v0.10 First impressions

[Ruki]

To be fair, alchemy coatings needed a buff of some sort. With that + the poison rituals, they'll actually be useful.

 

[Tantarus]

Can’t Mettle out of Death, bruh.

I am going to be that guy, 1 life spell 11 death spells... Rules can try and force me into healbitch role all they want, not going to happen! (Note that Life spell is my rebirth)

Or I will just go celestial, no pressure to memorize life spells, and I get a wand with about 1000 points of elemental damage a day to throw for free...

 

[Mulgrum]

11 deaths, one life for rebirth. 12 paralyze, 12 confine, 12 sleep, 12 bind. Just keep chucking them til it sticks.

 

[mikestrauss]

Here's something else that's a problem.

"Contact gels used on weapons last until they connect, not one swing"

You've just made contact gels better then Eviscerates and Slays, skills that actually cost xp to purchase, versus a freaking alchemical gel.

Based on experience, this part doesn't bother me, for a variety of reasons.

1) Contact gels cost money. Fighter skills don't.
2) Contact gels on ammunition are still used up hit or miss.
3) Contact gels are almost never used on melee weapons because they are REALLY slow to apply and only generally useful if applied to a spare weapon (or an off-hand weapon that is almost exclusively used for blocking). Otherwise the effect gets burned off on a meaningless target. Few people carry an easily accessible spare weapon around just to swing a surprise 10 Sleep Poison instead of 10 Normal.
4) In addition to costing money, contact gels also cost XP in the form of levels of Alchemy. Most useful contact gels effectively cost 9+ XP. That effective cost can be decreased, but only at the cost of even more money.
5) A contact gel is only usable once EVER, even if it is "until hit," while Fighter skills are once per day.
6) Fighter skills can be recovered via meditation if they miss, effectively making them "until hit" across the course of a day. Heck, if you have enough (and many fighters will), just keep swinging the skill until you hit and then meditate all the misses back at the end of the fight.

Only one type of character meaningfully benefits from contact gels lasting until they connect and that is thrown weapon users. These are usually rogues, but it isn't that uncommon to find fighters (with alchemist friends) going this route. I'm happy that thrown weapons got a mild boost, honestly.

-MS

 

[mikestrauss]

To be fair, alchemy coatings needed a buff of some sort. With that + the poison rituals, they'll actually be useful.

I'm convinced that these rules are a net debuff to alchemy coatings. As I detailed above, the so-called buff, really only helps the small population of people who use alchemy coatings with thrown weapons, while the fact that coatings go away at the end of the weekend seems to really screw archers that use coatings, which I believe is a higher segment of the population (I know for a fact that it is in HQ).

-MS

 

[Draven]

I'm convinced that these rules are a net debuff to alchemy coatings. As I detailed above, the so-called buff, really only helps the small population of people who use alchemy coatings with thrown weapons, while the fact that coatings go away at the end of the weekend seems to really screw archers that use coatings, which I believe is a higher segment of the population (I know for a fact that it is in HQ).

-MS

Eh.

1) Alchemy costs money, Fighter skills don’t.

- I don’t understand why that matters, tbh. Why should coin be more/less valuable than build? In fact, one could argue that 2.0 is intended to put more value in build-bought skills; if anything, this indicates that this direction supports that intent.

That being said, I also agree that coatings should remain until used, because one of the relationships in Alliance is the alchemist coating arrows for fighters; I don’t see that the “gain” outweighs the deterioration of that team-reliance.

 

[SomeGuy]

Can’t Mettle out of Death, bruh.

Oh that would be cool though.
https://i.imgur.com/K6wA1jP.gif

 

[Axle]

Nobody seems to have noticed something that really stood out out to me on the first read through. Weapon coatings go away at the end of the weekend. ALL weapon coatings.

This doesn't mean much to the rare person who coats a sword, but this is devastating for a large number of archers that I know. I know a bunch of archers that have built up a nice supply of vorpal 10 arrows. Suddenly, that supply goes poof after the next game played. I think this small change (which I appreciate the reasoning behind why it was done), will have an extreme effect on a specific portion of the player base, in some cases completely destroying character concepts.

-MS

Oh no I missed this. Gotta start thinking about a new character now.

 

[Muir]

Good:

• Reducing rit limits. This has been needed for a while. Yay! Thank you thank you!
• Absence of Paragons. Those were a big fat mess in the last edition. I like the concept of end-game growth...but those needed a LOT more work before release.
• Terror is out. Wasn't a big fan of it.
• Still liking but not new in v10: Swarm, built-spent-in-X, Hearty (though body itself is pretty useless now), Corrupt (esp after fixes), Cause Disease (esp after fixes), Educated
• MWE to Sylvanborn, I like.

Undecided:

• Barbarians to Oathsworn...I can't voice an opinion, since we still don't know what that means
• The flaw/true empower changes may be good, but can't speak to them until they come out.

Bad (most of these are ongoing concerns not yet fixed as of v10):

• This still feels messy as a rules release. A lot of clunkiness and a lot of cludge to fix problems that may/may not exist. Previous editions were focused on fixing things. This one appears to be focused on releasing a new game system, without fixing bugs from previous editions. The goal and direction of these changes feels haphazard at times.
• Removal of various alchemies, including quicksilver
• Evade changes. Rogues don't have the body to support half damage. The old evade was nice flavor and situationally useful. The new one feels pretty awful, except maybe for scouts.
• Rogues cease to be worthwhile as combatants. The intent appears to be to move them to gas/traps. Those who liked playing combat rogues need to find a new class for the most part.
• Fighters are amazing, until they aren't. Mettle helps, but overall, they're pretty weak in physical combat with other fighters 2.0. With the removal of P2D, triple-tapping a fighter can burn all their daily skills or make them lay down. No skill to it anymore, just character cards. Almost feels like rock-paper-scissors at times. Against almost any other class, though, fighters win the game in 2.0 (or die instantly...there's no middle ground).
• Earth is just a healbot class. With the decrease in viability against undead and no way to use defenses tactically anymore, the only role for this class appears to be binding and after-the-fact healing. Since binding is largely mitigated by Mettle, that leaves just healing. Not sure all healers want to be support-only.
• A lot of this is unscalable for plot. If your PCs walk around swinging 4s all day, but can spike to 19s for ten minutes at a time, how do you scale/plan? If you plan for momentary burst and the PCs are out for the day, they all die. If you don't, they steamroll. This is ugly from a numbers perspective.
• Huge body/armor...and it doesn't matter at all. Everyone can/should have max armor with the new armor system, and body bloats up bigly. However, none of it matters, when NPC fighters can just wander by and swing "disarmdisarm70normal" and burn through it, or force you to use a ton of daily skills every time.
• Life leech for invisible/undetectable necromancy. Using the Big Bad Evil should be risky, not something you can do freely without consequence! I'd be happy with "appears to heal me" and otherwise silent.
• Kyn having 3 racials is seriously OP (and I play a kyn). Same for unlimited Racial Dodge and Resist Magic purchases.
• [added because I forgot] Per-logistics period items. I hate this...but that's because I play regularly, travel, and pass items around to teammates. This change is GREAT for intermittent players. It's terrible for heavy players and hurts newer players, as items won't be handled off as readily. Instead of "this expires next month, so you can have it" now we have "this has 2 logistics left, so I'm going to keep it at home until I think I need it."
  • EDIT: I was just told that somewhere (I can't find it) numbers were given as 20 logs to replace 1yr and 100 logs to replace 5yr. If those are correct, my concerns are moot, as that more than covers the average traveling player. It does not reduce my concern for items not going to newer players, but does address my concern about durations.

Sum total:

• Do not like. Do not want. Does not feel like Alliance. Does not feel like a rules upgrade, but a replacement with a totally new and unrelated game.

Jim pretty much covered it for me. This reads like a possibly functional LARP system, but is going to play nothing like Alliance.

Just realized Flurry Rule is completely removed. I very much like this!

I don't. The reduced damage this system relies on is murder without it, as it means 'DISARMDISARMEVISCERATEEVISCERATE' solves most Big Bads who don't have Rogue levels or the same explicitly written-in 'does not take takeout effects' stuff we've all been complaining about in 1.3 in under five seconds. Not to mention that there is no way in the world any rogue player is going to be able to honestly take Evade half-damage correctly at the current speed of combat. I couldn't do it, and I've been playing rogues for a decade in this system.

To use a videogame game-design idiom, this combat system is even more rocket tag than our current one. Regular attacks might as well not exist, for all the effect they will have. The apparently intended play strategy for Fighters and Rogues is 'blow your per days in the first ten minutes of the event to get kills, then keep swinging so the NPCs are busy blocking while the casters burn down their encyclopedia of takeout effects'.

 

[Tantarus]

Ehhh I don't think flurry solves any of those issues. It may pace them down slightly but really not a huge difference over all. Those KO effects seem to be by design at this point with the way they are pushing rogues and fighters. Just like making earth a back row healbot. Not my preferred way to play. But will see how it goes in playtests.

 

[Melimir]

Long time lurker, first time poster here.

So I am a fairly new player (7ish events total), I may have a slightly different perspective than a lot of the more senior individuals around these parts, however I'll try and give alternatives to what I am commenting on as well as criticism. In addition, myself and my fellow adventures (all similar level) do travel as a group, we have played in high APL chapters and low APL chapters, including a nationals years back where as a level 5ish PC I was stageringly useless.

• Alchemy changes (coats expiring between events): I play a scholar archer, and frankly this kills my character concept as it is the only thing that makes me relevant in high APL chapters (my home chapter is HQ). The ability to use vorpals and/or poison coatings allows me to overcome threshold on many monsters or outright affect them. In addition, and probably most importantly, it allows me to feel relevant and like I am actually affecting the story. I've had many monsters take no effect from my 3 normal, and frankly nothing is more disheartening than to be basically told "hey you're not good enough/strong enough to matter to me, but here take a couple handfuls of my 20 wither (it has happened)". But change it up with a 13 normal or 3 nausea and I'd actually have an impact. Now the cost is steep, and this is the tradeoff. A significant amount of the treasure I receive has been going into maintaining this resource.
  
• Evade: The group I play with is all lower level, and this is the first defensive ability our rogue has access to and frankly gives him surviveability. Besides the mental math someone would have to do in dividing by 2, it is also extremely useful for lower level rogues (especially for a rogue who wants to actually fight from behind the monster line on an island not directly line fight with the fighters). We face a lot of creatures on modules that will swing for attacks such as 4 disease or 4 nausea (not so much the "arcane death" spam I've seen in a couple events). So it is still very is useful for us (us being low level characters) as it keeps him in the fight. My suggestion would be keep it as is.
  
• Relics: While I greatly appreciate what is trying to be accomplished here, I do not think the method is effective. Like many have stated the cannot be effectively used. In all most all circumstances a potion or waiting out the effect in low APL chapters, or orcish healing as I've seen at some high APL chapters is significantly more effective and quicker to employ.

Suggestions:

• Keep coatings as they are, while dumb defenses will expire between events (spell shield, weapon shield, ect).
• Evade: Keep as is in 1.3, essentially equivalent to a parry. Have evade/parry require the same build cost. (maybe even raise evade/parry/dodge/mettle build cost slightly).
  
• In addition, since rogues already have the evade/dodge progression (smart guard to avoid weapons/avoid almost everything respectively) perhaps consider giving fighters the same. Parry is the smart guard to avoid weapons, spell parry is a smart guard to avoid spells but requires a ritual so it is inaccessible to a lot of the player base (especially low/mid levels) so while nice, I will not be considering it. Now, how about meeting in the middle (absolute smart guard but not as good as dodge): when hit by an attack, whether an eviscerate or a bind, the individual would be effectively stunned for a 3 count and be able to shrug off the damage/effect, (I feel the wording is bulky but it demonstrates my point "I collect myself 1, I collect myself 2, I collect myself 3"). This would give it more value than parry, and would have it be weaker than dodge and make the individual vulnerable for a short time during which no abilities may be used. There would be less incentive to do what a lot of people are recommending and that is dump some XP into rogue skills purely for a dodge or two or 5.
• I liked the initial proposal for mediate, regain a botched/missed skill or spell, but having to mediate to simply reuse a per/day skill is unwieldy and greatly slows down the game. Thus I do not like having to "effectively meditate" (I realise the skill isn't actually used here) to use the same skill/ability again that day. So remove this requirement.
  
• Now relics, I hate to echo this bandwagon, but since it appears the design is for it not be a direct offensive ability or to increase a town's healing pool (hence the reason it is not just a simple healing/chaos charges), and since the curative route is a very inelegant/ineffective application, why not a crowd control option? A single charge would create a crowd control effect where I am suggesting the call "repulse". The effect is a creature would simply have to take 2 steps back from the caster. For options/greater relic ritual, a caster could expend 3 charges to create a "slow" or say 5 for a "repel", shoot for 10 maybe even a "shun", just to provide options and make it diverse (and rapidly consume charges/a player resource).
  
• Racials: Has anyone suggested simply replacing the racial dodge with a racial evade? Keep the same build cost. It is thematically the same and still quite useful, however it is greatly less powerful than racial dodges. In addition with this the unlimited purchases can still be allowed and are still effective but do not contribute to the ultimate avoidance bloat. And I believe power wise it is even more so in line with the racial prosthetic requirements for the race. Dark elves, instead of their all avoiding resist magic, could receive this new mettle I have suggested as their racial, which is still quite powerful.

 

[Alavatar]

Long time lurker, first time poster here.
...snip...

Thanks for the post. Good feedback.

 

[Muir]

Ehhh I don't think flurry solves any of those issues. It may pace them down slightly but really not a huge difference over all. Those KO effects seem to be by design at this point with the way they are pushing rogues and fighters. Just like making earth a back row healbot. Not my preferred way to play. But will see how it goes in playtests.

Flurry helps those issues by making it easier for NPCs to survive longer with lower body totals. Without some cap on attack speed, be it Flurry or marshals actually enforcing the rules regarding clearly stating damage before striking, the only ways to make an NPC last are either body total inflation or 'reduced' and 'no effect' calls. Given the design of .10, body inflation will overwhelmingly only slow down Fighters and Rogues due to their decreased access to takeouts and absence of access to carriers.

In my experience, fighting is not fun when you feel completely ineffective. The frustration that breeds also does not lead to a friendly, fun, and safe fighting environment on either end of the stick.

 

[KyleSchmelz]

Just to clarify a couple points:

Evade: Keep as is in 1.3, essentially equivalent to a parry.

Evade and Parry are not really equivalent. Evade can only be used on standard weapon blows, whereas Parry can also be used against blade skills like Eviscerate, Assassinate, Disarm, etc. Evade can evade Massive swings, though, and Parry can't.

Racials: Has anyone suggested simply replacing the racial dodge with a racial evade? Keep the same build cost.

I'm not sure anybody would pay 10 build for a Racial Evade, but it's a great idea otherwise.

Thanks for piping in! It often feels like most of the posters in the 2.0 forum have level 40+ characters and it's important to get feedback all across the board.

My personal thoughts on the newest packet (as someone with a fighter in the high 20s and a Cel templar right around level 20):

Removing the 9th level spell limitation on Cloaks and Banes while also removing any possibility of access to those abilities for melee classes seems absurd to me. I know there's an opportunity cost for taking those high magic abilities, but there's almost no way I'd take any less than 10 cloaks if I had 20+ formal.

I'm not 100% in the "fighters are obsolete" camp, but if the .10 rules went live right now, I'd definitely switch to either a Spellsword or a Scout. I've been contemplating Scout for a while, to be fair, but I really can't find a build I like as a fighter with this packet.

I love the concept of Mettle but I'm not sure about the 10 second timer. I'd really have to playtest it to be sure and my home chapter has not run a playtest so far. (I talked to the owner last year about running a playtest but we've had a change of ownership since then so I'm not sure if there's any plan to run one at this time.)

I love the change to Corrupt and Create Undead to make Life a fix for them.

Similarly, making First Aid work on Diseased targets is a great move.

I'm still not sure about PTD Disarm and Shatter in their proposed form. When every part of the rules update seemed to be built around the idea of standardizing/commonizing how things work, why did these two skills get singled out for a non standard delivery method?

Good riddance, complicated XP formula! Long live new XP!

Relics are meh. They seem like a fine step in the right direction, and some variation on the concept could be pretty cool, but I'm not sure how useful they'll really be in their current form. I know the owners don't want to give earth casters a real wand equivalent (and I personally think that a straight healing wand would be a bad move) but I feel like this could get a little more love. Admittedly, I don't have a great suggestion for how to improve it. Maybe if it required a minute to charge it, but then you could cast the spell freely instead of having to take a minute to focus it on the target? It would also be nice if you could use them at the same time as First Aid - this guy got berserked? Knock him down, relic awaken/first aid him, let him sleep it off for a minute.

I still hate the new Evocation and Cure incants. Putting the number in the middle of the incant means that the number is actually there as part of the IG incantation that the caster is actually saying IG instead of having it as an out of game part of the verbal. Just put the number at the end!

For that matter I dislike a lot of the new incants. "I evoke a [blah]" and "I call chaos" are probably my least favorites. I can't say "I protect you with a Dispel" is any worse or better than "I grant you the power to Dispel" but it's still not great.

Claws for all Wylderkin is great. Giving them an additional two racials is a bit much.

Sylvanborn! Neat. I'm not sure this would have been on my list of changes if I were in charge, but if it means I never hear "meewee" again I really can't complain.

I'm not sure how I feel about weapon coatings going away at the end of an event. It's nice being able to stock up on Vorpal arrows, and with stacked Critical Attacks being the new norm, I don't see why it's an issue for archers to bring their Vorpal arrows. Maybe if it were a little easier for alchemists to double-coat arrows (not requiring a workshop, or not requiring logistics somehow) this wouldn't bug me.

Magic Augment being open-ended is nice. Strangely enough, I didn't have any real opinions on that before I bought Formal Magic on my templar...

A ritual limit is way better than the other proposed restrictions on magic items. 60 feels high to me, but I don't know what a typical high level load-out looks like on the coasts. Both of my main characters definitely fall into the Haves category and I'm not sure I've ever hit 60 rits on either of them, though I come close on my templar if nobody else from my group shows up.

I get that Spell Parry should be limited somehow since it doesn't burn a Parry anymore but I don't know if Meditate is the best approach. I'd be less bothered by this if casters didn't have newly-granted access to a potentially huge number of stacked defenses.

All of these changes make me happy: Event duration instead of time duration on MIs, changed ritual target names, Wand component name change

I look forward to seeing the changes on Choose Flaw and True Empowerment. Even the folks who use Choose Flaw to its fullest (1/4 damage from all but Stone, 4x from Stone, must be worn to be used so you can just take it off if Stone comes around) around here think it's super cheesy.

I look forward to seeing Paragon Paths return someday when they're given enough time and attention to make them actually work.

Dryad armor clarification <3 <3 <3 I'm definitely gonna rock some leather armor with a gambeson in 2.0

I feel like people are kinda sleeping on Raging Blow. The only defense a typical fighter will have against a Massive Slay will be Resolute. That's a little nuts.

 

[Tulbor]

I feel like people are kinda sleeping on Raging Blow. The only defense a typical fighter will have against a Massive Slay will be Resolute. That's a little nuts.

Won't matter when there aren't any typical fighters left

 

[Muir]

I'll be honest, I discounted Raging Blow because it's essentially in the same boat Eviscerate is now. When was the last time you saw one of those land and stick, outside of PVP?

I don't know that I see it being commonly used, given that it's a weapon enchantment and a once per day that requires a meditate between uses even if you have more than one on the weapon in the first place, and only effects standard attacks and not takeouts.

 

[Tantarus]

I'm still not sure about PTD Disarm and Shatter in their proposed form. When every part of the rules update seemed to be built around the idea of standardizing/commonizing how things work, why did these two skills get singled out for a non standard delivery method?

Yeah I am really not a fan of these changes either. They make shields super bad. They make a ton of exceptions, Such as if your shield gets tapped by a disarm strike or shatter strike it pops your magic armor, but if it gets hit by normal weapon blows or something like a slay it doesn't.

I still hate the new Evocation and Cure incants. Putting the number in the middle of the incant means that the number is actually there as part of the IG incantation that the caster is actually saying IG instead of having it as an out of game part of the verbal. Just put the number at the end!

I really dislike incants becoming generic flavorless oog statements. It just feels weird. I would much prefer Something like "I call forth a dragons breath, 40 spell flame" A IG incant and a oog damage call.

I feel like people are kinda sleeping on Raging Blow. The only defense a typical fighter will have against a Massive Slay will be Resolute. That's a little nuts.

Yeah for PVP is pretty insane, but against npcs probably much less powerful. All the big fighter ritual effects seem to be locked behind mediate, which is disappointing.

 

[Tantarus]

I don't know that I see it being commonly used, given that it's a weapon enchantment and a once per day in the first place.

Yeah fighter magic weapons seem so meh to me, having to have multiple ritual slots to just swing magic for 10 mins at a time. Raging blow and Spellparry only useable once per battle...

 

[Muir]

Yeah fighter magic weapons seem so meh to me, having to have multiple ritual slots to just swing magic for 10 mins at a time. Raging blow and Spellparry only useable once per battle...

Plus, you know, countered by a 1st level spell in Disarm... and possibly by a Disarm swing too, although there's a serious marshalling headache. If the person swinging Raging Blow hasn't completed their incant, and someone faster counter taps their weapon with a Disarm, who takes damage?

Besides all of us who have to stand around in the hold while the nearest marshal considers the if the effect stack is FIFO, or at what point a blow becomes a blow (currently defined as 'when the incant is finished' the same as spells).

 

[Avaran]

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