Slays and Assassinates

[tets]

The ratio of defenses vs body can easily get unbalanced. Ive seen monsters given extra body in an attempt to avoid getting circle beaten by all the fighters, yet at the same time it promotes that.

Truely at the heart of it they should be left as they are written in the rules.

 

[Dan Nickname Beshers]

Or the rules should be changed to transition away from seeking to race to land a successful all-or-nothing TKO against a large but limited supply of all-or-nothing defenses in favor of something a bit more elegant.

 

[MaxIrons]

This is why I liked the idea of creature tiers (lesser, greater, etc) and having more effects be tied to that. So a Slay or Assassinate doesn't need a damage number, it's going to kill a lesser creature outright and do X damage to a greater creature. Eviscerates and Terminates will kill a greater creature, but "boss tier" monsters take Y damage from them.

This lets certain monsters not getting 1-shot by an eviscerate be a standard thing by the rules, and not up to the whim of each plot team. It also makes your first Slay something special, because it doesn't require Slays 2 through 5 to bring the damage up to something meaningful.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, lesser monsters at APL 1-10 for example, would simply be killed outright by Slays and Assassinates the same way a Lesser Undead is killed outright by Destroy Undead or a Lesser Elemental is sent back to its plane immediately by a Banish. Greater monsters hit with a Slay would take 50 damage just like Greater Undead or Greater Elementals. Then we add a third tier (APL = Plot ) where the one hit KO effects do a different set amount of damage, something that would just destroy any standard monster up to APL 30 or so... for the sake of arbitrary numbers lets say 250, and they'd still take 50 from a Slay.

It's something to be looked at for Alliance 2.0, as in my opinion as it would require too extensive a rewrite to "tack on" to the current rules, but in terms of simplifying the game and effects it's really nice.

 

[Draven]

Except simplification is exactly what it doesn't do.

 

[MaxIrons]

Except simplification is exactly what it doesn't do.

Poor choice of words. Standardization then. I'll now leave this be as it deserves to be its own topic.

 

[Dan Nickname Beshers]

Except simplification is exactly what it doesn't do.

Which is simpler: a standardized set of results using a tiered system that are identical across the game, or often similar but rarely identical chapter-by-chapter tweaks to address perceived issues?

 

[tets]

Standardization would be by far better, but no matter what there will always be chapter-to-chapter tweaks.

 

[Tyson]

Pretty much, MaxIrons.

Although, it wouldn't have to be limited by APL. You could have a APL (or ACE?) 30 creature, but it's a "Lesser Beastosaurus" so it gets popped by a Slay or Assassinate. So even as the event scaling goes up to keep pace with static damage, lower level adventurers can still have an impact by landing their slays and assassinates. (With an understanding that lesser things would have few if any defenses.)


As far as simplification goes - it is really no more complicated for the player involved. - the one who has to remember their stats. If you are given a greater card, you need to know "these effects deal 50 damage to me, these effects will kill me."

 

[Talen]

It's not a bad question. The answer is: often the best way to kill a major enemy is to run them out of defensive abilities rather than try and deplete their body. If a big bad has 5 dodges and five hundred body, I can kill him more easily by dumping six assorted TKOs into him than wear down that much body, especially if he's healing. Effectively I can consider his dodges to be a secondary health pool that I can opt to attack instead, with various skills and spells doing one point of damage to this secondary health. Depending on the monster's type, finding 6 options that can defeat him in one shot may be far, far easier than trying to wear down all that body. Prison works on almost everything, so that's a good choice. Undead have a lot of immunities, but are in turn vulnerable to Purify (and Drain can be an option for necro-curious characters). Sleep, Paralysis, Death and basically the Alteration effect group will shut down anything with a metabolism, and Web/Confine work very well on things that can't rip free, plus combine well with debilitating weapon strikes. Which brings us back to Eviscerate/Terminate. It obviously depends on how much damage the altered effect yields, but given how many things can trigger a dodge (or phase, or parry, or cloak, or whatever), I would often rather hear the defense called than "I took non-lethal damage, lemme get my heal on."

This. It rapidly becomes more effective to "defense or die" targets instead of beating them down, especially as actual damage becomes less and less of a "KO" as stat inflation occurs. The same thing applies to PC's, of course, especially since damage frequently means "gets up again one CLW later". After all, it doesn't matter how much damage something takes, long as there's a healer with even the most trivial curative available. They're up and swinging again.

 

[MaxIrons]

This. It rapidly becomes more effective to "defense or die" targets instead of beating them down, especially as actual damage becomes less and less of a "KO" as stat inflation occurs. The same thing applies to PC's, of course, especially since damage frequently means "gets up again one CLW later". After all, it doesn't matter how much damage something takes, long as there's a healer with even the most trivial curative available. They're up and swinging again.

As a regular NPC in Seattle I can tell you that as the APL of my Card increases, the number of times I'm taken out by sheer damage decreases. This of course is a sylistic decision but I really do dislike it. I know this is personal opinion and your mileage may vary, but to represent a true threat to some of the higher level PCs a monster card has to have a rediculous number of defenses or just outright immunities and that leads to a large number of holds (and immunities can lead to PC frustration - I've been there too). I'd much rather see more debilitating "save or suck" effects than TKO "save or lose" effects.

Tangent here: viewtopic.php?f=214&t=18102

 

[Gilwing]

Prepare to Die: two-hundred-fifty eviscerate! two-hundred-fifty eviscerate! two-hundred-fifty eviscerate!

That's way too many syllables.

What I was talking about is when chapters want there baddies to not take an eviscerate but instead take a large amount of damage. These chapters must (in my eyes) say how much it does at logistics or say so oog so that people know this.

By the way try saying one-hundred-fifty silver slay...same thing.

BTW Nj did it perfectly this past weekend. NPC got hit with an Assassinate, "altered effect, 500 damage". I stopped to give the marshal a thumbs up.

 

[mikestrauss]

Prepare to Die: two-hundred-fifty eviscerate! two-hundred-fifty eviscerate! two-hundred-fifty eviscerate!

That's way too many syllables.

What I was talking about is when chapters want there baddies to not take an eviscerate but instead take a large amount of damage. These chapters must (in my eyes) say how much it does at logistics or say so oog so that people know this.

By the way try saying one-hundred-fifty silver slay...same thing.

BTW Nj did it perfectly this past weekend. NPC got hit with an Assassinate, "altered effect, 500 damage". I stopped to give the marshal a thumbs up.

An Assassinate or an Eviscerate? Because, damn, if it was an assassinate, that was the best assassinate ever in the history of the game.

-MS

 

[Gilwing]

What I was talking about is when chapters want there baddies to not take an eviscerate but instead take a large amount of damage. These chapters must (in my eyes) say how much it does at logistics or say so oog so that people know this.

By the way try saying one-hundred-fifty silver slay...same thing.

BTW Nj did it perfectly this past weekend. NPC got hit with an Assassinate, "altered effect, 500 damage". I stopped to give the marshal a thumbs up.

An Assassinate or an Eviscerate? Because, damn, if it was an assassinate, that was the best assassinate ever in the history of the game.

-MS

It was actually neither. I made a mistake. It was a Terminate.