strike enfeeble and just have to hit their shield? Is a coating a weapon swing? The only defenses for it would be poison shield, poison block, phase, dodge, cloak alteration? Just trying to understand some combos here.

Resist Poison and Mettle would also work.
 
Back
Top