Disquiet (Working Title) - System Design (formerly concepting)

[Dark Holy Elf]

The offensive boosters feel much more potent than the defensive there. They grant +15% to a stat you know you will use, which is better than +15% to a stat which is only struck by enemies half the time. Similarly, the penalty on the defensive boosters is larger: -7% to a stat you know you will use (unless the PC is using stat-independent abilities such as items?) while the offensive boosts are only -7% to a stat hit half the time.

[Grefter]

Also definitely think 5% evade with no stat drops is the strongest thing there.  Evade its everything.

[AndrewRogue]

Some boss thoughts from over the holiday. Some of this is just rehashing/reinforcing.

Corpulent: As previously stated, I'd kind of like this fight to go reverse (start magically vulnerable/physically resistant, swap over after Recomp). To that end, I might actually to tune this even further: rely on his physical beatsticking in the first half, then swap over to DISQUIET effects in the second half. Also he needs to not triple-hit Kasia.

Thug Fight: Yeah, we've more or less hashed this one out. Just need to rebalance the threat. Raiders need to be more dangerous (it is currently easier to spam past them, it seems), MT needs to not be the only real threat, and it needs to be assured use but not spammed.

Mirek Mini-Boss: Needs to be tuned down a little further. Just prone to things going wrong really suddenly with no opportunity to intervene.

Legion: We mainly wanted to make Putrefaction (or at least his Putrefaction) be backloaded Bleed damage. To this end, the reconcepting of him with delay intrigues me as it is both neat and counterintuitive. Bleed needs folks to get turns to be dangerous, but them being delayed prevents that. At the same time, that makes higher Bleed more survivable so...

Sebrle: Hmm, hmm. I think Sopko was plotting a bit that this guy should be a one-shot. Maybe use Djai's old basic build (Mage Killer via status/Stam punishment) to illustrate some breadth to the Guardian art? Probably a fairly new hot shot or something. Hot-blooded, a bit reckless?

Crab: Similar problem to Thugs in that the fight can be really swingy pending how he uses MT. Maybe Lethal Scissor should be percentage based?

[AndrewRogue]

NEB: Hm. True enough. (I'd also vaguely note that, since I was suddenly unsure of % based boosts, that those were presented as literal numbers, meaning the percentages are larger). I was originally toying with the idea to have them only be two accessories: +Str/Mag, -Vit/Spi and vice versa.

I would say, at the moment, given our healing and durability deals, that defense stats are probably more valuable then offense in general? Which is part of the assumption I was running off of when scaling these.

Grefter: Mebbe. 5% is a pretty small boost.

[Grefter]

Also worth remembering how evasion scales better the more of it you have and stuff.  5% boost on Eirwen is pretty good.  Also I know what accessory Erastus gets and never ever takes off.

Edit - Below is probably better in conjunction with other accessories if we want these to be varied but impacting instead of mostly fire and forget.

Worth considering is making them work on a different axis than our standard dynamics?  We have a lot of very explicit +atk -Def stuff.

You could try shifting up the points of attack more.  + Dex - Spirit (with all the traps +Dex has for player understanding), + Str - Speed/Agi (in uneven amount so that Str is a net damage gain but with the opportunity cost of less frequent turns).

Also if we are going for something to just throw in the slot and forget about so there is filler, you probably want them to be weaker than that because 15% boost to either defense or offense is going to effect our incoming damage and time to kill a fair bit.

[AndrewRogue]

You actually raise a good point. These may be a little too easy and dynamics scale along already existing lines.

I'm leery of Dex increases to a degree due to the general strength of Dex, but it might be possible. Working off different dynamics is a decent idea, though.

And we're not really aiming for filler (part of why I'm tempted to say we should drop down to 1 slot), we're aiming for various tactical options that modify how the character handles to a degree.

[074]

To be fair, those AI patterns were defined when I was still under the treatment as Putrefaction as frontloaded MT damage with a bonus status.  If that's the case then I'm going to have to further revise patterns to compensate for the fact that it is abso-fucking-lutely terrible as a MAG-boosted attack.


--Also keeping in mind the matter of Putrefaction currently finding use on three enemies right now.  Two are bosses.  Furthermore, I discussed in chat already about the fact that if we are going to be using Putrefaction on Corpulent, it will have to be early in the fight for it to be largely effective, otherwise backloading damage will result in the ability being, well, trash.  That is to say, it needs to be on the first phase if at all, otherwise we'd be introducing another trash move, and I've made my recent hate of trash moves well-known by now, I believe.

[Grefter]

DoT works fine in final phase as part of a soft enrage.  Damage doesn't need to be RIGHT NOW to be threatening.  Putrefaction followed up with some other moves is a lot of pressure but gives more room for the player to react to it instead of it being LOLOLOL YOU ALMOST KILLED ME EAT HUEG DAMAGES NAO scenarios where Putrefaction would be what you are describing as a "trash" move.  For it to be trash he needs to be nearly dead and the player needs to be able to kill him before he can capitalise.  We are still looking at bleed being 45% over three turns right?  That is a lot of damage no matter how you slice it.

[AndrewRogue]

As I said, realistically, we can also just change Putrefaction on Legion to something else that causes the desired effect.

Grefter: While we're thinking, did you have any suggestions for the initial way to handle Noemi/Kasia's skill costs?

[Grefter]

Specific accessory ideas from a while back.

Stamina regen -1, +10 Stamina.
20% element resist, -10% HP.  (Specific example was Disquiet).

I think there was a third, but it doesn't spring to mind.

Initial way to handle Flare Shot I was thinking you price it at about the price point of Spark Cluster (probably even +1, +2 on Crescendo) and then scale it back as more utility unlocks.  Finalize them when you get Spark Cluster.