Nioca

Once you complete a log and learn just how tedious and time-consuming it is, you earn every right to complain. Until then, just be grateful we're providing logs at all, and not just truncated summaries.

Originally Posted By: Dantius Originally Posted By: Nioca Chocobo breeding? There's a great 8-Bit theater I'd like to post here, but something tells me that that would be a veeery bad idea. That's actually where I got it from. And yes, it'd probably be a very bad idea.

Chocobo breeding?

AIM Express doesn't do chat rooms. And even if it did, it's as slow as hell. CoolIM is another option, though.

Are you making sure to force a new frame between each bubble? I can't remember the exact call at the moment, it's been a while... I think it's force_terrain_redraw(); or something to that effect. Anyway, if it's not redrawing with each change, it probably won't display correctly.

Woo! Level again! Click to reveal.. (Johnathon Dark, Level VI) JOHNATHON DARK Occupation: Pilot Temperament: Hotshot Rank: Ensign Attributes STR - 3 (9/9 Stamina) DEX - 4 (14% Dodge) CRD - 1 (3 Speed) INT - 5 END - 3 (28/28 HP) Skill Points: 0/55 Skills Pilot - 5 Melee Weapon (Nuclear Blade) - 4 Turret (Atom Blaster) - 3 Melee Weapon (Planar Blade) - 3 (+3) Knowledge (Spacecraft) - 3 (+1) Perception - 3 (+1) Handheld Weapon (Stun Pistol) - 2 Computers - 1 Diplomacy - 1 Bluff - 1 Armor - 1 Traits/Feats Supreme Focus - Once-per-day and for 5 stamina, can get a guaranteed minor critical on a single roll. So, basically, a bit of training in my new-found melee weapon. Not very imaginative, but it ought to be useful. EDIT: Gah, just caught Dantius's message. Updated.

Click to reveal.. (Johnathon Dark, Level V) JOHNATHON DARK Occupation: Pilot Temperament: Hotshot Rank: Ensign Attributes STR - 3 (9/9 Stamina) DEX - 4 (14% Dodge) CRD - 1 (3 Speed) INT - 5 END - 3 (18/25 HP) Skill Points: 1/50 Skills Pilot - 5 Turret (Atom Blaster) - 3 Melee Weapon (Nuclear Blade) - 4 (+1) Knowledge (Spacecraft) - 2 Perception - 2 Diplomacy - 1 Computers - 1 Bluff - 1 Handheld Weapon (Stun Pistol) - 2 Armor - 1 Traits/Feats Supreme Focus - Once-per-day and for 5 stamina, can get a guaranteed minor critical on a single roll. Sorry it's coming so late, but it's a simple update, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

Eva's getting muscles! Okay, not really. But she's getting some nice juicy HPs to help protect her from hostile fire. Plus some Evoc so she can put out some nasty fire of her own. Click to reveal.. (Eva Roe, Level IV) Name: Eva Roe Sex/Race: Female Elf Age: 21 Occupation: Wandering Healer Alignment: Empathic Homesick ATTRIBUTES Strength - 2 (+1) Dexterity - 2 Intelligence - 9 Health - 12/16 (+4) Stamina - 4/10 Speed - 5 SKILLS Magic (Evocation): 7 (+2) Magic (Conjuration): 5 Magic (Abjuration): 4 Religion: 2 Composure: 1 Streetwise: 1 TRAITS Weak (Weakness) - Eva lacks in physical power. She has heightened difficulty in any task that requires physical strength; For any strength check or skill check that uses strength, her Strength is treated as if it were at 1, regardless of her actual strength statistic. Bookworm (Perk) - Constant study has made Eva an expert on all things magical. Eva gains three additional spell slots. INVENTORY 2 Gold 25 Silvers 0 Coppers (4.50 Gold), Traveling Clothes, Spellbook, Journal, Pen & Ink, Hardtack, Water Flasks (2/2), Vibrant Red Cloak SUMMON Patches the Criticalico - A positively adorable male calico cat, summoned by Eva on a critical success. Currently obeys her commands, and has demonstrated tracking skills. Likes being petted.

Yay, perk! And yay, more spell slots! I look forward to the next session. Things are starting to heat up.

There was a parry skill, but it was done away with.

I'll admit, initially seeing a time of 10 PM startled me a bit, but that was before I converted it to EDT. Works for me. It'll be interesting to see how a civilian character works out. It's been an idea that's been sitting around my brain for a while now, but considering the focus there was on combat, I hadn't worked up the nerve to actually make such a character. Thing is, I always figured that it'd boil down to me sitting around for entire sessions while the party did stuff. Worse comes to worse, I can always run a cheering squad from the sidelines during combat. On a side note, which room is this taking place in?

Cheat codes that recover health and energy respectively. You can enter them by pressing Shift-W during gameplay.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan I was going with option B. After level one, wizards only learn a new spell and fighters a new ability every Nth level -- say, every odd level (maybe less often for non-Sarachim campaigns). Do mages pick up new spells more often than that currently? That might work (emphasis on "might"), but the thing is, Spellcasting's working fine already. Anyway, to answer your question, yes and no. Mages usually start with about 5 spell slots (with 5 intelligence), varying up and down between 3 (Anthony Block, Mage Fighter) and 8 (Eva Roe, Evoker/Conjurer/Abjurer). Depending on how the player levels the character, they could get a 3 or 4 spell slots over the course of a campaign, or they could get none. Depends on how high a priority the player puts on Intelligence and additional spell slots. However, the thing is, mages can switch their spells out whenever they get some time on their hands, so if a spell turns out to be a bit of a dud, or if they level up and raise their magic skills, they can switch spells out for something more useful. In short, a mage can technically have up to 18 or more spells, but unless they have INT to match, they just can't have them all active at once. The problem is, locking a mage into permanent abilities and only getting a new ability every other/every few levels is that they're stuck with whatever dud and low level spells they have when they started, which also take up space that could be used for better spells. And if you get a multi-classed mage like Eva Roe... well, suffice it to say that you'd start feeling constrained very, very quickly. In short, with a fighter, the abilities would count as extra bonuses. They could still just switch to regular enemy-whacking whenever they pleased. With mages, however, there's no base alternative to switch to, meaning that a mage with a poor selection of starting abilities would effectively get neutered for the entire campaign.

Ack. Seems I'm late to the party (literally). Ah well, it'll be fun to watch.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan I think the idea would be always using the abilities, like the way a mage always uses spells. Think of fighters as mages who only cast spells at close range. With really sharp wands. Actually, it's more of a way to spice up fighters, rather than have abilities replace normal weapon usage entirely. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather not have to have an ability just to shoot arrows off my bow. Quote: What's kinda weird is how spells per day is based on intelligence, but fighting abilities known is based on skills. How about abilities known is based on skills in some way, while abilities memorized is based on STR/DEX/INT? Or should it just be INT, to make it useful for fighters as well? I suggested this before, and it received lukewarm reception at best. Probably because it starts entering difficult territory when you base martial off of stats; if you base it off of STR, archers get screwed. Base it off of DEX, and melee fighters get screwed. Base it off of INT, and fighters of all kinds get screwed because they have to spread stat points out even further just to keep status quo. Quote: EDIT: The simplest way to have spells and 'combat manoeuvres' not depend on skill levels is to let each character choose a new ability (either magical or martial) every n levels. That way, it's easy to support magic-only characters, martial-only characters, and characters who dabble in both, all without influencing how skill points are spent. Ick. That is... not good. If I'm reading correctly, what you suggest would either: A) Grant abilities of this type to both fighters and mages, thereby inflating the power of the already rather powerful wizards even further. OR Base a wizard's spells off of a similar ability style system, which practically nerfs wizards into oblivion. Neither is a good option.

Two reasons: First, it inspires people to pump whatever Martial skill they have like crazy. Second, because to actually get any abilities, you'd have to follow a mindset like the one presented in my first point and blow skill points like crazy. Furthermore, while yes, the wizard with 2 in staves would have a lot of abilities at high-level, with only a two in staves, none of those would be very powerful. Or powerful at all, really. So, ultimately, it'd be the same as not getting any at all.

Originally Posted By: Dantius So would wizards get these too? Because how would we draw an arbitrary line between "fighters" and "wizards"? If they have points in Martial, are they a fighter? If they have points in any magic skill, are they a wizard? How would that work? Who says a line would need to be drawn? I don't see why a battlemage couldn't have both spells AND martial abilities. This sort of thing would likely balance itself out; Yes, a battlemage would have both martial abilities and spells. However, because their martial skill isn't as strong, their abilities aren't as strong, and because they've got a martial focus, their spells likely won't be as strong and they'll likely have fewer spell slots.

That probably would be better, come to think of it.

Well, they'd obviously need to be balanced. Anything from a simple accuracy penalty (harder to pull of than a normal attack) to something like the defense penalty in Boregloaf's Spinning Blade ability would work. And there's the good old standby of Stamina expenditure.

*kabump* A thought about fighter skills. What if, each level (including the first), a character with martial skills gets to select a new martial ability? It'd have to be appropriate to their current martial skills (e.g. no super-awesome sword maneuver when you've got a 1 in swords, no mace knockback ability when you're only trained in bows, common-sense-etc.), and you'd naturally only get one-per-level, but unlike a wizard, you wouldn't actually need to memorize the abilities. Once you know it, it's there for good. I think it'd help spice up fighters and help make them a bit more balanced with wizards, but simultaneously avoid complexity and keep fighters simple to play. Thoughts?

... Oops. I completely forgot this existed.

I've tried to get back into KoL a few times, but... Pretty much what Diki and Xel said.

Okay, wow. You leave for one day, and the thread explodes. That said, there's a little adage that needs to be kept in mind here: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Anyway... I sort of regret bringing damage up. Me and my big mouth... But yes, I was running damage where different weapons/spells had different damage potential. However, the difference was pretty small; Erika's Daggers, for example, did at most 4 damage, whilst Iliau's staff had the highest maximum... of 6. Furthermore, simpler weapons like staves get small a bonus to accuracy, so while you might not be doing as much damage per blow, you're landing blows more often. In short, someone preferring one weapon over another isn't getting royally shafted. Originally Posted By: Dantius Well, in all honesty, (and I'm talking all honesty here), it seemed like this bit was just pandering fanboy service (since I'm being brutally honest here) to Eph. You included his backstory NPC to the point where he was a central ficure in the campaign, you centered the campaign around his character, you marginalized or ignored other character, etc. This was a very bad idea. (NB: I'm guilty of this too, ) I wouldn't go quite that far. I was subconsciously favoring the character, yes, but not the player. There's a difference. Originally Posted By: Dantius Well if you wanted to get more stuff done, don't spend so much time travelling. We had how many sessions wasted on wandering through he wilderness/sailing again? Four? More? Yeah, I know. Again, there are mistakes I'll be aware of to avoid the next time I do this. Originally Posted By: Dantius Oh, and there are always sequels. Who says that there isn't some crucial text in the monastery that will allow Reat to further his goals of archipelagaic domination? (I am fairly sure that's not a word, but it is now!) I've actually already got an idea of where a sequel would go and how it would end. Originally Posted By: Dantius Also, it majorly irked me not being able to see my damage roll. I'd roll a critical and then do minimum damage, which really sucked. Actually, as I was running it, criticals automatically did maximum damage. Anyway, I definitely prefer keeping damage to enemies transparent. I'd rather have the party marveling at a boss enemy's toughness or ability to shrug off attacks, rather than wondering just how many hitpoints I loaded into the thing. Originally Posted By: Dantius Cool campaign, liked the atmosphere, liked the combat, liked the RPing, plot was a bit cliché but workable, despised the ending. Reat was/is not a good villain, and I blame that for the failure to bring closure. Actually, I think Reat is a good villain, just presented poorly. At the end, I tried to give him some legroom so that he seemed less like a mustache-twirling cliche, which... backfired rather spectacularly. It probably would have ran better if I hadn't tried to cram two sessions worth of exposition into two hours. Originally Posted By: Dantius Originally Posted By: Lilith wizards don't generally run around with greatswords because (apart from not needing to hit things with weapons) they don't have weapon proficiency for it and God help me if you try to get a class-based weapon proficiency system shoehorned into AIMHack i will personally throttle you through your computer screen This sounds like a challenge. But weapon proficiency always struck me as pointless, because every point you wizard puts into a martial skill is one less point they are putting into a Magic skill. Eventually they'll have to pick one or the other, I suppose, because the difficulty will scale with the PC's that are dumping all their points into one skill, and you'll have a character that is proficient in all skills but not good enough at any of them. A few points in Swords at the beginning is fine, but you can't expect someone with 6 in Swords and 6 in Evocation to be able to compete with someone with a 12 in Evocation or a 12 in Swords That said, Red Mages are cool. Dantius? A certain Etris Tanner would like to have a word with you. You see, the thing with having a mage with 12 in Evocation or a swordsman with 12 in swords is that they become something of a one-trick pony with glaring weaknesses, one that a more versatile character, like the 6/6 battlemage you mentioned above, would be able to take advantage of. Swordsman vs. Battlemage? The battlemage would be able to just dance out of reach of the swordsman whilst blasting him with fire. Wizard vs. Battlemage? Use a magic-disrupting spell to turn off the magic, then go to town with the sword. Seriously, the two examples you listed above would have no choice but to run with their tails between their legs if they came across a unique challenge. An L1 archer on an unreachable cliff could take down all but the most powerful single-classed swordsman, and if a single-classed wizard ran across a monster with magic resistance? The results wouldn't be pretty. There's a power in versatility. To quote another adage, Jack of all trades, master of none, though ofttimes better than master of one. Originally Posted By: Dantius Good, let's test this. You get a gun with a full clip of ammo, and I get to select a martial artist at the top of his form who has like eight black belts. Twenty paces, who wins? You're clearly not as well trained as he is (unless you are, in which case replace "you" with "someone off the street", so why did you just win? It's because the gun is so much more powerful than hands. Now image you're playing a game where shooting someone in the face does the same amount of damage as smacking someone upside the head. Wouldn't your enjoyment of the game be diminished by you having to constantly suspend disbelief about "I've shot him five times in the head and he's still kicking the crap out of me!"? You watch too much television. In real life, taking a bullet doesn't instantly kill or incapacitate unless it hits vital parts of the spine or brain. Furthermore, it's actually rather difficult to hit a moving target, and especially difficult to hit a small target like someone's head. And on top of that, the shooter would have adrenaline pumping, which makes it different to concentrate and focus, screwing up his aim even more... Then, if the shooter burns up all 16 of his shots (assuming he has a gun that can support 16-bullet magazines), he's effectively screwed, since the Monk has an unlimited supply of fists. Plus, the monk could likely close the distance before the shooter could get a shot off like Nalyd mentioned. So, yeah, the monk wins hands-down. Originally Posted By: Dantius Originally Posted By: Triumph Something along this line sort of happened to Lanrezac - by splitting skill points between magic and a weapon, he was nowhere near as proficient at combat as Boregloaf, and nowhere near as magically proficient as the other three party members. To some extent I planned him that way, as a supplementary sort of character who could fill in and help a little on both sides. However, I think he also struggled some as combat scaled more to match the rest of the party, and by the end he had a tough time landing a hit. This is a quandary. If the PC's aren't balanced, the DM gets a bad choice between 1. Letting the more powerful characters obliterate the setting with ease by scaling to the lower reaches of the party or 2. Screwing over the less optimized party members by scaling to keep the powerful characters engaged in the setting. Of course, the third alternative is even worse, which would be to simply let the DM level the characters to keep the scaled. But we've seen that happen (in The World), and the result is that they players feel a disconnect between them and their character, which is worse than just some unrealistic combat. You're forgetting option #4: scale the challenges to the party's level, rather than their skills. This makes it imperative for characters to keep their secondary skills up (though it also makes it imperative for the DM to implement skill challenges with enough frequency to warrant this). Originally Posted By: Lilith it would probably be a good idea to revamp the skill point system maybe something like this: * raising a skill costs a number of skill points equal to its new value, just like in character creation * when you level up, you get a number of skill points equal to, say, 3 times your new level that way you can either have one skill that's as high as possible or a few skills that are only a couple of points behind Hmm... that could work. The only problem is that, at low levels, you'd really be getting very few skill points, and at high levels, you'd be getting a truly freakish number of them. Originally Posted By: Lilith btw my kokoro wish is to get rid of the Str/Dex/Int stats altogether and just have skills, maybe i'll run a campaign sometime and see how it goes Eh... On one hand, I can see how this could work. On the other hand, it'd likely result in the introduction of a whole beepload of skills just to handle all the things Str/Dex/Int used to handle. I'm not saying it wouldn't work, I'm just saying that it'd probably wind up introducing a whole new level of complexity. Originally Posted By: Triumph One other thing I'd add is that I think one of the draws of AIMHack is simplicity and ease of access. I am willing to put up with the occasional inconvenience, such one character not having quite as much power as another, for the sake of that simplicity and easy use. Part of what happened in Selos was learning on the part of the players. Once players understand that they don't need to raise Magic to 11 and ignore all other skills, they stop doing it. I haven't seen anyone in subsequent games maxing out a single skill in the way people did in the first games (magic skills at 10, 13, and 10, respectively, for Selos, for example). I haven't seen any characters outside Selos who have had the problem I felt Lanrezac did. Don't rush to change the system for a problem caused simply by player inexperience or misunderstanding. I think an RPG assumes a degree of player maturity in order for it to work. QFT. Even with the best system, when you've got new players and new DMs, you're going to have problems. No two ways about it. Woo. I think I criticaled my "Summon Gigantic Post" roll.

Okay, huge massive post for wrap-up here. First, a proper denouement: Originally Posted By: Aftermath When the next morning comes, you can't help but feel lost. Not eight hours earlier, five adventurers came to claim Reat's life. Now, three were assisting the very goblin they had been trying to stop. After Iliau departed from the group, Erika performed a surprisingly respectful burial for Xuan (though, naturally, only after respectfully relieving him of even the knife he used to claim his own life). Darusk was sent back to the Trimaran to fetch Casper. And Harosh hesitantly helped Reat decipher Orlis's journal. During the tedious work of trying to decipher the journal, Reat relates what happened. He came to the island looking for the journal of Orlis in his search for the Cliffpainter's supposed treasure. Apparently, he and a necromancer named Erratis were close companions. Also apparently, Orlis had built some kind of vault for a treasure of Erratis's... alarmingly, though, your glances through Reat's notes seem to be rather vague on the subject. Furthermore, it seems the mages were part of a triad, with a third, unknown mage having been involved at some point. After two days, Reat finished at Ssareko Point. With you in tow, he set off to Thane, delivering the jewels back to Alaris and confirming that, yes, Alaris and Reat are working together to locate this treasure. Krath, Alaris's butler, was apparently behind the jewelry theft, in a misguided attempt to protect his master. Certain measures taken by Reat to uncover the jewelry had left him in mortal condition, causing him to tell the next person he came across of their location... Wallo. Wallo then was relieved of the jewelry by Reat after Wallo started talking of mutiny against Reat. Alaris doesn't pay you anything, seeing how much damage you did to Reat's treasure hunt. However, he does agree to get Gregory Harper of the Ivory Stool to drop the 1,000 Gold bounty he had out against you for the damages caused by Xuan and Erika, along with the 1,600 gold worth of bounties set out by Reat. The 5,000 gold bounties originating from Ricoto, unfortunately, were ones that you'd just have to live with. The next day, Reat informed you that you'd be setting out to Hermit Isle, where Orlis supposedly had an old tower, and where the remnents of his men were located. Spring weather was finally coming, and the adventure had finally come full circle. Where it had begun, it was now over. And a new one was just beginning... Assuming, of course, that you decided to tag along. Reat genuinely seems to believe that his actions will lead to a better and united Skarrifissk. And yet he's also taken extreme measures to further those goals. At this point, you can't help but wonder... is this really the road you want to go down? Okay, time to send in those epilogues. Some notes here for those that might be feeling lost: -Iliau can do pretty much anything xe wants, since xe left the party at the end of the finale. -Xuan is dead. There's not much to do besides decompose here. -Harosh, Erika, and Darusk joined up with Reat at the end of the Finale. Now that the characters are in Thane during the denouement, if you've changed your mind and want to break for it, you can do so in your epilogue. Also, you can either write your epilogue yourself or, if you're feeling uncomfortable or confused, can just send me a small outline of what you want your character to do and I can write it up for you. -Jewels wasn't present during the Finale, so I had Casper stay back on the Trimaran with some mysterious illness. It's ultimately up to her whether she joins with the trio that joined with Reat, strike out on her own, or what have you. -I'll also be writing up epilogues for some of the NPCs as well, just so you can see what kind of impact you had on Skarrifissk. Okay, now it's time for some thoughts. Let me start off with saying that I really enjoyed running this most of the time. The upkeep was a pain in the place where the sun doesn't shine, but actually running the sessions was great. However, there are a lot of things that, in hindsight, were ill-thought-out, executed poorly, and, given the chance, I likely would have changed. First, on the campaign's denouement. I've got to be honest, I couldn't help but wince. There was way too much explaining there, explaining that really ought to have been avoided, had I handled the plot better. Admittedly, part of this was the players making the rather surprising decision to join with the villain, instead of killing him (though that may have been my fault by making him too sympathetic at the end). But still... the plot should run smoothly, not get dumped on the players in the end text. Another thing was the whole Orlis thing. Don't get me wrong, I liked injecting Harosh and Orlis a little deeper into the plot. However, I feel I got too enamored with it. The result is that I wound up side-tracking the plot and entire point of the campaign, and also wound up unintentionally showing favoritism to Harosh. This wound up being unfair to everyone (Harosh for hijacking his backstory, and the rest of the party for perpetually thrusting Harosh in the limelight). And while I don't think it actually turned out bad, it still wasn't as good as you guys deserved. Speaking of which, allow me to take a moment and say that you all were excellent players. As were the subs, when they had to step in. Another thing I probably wouldn't have done is keep derailing myself. Every other session, I'd wind up changing the plot on a whim. Which ultimately meant that when it ended, things were a bit of a mess. Players derailing the campaign is one thing, but when the DM is constantly derailing himself, it sort of defeats the purpose of having a plot in the first place. There were also quite a few things that I wanted to do that never got a chance to see the light of day. Visiting Saris Peak and the monastery there, for one, and visiting the religion-torn battlefield called the town of Nikorom. Not to mention various other bits I planned out. Plus a few things I wanted to reveal to you now, but can't now that a sequel hook has been firmly lodged in place. Mechanically, there are probably a few things I would have done differently, but I think it mostly just came down to inexperience. Now, regarding the system, there was one thing I noticed while DMing, that particularly stood out last session: PC Defense. The way defense is handled right now is rather horribly broken. It's pretty transparent when it's Player versus DM-controlled-and-statted monsters, but becomes blatantly obvious when Player-versus-player arises. To put it bluntly, all current PCs have defenses of less than 20, regardless of their level. This means that someone completely untrained in any martial skill could still land a hit on high-dex player character. Fair enough, everyone has their critical hit, right? Thing is, if the creature has so much as a +5 attack, their odds of landing a hit increase to 25-50%, depending on the PC. And if they have a +10, which is about average for most semi-leveled PCs? That increases to 50-80% hit chance. If PCs and Monsters were statted out the same way, 9 out of 10 fights would break down into particularly bloody slaughter-fests where even natural 4s would regularly land hits. If a lot of the PCs thusfar were to turn on each other? The more optimized would be landing hits on natural 1s. The thing is that defenses don't scale like attack power; they're based primarily on stats, which require a lot of skill points to increase. My thought is to maybe make stats count for double when it comes to defense; that way, it'd be possible to invest in a character's defenses efficiently and help keep the system from slanting so far into favoring offense. Okay, I think I've rambled enough for now. Any thoughts, comments, criticisms? Questions? Things you think I should have done differently?

It sort of says something when you've got everyone including the DM going "WTF JUST HAPPENED HERE?!?!". Anyway, yes, the campaign has ended. I shall have a proper exit written up tomorrow, because it was physically impossible for me to predict that it would end this way. And then I'll get to work on the log. In the meantime, though... To the migraine pills! *also, note altered signature*