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A:EftP - Perks and Character Differentiating


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I was reading about perks on the main page and wondered what types would be cool to have in.

 

The only ones we know of so far are backstab (self explanatory) and swordmage (not so much). I think that there should be a wide and large amount of perks that can cater to many aspects.

 

-For example-Single weapon mastery-From day one, i have always wanted a single weapon user that doesnt wield a shield. This would be cool.

 

-A monk type group of feats would be cool.

 

-Poison should be brougt back from the exile series (if it hasnt already)

 

Im hoping that this perk system that jeff is making will be more than meets the eye and affect how you play the game with different ways to go.

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Neither one does more damage. Both do damage based on how much you stack on an enemy (or how much gets stacked on you). It might be harder or easier to get the damage on, and there might be different caps, but they functional quite similarly.

 

—Alorael, who wouldn't count on a monk ever appearing, and there's a good reason for it: fists aren't equipment. In order to be better than equipment with many bonuses, they'd have to get increased damage and bonuses from traits. And then you're spending traits on that, so your character is worse unless those traits are better. Eventually it becomes a balancing nightmare in a system that has no classes to encourage or enforce unarmed combat. It could be done so that you choose monk traits and are functionally a fighter with no choice of weapons, but it would be a very niche build.

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There won't be any monk builds, and there's a reason. It doesn't belong in Avernum. What would be the lore behind that? If Jeff decided to put some ridiculous explanation for why there's a monastery fighting academy with generations old martial arts masters in the caves of Exile at the time, fine. After all, the monks we're all talking about - the Shaolin - do not only use their own body parts. They use all the variety of far eastern metal weapons of war. Including swords, spears and flails. So yes, it could be implemented and balanced (the absence of need for loot being more of an issue than the power of the traits themselves imo), but it wouldn't be right.

Also, yes, those feats are possible. Let's not get into it any further in this thread.

 

I would like to see a little more differentiation in melee itself (fast lightweight vs heavy hitter kinda thing) and similar fields where it's become more about cooldowns and graphics than lore or effect. How about making poison more effective vs humanoids but acid more against uh... slimes? Or sumthin. Too tired to formulate a prettier response. Oh rent, why do you curse me so, why the 17 hour shifts at Oktoberfest... why

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There were monks who weren't mad in Avernum, although they weren't numerous and never really got an explanation. But yes, bare-fisted fighters are common in certain types of fantasy. Actually, mostly in two types: those influenced by Japan, China, and martial arts, and those influenced by D&D. In reality, while unarmed combat was a part of many (most?) martial traditions and is still part of modern military training, it's never stood up very well to armed opposition.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't advocate reality as a concern in fantasy games. He does see it as a justification for keeping the monks out. Fists have a long and honorable tradition in the swords and sorcery genre, but when the swords come out the fists are second fiddle.

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Monks tend to be rather gimmicky fringe builds anyways.

 

Not that I tend to shy away from them, mind you - WAAAAAY too many games think it's HILARIOUS to strip away 20 levels worth of hard won loot, turning your sword wielding atomic ultra samurai into Derpy the Club Wielding Village Idiot.

 

But I digress. An unarmed monk is always a wierdy among his peers, and I think Jeff, even if he didn't subject the concept to scathing parody, would simply feel it would be too difficult to balance. Sure, he himself said that the Shadowwalker was a very silly concept, but it still didn't demand working around a "no weapons" clause.

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I wouldnt say that though. I actually think that jeff would have a better chance of implementing a monk type character in Avadon more than avernum. Avadon is more about crazy/awesome classes whereas avernum is about the group. I would not be surprised if avernum is passed up on the monk idea, only to be passed onto avadon. Besides, avadon has done 2 melee classes and 2 mage classes. The only other classes he could choose would be a "Dedicated" ranged archer class or a monk. I would prefer the dedicated ranged class tbh. When i say dedicated i mean called shot, precise shot, disabling shot, fire arrow. All that. Not just flurry ranged attacks like the bm and sw.

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Avadon would definitely be the school of mechanics to put in such a class if he so desired - Avernum's too wide open, and it would mean having to balance Unarmed Combat along with EVERYTHING ELSE EVER a character could feasibly invest in.

 

Thing is, he's already got an overt NINJA (and yes, the Shadowwalker is an awesome class), I'm not sure if he'd be willing to stretch the WTF budget to afford a Kung-fu guy. On the other hand, it might make the Shadowwalker seem like less of an anomaly if there was more Asian-ish influence in the game.

 

That's kinda why the monk so readily suffers. Most western RPGs are decidedly western, while Monks are almost invariably eastern. Cultural connotations aside, I still stand by the notion that Monks are gimmicky and fringe, however, even if they are technically a baseclass in the eyes of D&D.

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I found that the classes in avadon were essentially all the same thing when it comes to the type of classes (which were 2). Blademaster and Shadowwalker were in the combat class category and Shaman and Sorceress were in magic class category. The reason that they were so like each other was how they were made-Both SW and BM get melee and missile capabilities though favoring melee a bit more. Both Sorc and Shaman get magic and ranged capabilities, though they favor magic more.

 

Aside from that, there are minor things that each class can do and cant, but in reality-they play very similar to each other. The only games where they are completely different would be the geneforge series and nethergate. Celts play completely different to romans and geneforge is even more so of that.

 

The way jeff is going to need to switch that up would be to adding an almost pure ranged combat class in avadon. If he did that, then i might give it a shot. Aside from that, the shadowwalker plays too similar to BM and i was very dissapointed. Im figuring that he can setup an ultra cool backstab like in bioware games. In the game-backstab was when you are next to an ally?? Made no sense.

 

I found that the blademaster was the coolest character class in the game (which says alot cause i greatly favor the rogue type chars). You can use bows to a pretty good extent and can still melee. However, they still needed more ranged attacks. Jeff has got to add some kind of ranged warrior into avadon. Something with bows/Crossbows would be cool.

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Actually, Avadon already favors ranged for both the blademaster and the shadowwalker. Mechanically, that's the best build. What would be better is a way to use either class as a melee or ranged build equally effectively. Yes, it would probably need a separate ranged tree, but it would also need to balance strength with dexterity.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't think shadowwalkers need to be so Asian. If their razordisks were replaced with throwing knives and they didn't wear obvious ninja outfits, they could just as easily be called assassins or rogues and fit right in.

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Originally Posted By: Attachment Disorder
Actually, Avadon already favors ranged for both the blademaster and the shadowwalker. Mechanically, that's the best build. What would be better is a way to use either class as a melee or ranged build equally effectively. Yes, it would probably need a separate ranged tree, but it would also need to balance strength with dexterity.

—Alorael, who doesn't think shadowwalkers need to be so Asian. If their razordisks were replaced with throwing knives and they didn't wear obvious ninja outfits, they could just as easily be called assassins or rogues and fit right in.


I wasnt actually in favor of removing the SW or any of that. I just think that there needs to be a sole-focused ranged user class. Thats all.
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A base class, it should be noted, that those who spend time considering such things generally consider the worst in the game.

 

I'm not a big fan of unarmed combat in RPGs. It just doesn't seem like there are any cases where a character with x amount of training and y amount of strength and speed and their bare hands would be better than one with equal training, strength, and speed, and three feet of (possibly magical) steel.

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True. I was talking about combat situations, specifically, but even then there are exceptions. In real life, there are plenty of cases in which unarmed combat is superior to armed combat, simply because one isn't allowed to have weapons. A person trained with guns, knives, tonfa, etc., may be overwhelmingly superior to a fist fighter if the former has a weapon, but you try bringing a gun or a knife into...a lot of places, really. There are a lot of metal detectors around, these days.

 

Thing is, these are almost never situations that come up in most RPGs. Nobody strips you of your sword when you go in to see the king, and prisons tend to leave your equipment in a chest conveniently located in the same room as your cell. It would be an interesting tradeoff to make unarmed combat weak, but usable in situations in which the PC can't have weapons. It's not the sort of thing that's likely to make it into one of Jeff's games, though.

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Originally Posted By: FnordCola
Thing is, these are almost never situations that come up in most RPGs. Nobody strips you of your sword when you go in to see the king, and prisons tend to leave your equipment in a chest conveniently located in the same room as your cell. It would be an interesting tradeoff to make unarmed combat weak, but usable in situations in which the PC can't have weapons. It's not the sort of thing that's likely to make it into one of Jeff's games, though.


"hey, let's have a character type that's exactly like another character type but somewhat less powerful almost all the time, but much more powerful in very specific circumstances!" is one of those ideas that sounds better in theory than in practice. assuming the situations where you'd have to fight without your weapons are non-trivial and aren't easier to just avoid, it'd just mean that each party would effectively be forced to drag around at least one unarmed character in the same way that they're currently forced to drag around a lockpicker

Originally Posted By: FnordCola
A base class, it should be noted, that those who spend time considering such things generally consider the worst in the game.


depends what kind of d&d we're talking about. 4th edition monks are actually okay and 3rd edition monks have tough competition for last place from other equally awful base classes, like truenamers, who end up finding it mathematically impossible to use their abilities on equal-levelled enemies at high levels. i have no idea about AD&D monks
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Originally Posted By: FnordCola
Thing is, these are almost never situations that come up in most RPGs. Nobody strips you of your sword when you go in to see the king, and prisons tend to leave your equipment in a chest conveniently located in the same room as your cell. It would be an interesting tradeoff to make unarmed combat weak, but usable in situations in which the PC can't have weapons. It's not the sort of thing that's likely to make it into one of Jeff's games, though.

Jewel of Arabia: Dreamers did this: it had a fairly grueling optional labyrinth, containing the equivalent of Pachtar's Plate, into which you were thrown without weapons. However, Jewel of Arabia actually had two classes that could fight well bare-handed: one, the Sufi, did so normally and was a weak fighter who also had spells, and the other, the Ghazi, was the pure warrior class, which normally fought with weapons but received a large enough damage bonus to fight effectively without them. But neither class was a one-situation class!
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BoA Frostbite scenario had a section where you had no equipment and had to fight your way to regain it.

 

AD&D 1st edition monks started out weak, but after the middle levels got the ability to avoid some magical damage and do significant physical damage. Still for all the specialized starting stats needed it was hard to survive to that point.

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Originally Posted By: Harehunter
Originally Posted By: Rowen
Someone should make a monastery of maddness meme. tongue
All this talk of monks reminds me a series that played a half-lifetime ago. Does anyone remember David Carradine Kung Fu ?


Yes. It was a very silly show, but I used to watch it. I liked him in Kill Bill, too. Unfortunately, the manner of his death kind of spoiled the mystique. frown
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Quote:
"hey, let's have a character type that's exactly like another character type but somewhat less powerful almost all the time, but much more powerful in very specific circumstances!" is one of those ideas that sounds better in theory than in practice.


My point was more that one could envision a game in which these sets of circumstances came up fairly frequently, so that each type of character was better in a substantial number of situations. This would probably work best if unarmed combat was a skill, rather than a matter of class choice, so that it wouldn't have to be all or nothing. In any case, Jeff is not likely to make a game like this.

Also, I took "base class" in Necris Omega's post to mean one of the core classes. Truenamers aren't this, which is for the best since they (unlike monks) are full-on unplayable.

As for monks in first edition, they were pretty awful. They were like paladins in that they had some nice immunities and limited healing ability, but they had far fewer hit points. Like rangers, they got two hit dice at first level, but while rangers had d8, monks had d4; as such, monks were fairly tough at level 1-2, but the squishiest class after magi/illusionists at middle and higher levels. They had natural armor that scaled with level, and was actually pretty powerful at high level, though still not as strong as a fighter/paladin with magical equipment. Contra what Randomizer says, their attack power is actually pretty terrible. At first blush, it looks like they have some of the highest physical damage of any class, but that comes with a fatal drawback: their unarmed attacks don't count as magical. Most high level monsters require magic weapons to hit, and unlike in 3E and beyond, this isn't a matter of set damage resistance. Their attacks literally do no damage to even mid-level extraplanar/undead/magical enemies. The point at which their unarmed damage gets good coincides with the point at which many things worth fighting become entirely immune to it. They can equip weapons to get around this, and gain a small damage bonus when doing so, but their selection is barely better than a mage's, and in 1E there are no rules for acquiring new weapon proficiencies, meaning they have to either use weapons that do d6 damage tops, or suck down a permanent -4 to hit. Their THAC0 (chance to hit) is also pretty mediocre. And like druids, they have really convoluted 'There can only be one' rules for high level advancement. 1E: really unbalanced.
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If you make unarmed sections mandatory and frequent, what you do is force the player to make a party where half the characters are handicapped at any given time. That can be done well, but in practice it's usually no fun at all. And that's ignoring the inevitable players who come up with a workaround,, or just grit their teeth and have a severely handicapped party half the time for a fully competent party the rest of the time, usually built for the hardest fight in the game.

 

To about-face, though, what might work well is treating fists like a third option with poles and swords. (Okay, they're already not equal, but bear with me.) Let's suppose the former is supposed to do more damage and the latter is supposed to give you more defense with shields. Give fists another bonus! Access to more or different battle disciplines or similar bonuses? Increased effects against enemies resistant to weapons? One could make it reasonable.

 

Jeff probably won't, but it could be done.

 

—Alorael, who would rather start with reasonable balancing of melee, ranged, and pole. All should be viable, all should have their places, none should be absolutely dominated.

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Originally Posted By: In memory of the forgetful
To about-face, though, what might work well is treating fists like a third option with poles and swords. (Okay, they're already not equal, but bear with me.) Let's suppose the former is supposed to do more damage and the latter is supposed to give you more defense with shields. Give fists another bonus! Access to more or different battle disciplines or similar bonuses? Increased effects against enemies resistant to weapons? One could make it reasonable.


Oblivion tried to do this, where using Hand to Hand at a Master level drained enemy Fatigue. Of course, it's next to useless, because you wound up doing a fraction of the damage, and since the worst that could happen when your opponent ran out of fatigue was that they did less damage, it was still inferior to using literally any other weapon, which at Master level caused paralysis. Since there has never been a game where Paralysis hasn't been infinitely better than reduced damage over any time period (coupled with the huge damage bonuses from wielding weapons), HtH was pretty much the most useless skill in the game other than Speechcraft and maybe Mysticism.
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So Oblivion didn't do it well. What if hand to hand had a chance of paralysis and weapons didn't? There'd be reason to use it. And yes, it would have to be a very careful balancing act, because too much paralysis is a stunlock, which is usually overpowered, and too little paralysis is useless, and no one will give up weapons.

 

—Alorael, who votes for more stunning. A stunlocker with little damage and a damage-dealer can deal very efficiently with a single heavy hitter with friends. Against many equal enemies, the stunner becomes much less useful.

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Yeah, I think there are a lot of options for creative developers. I alighted first on constant availability of body weaponry as one of the more realistic, but realism need not be the main concern in a fantasy setting. One of the traditional ways to balance them is to make it easier to channel magic-esque powers (chi/ki, or what have you) through unarmed attacks than weapons. This would mean access to additional or better special abilities, but at the cost of lower base damage.

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You could always give a fistfighter fistweapons. A few games have them, like WoW, or even D2 if you count Katars. If I were an amateur modder (which I'm not because I'm even less than that), I would simply add items for the monk to use as weapons in his weapon slots but were called after things that would give a martial artists more power in a more... abstract, steel-less way. Could be quite fun in an actual game. "Oh look, I found some Qi Gong Fire Meditation lvl 3 in this chest! Let's equip it!"

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Eh, a Fist Weapon is still a fist weapon, and kinda throws out the "unarmed combat" angle. Honestly, though, I don't really mind. I generally like the idea, and maybe it's a possible future angle.

 

Still, though... Unarmed specialists are almost invariably weaker by the end than anyone who is specialized in... anything else. Sure, the classical D&D monk could theoretically have a few weapon focuses other than her fists, but... Well the guy with the dual bastard swords is still going to be more effective than the dual kamas.

 

That said, I will admit I have enjoyed playing a monk from time to time, they can be a fun class. I loves me that movement speed bonus. However, they still come saddled with too many gimmicks, almost never really feel cohesive to the genre, and are just generally underpowered compared to everything else.

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One cool bunch of perks i was hoping would be in, were ways to combat against dualwielding's awesomeness. They could do this with making sword and shield and even no shield/melee builds better. In baldurs gate 2, they had a weapon skill that caused better criticals called single weapon style. It was probably one of the only other choices you had as it was pretty viable, especially for rogues. Jeff could do something like this as there were people that never used a shield with a rapier (swashbucklers)

 

Sword and shield can also have perks that enhance parry and riposte. That might be cool for a defensive aspect. This whole perk system is very interesting and I have high hopes for this game.

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  • 1 month later...

Monk idea was probably not a good idea, at least for avernum or geneforge series. I do think that jeff could do justice to the monk for avadon as the class system in there is the best of all the games (IMO).

 

But besides all that, i find that perk systems in rpgs give so much to do with your character. Take fallout for example, if you have 5 characters that all have 5 in all the SPECIAL stats, either way you look at it, they will all be different in some way.

 

Im going to guess that a lot of the abilities from avadon and some from avernum will be in this game, which is a good thing. I can see beastmaster (A1trait) in there with mostly all the rest of the traits from the first and second trilogies.

 

Jeff's going to be busy when he's done with the first one though as balancing the second avernum will be much harder due to the already imbalanced race system. Humans will have to have certain perks that are really good that neph's and sliths dont get and vice versa.

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Originally Posted By: Death Knight
Jeff's going to be busy when he's done with the first one though as balancing the second avernum will be much harder due to the already imbalanced race system. Humans will have to have certain perks that are really good that neph's and sliths dont get and vice versa.


Not necessarily. Humans have been worse than Nephils and Sliths for quite a while now. There isn't necessarily any need to change that, and I doubt that Jeff will spend a bunch of time trying to "fix" this.
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On the other hand, now is a great time for Jeff to jettison the current system and redo it. If nephils and sliths get unique perks that boos archery and spears every five levels and humans get a perk to spend on something else, it wouldn't be terribly hard to balance. Nephils would be best with bows, sliths best with spears, and humans best at anything benefiting from other perks. Not the most interesting or imaginative system, but simple and effective.

 

—Alorael, who isn't even sold on the need for races to have enforced distinctions. Although there might be fan uproar, he'd be perfectly satisfied with cosmetic races that he could build into whatever characters he liked. Sometimes he wants an optimal human with a spear!

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