Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Brainstorming Topic!

[dude789]

Yeah, guess I initially read that as starting at +25% base speed. This version...I would agree would not likely be chosen.

I think it would get chosen, just not for slow characters. I would see it being used more to make fast characters even faster.

[Nephrite]

I could see it as a +25% bonus to base speed, going up to 100% (it'd be three turns, in that case) but if it's just going to be that then I probably need to figure something out for a downside... like, if the person dies they would then lose the speed bonus and couldn't get it again.

[Bardiche]

Maybe reduce their defence, so everyone gets to be a fragile speedster?

[DjinnAndTonic]

People have been complaining that the Sealstones have been getting too complicated lately... this doesn't seem like a good move no matter how you spin it... Speed? was one of the most elegant SS that we had...

[Talaysen]

"Reversing from average speed" is not very elegant...

[DjinnAndTonic]

It wasn't meant for average-speeders, though...

I don't see what you're getting at?

[Dhyerwolf]

I'm not sure if you are using elegant as a synonym for simple. Anyways, they can be simple or they can be more complexed but balanced. And really, have SS' been getting to complicated lately? Anyways, reverses speed turn 1 then has speed revert turn 2 (and does that make turn 2 average to come at average then?) while disallowing any speed buffers sounds far more straightforward when you only focus on the first part!

For NeoSpeed, plenty of balances. No ability to buff speed in any manner, have it reset upon death, making the bonus not as potent (balancing 15%-25% makes a big difference for what level of slow person is now above average speed).

[Nephrite]

Ramza gains an extra job every 3 floors.
Amarant and Arc down to 2.5
Palom/Porom to 2.0
Rydia to 1.5
Jean to 1.5
Rudy to 1.5
Bow to 1.0

Adding Butterfree as .5
Adding Dorothy as 3.5
Adding Scarecrow as 2.5
Adding ZALMO as 3.0

Officially changed.

The "Neo Speed" Sealstone will probably be a 20% increase in base speed, stacking up to 100% (so it'll take 4 turns to get the full effect) and will disappear if the user with it is killed. It can begin stacking in the next battle, of course.

Speed? will probably remain as it is, although I may change it so it simply makes someone a flat speed (say, 120%) instead of reversing.

[Bardiche]

Teams passing floor 1 and 2 is really a given at this time... would it be an idea to combine the voting for floors 1 and 2, as it's really more of a formality rather than not? They're usually pretty boring matches to think about, I think?

[Nephrite]

It's certainly a possibility, but perhaps that points to those floors being too easy, then?

[Nephrite]

Also, who would use a Speed? stone that reverses someone's speed and halves the speed of another party member but doesn't wear off?

[SnowFire]

Very few teams.  Half speed is pretty horrible, and if you keep old Speed?, making a slow character fast on turn 1 is generally enough of a reward already - keeping them fast isn't as important.  I'd only be interested if I had a Jogurt-level slot I just plain didn't care about, but even the 0.5 picks are better than that.  Maybe the half speed could be saddled on someone with initiative a la Alexia?  But still, probably not.

[Dhyerwolf]

Floors 1 and 2 aren't really a given since at least one team semi recently fell on Floor 1 (And I wasn't exactly smashing them. Still work to weed out teams that aren't well built at all at first). Second question...could work with a 4 person team and throwing in someone worthless that costs 0.5 as a fall person.

[Glen Veil]

I think a smaller nerf in line of 10-20% would be more realistically possible in keeping the stone attractive to use, maybe attach the not receiving outside boost to speed penalty to the other character as well.

[Nephrite]

Sealstones have been updated

Hopefully these changes aren't too complex and still retain the spirit of the old sealstones while making them more balanced.

[dude789]

Here's two ideas for sealstones I had.

Healing Burst: The wearer of this sealstone can proportionally increase the cost of their healing spells to make them more effective. For Example, a cure spell that costs 5 mp and cures 100 hp can be increased to 10 mp 200hp, 15 mp 300 hp and so on. In addition, they may add the following effects to their spell for the following costs. Status Curing: 3x, MT: 4x, Revival 5x. These effects can be stacked and are done so additively. (A double effectiveness cure spell with a revival effect costs 35mp (5*(5+2)) rather than 50 mp.

Blood Price: The wearer of this sealstone uses hp to cast their spells instead of mp. The HP cost is twice that of what the mp cost would normally be in terms of percentages. A spell that costs 10% of the users max mp takes away 20% of the users HP. If the user does not have sufficient HP they can not cast the spell. The exception is for spells that cost >50% of the users mp. These bring the user down to 1 hp and can only be used when the user is at full hp. This sealstone only works with characters with numerical mp scores and does not work with spells that take up all the users mp (Jessica's Magic Burst, TimeLord's Overdrive etc).  

If anyone has any balance changes feel free to share them.

[Magic Fanatic]

For Bloop Price (I assume that's to be Blood), you should probably add that the user can't be healed by magic, or you get healers that can pretty much never, ever die.

[Nephrite]

Healing burst seems a little too complicated. I could just see it as being changed to something like "Focused Healing" that increases the healing done by the person by 1.5x or 2x but reduces their damage and other buffs by some percentage.

[dude789]

If Healing Burst is a bit to complicated we can just take out the extra effects so have it be that they can only multiply the cost and effectiveness of their healing.  Still makes healers more versatile and gives healers who can't hit 100% a nice option for a crises with the cost that they won't have as much mp for the rest of the floor.

As for Blood Price, I can see the problem with healing magic as it essentially gives them infinite reserves. Making them unhealable by magic though makes the sealstone unusable except by very specific parties. It essentially halves the amount of mp they have which completely defeats the purpose of the sealstone. Making it so it takes away the hp after the spell effect takes place could work. Then a healer who had a MT healing spell that cost 10% of their mp could use it and spam it, but would be essentially running with 80% max hp, making them much easier to kill off. Another option would be to have their healing effects not work on themselves so that another party member would have to keep them healthy.   

[Dhyerwolf]

I will admit that it's the other facets of Healing Burst that would make it interesting to me. An MP Turbo effect for healing is...okay, but certainly the extra effects at high cost feel like it gains a lot more variety. Certainly a sealstone trading healing for damage or worse buffs doesn't strike me as very interesting. You could just pick someone who already made a similar tradeoff probably anyways.

Blood Price is interesting, but seems...very difficult to use in practice, and I'm not sure the gain is really something worth it in dungeon. It would have to be on someone with pretty atrocious resources where his or her moves are good enough to actually be worth casting despite eating up massive MP. Did you have anyone in mind that this would go particularly well with?

[superaielman]

For Bloop Price (I assume that's to be Blood), you should probably add that the user can't be healed by magic, or you get healers that can pretty much never, ever die.

You'd still be committing your sealstone to your healer.  The dungeon tends to be very effective later at breaking heal locks.


Blood price is neat enough to merit consideration. Don't know how well it'd work outside of cheese setups with Ryu2 and the like, though.

[dude789]

For Bloop Price (I assume that's to be Blood), you should probably add that the user can't be healed by magic, or you get healers that can pretty much never, ever die.

You'd still be committing your sealstone to your healer.  The dungeon tends to be very effective later at breaking heal locks.


Blood price is neat enough to merit consideration. Don't know how well it'd work outside of cheese setups with Ryu2 and the like, though.

With the rules I have for it now it wouldn't work with Ryu2 as the dragons use up all his mp.  Looking over it quickly, Yuri1, Nina4, Popoi, most of the Chrono Trigger crew, Naoto, some of the SMRPG crew, and FFT spellcasters would really benefit from it and a bunch of others wouldn't mind having it. You'd probably want to have a really good healer to support them though because it can really tear through your hp with some of the more expensive stuff.

[Magic Fanatic]

And then you get characters like Princess Toadstool making their slightly limited resources then limitless.  Group Hug is normally 4 FP, and recovers ~100 HP AT LEAST.  Then you have characters like Tir where you have absolutely no clue how they work, Shania could spam Shining Zephyr forever and probably not care - same with Yuri and For Tomorrow - while Ness turns into someone that you absolutely MUST status or lose.  Ramza gets interesting, at least.

I just suggested a fix like what I was reminded of in Paladin's Quest...  Granted, there's no HP-recovery spells in that game, and all spells burn off HP.

[Dhyerwolf]

A lot of the people named really only start drawing use from it really late

-Yuri 1 for example...starts at L3s, I think?
-Priest...might take several floors to get the MP to use Holy twice?
-CT is one of those games where I believe the characters get much less efficient on MP? On a similar note then, Mana Khemia. But again, for games like this, they are much more damage efficient early.
-Naoto's pretty efficient minus damage, which is...not good. Ironically, if I was using her for damage in dungeon, Blight, which hits HP, would probably be the superior choice because P4 Poison is great and the damage differential is not really a big deal because Naoto's damage is bad regardless (Not to mention Megidolaon would be double the HP cost)

So I think it's a cute idea, I just don't see a lot of use for it in practice (Probably because dungeon is about neutralizing enemies so quickly. Running out of MP might be an issue, but taking all that extra damage or needing to have someone heal even if the enemies did nothing would be a far worse issue). I understand that some people might gain a benefit from it at points, but generally they don't like it enough early. Especially since certainly I'd imagine that the cost being incurred after any healing would be the sane balancing measure.

[Bardiche]

Resourceless - One character's spells and abilities are now free but you may not use the same ability more than once a fight. This does not apply to moves that drain all resources.

Just checking, this means for Suikoden characters... what, exactly?

Sasarai has two runes. If he has 1 L4 charge, can he use one from both runes, or just one at all? Because they're different abilities, and all, but it'd also deplete all L4 resources to use it? I'm not sure.


Vantage Effect - Counterattack abilities activate BEFORE being attacked. Also increases the chance of any counter attack activation skill to 100%. This only affects allies.

Does this include defensive abilities, like Jude's random guarding skill?


I like Elemental Penetration and Speed? right off the bat. 120% speed will be fun on some characters~