Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Brainstorming Topic!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Ditto's a bit different, in that he copies enemies. (Or could he copy allies? He's so colossally useless in Pokemon battles that I've never used him in a double fight.) There's probably some potential there, though the fact that he's really slow/low HP and transformation takes a turn keeps him pretty bad even in this format. Although he'd be ridiculous if he transformed into someone with awful HP but ridiculous defence, like... Violetta or Lambda (the only stat Ditto retains after transformation is his HP). But that's so rare, and otherwise he's not very good; would have to be really low point score I'd think.

[Dhyerwolf]

Could have some use with healers whose main issue is specifically their HP though!

[Mad Fnorder]

I'm hard-pressed to think of a healer in the dungeon who would rather have Ditto HP. It's... pretty abhorrent.

[hinode]

Ditto can indeed transform into its partner in 2v2.

5 shots max of anything seems like it'd kill of any healer idea, even if said healer had 20x defenses and 0.1x HP.  Ditto'd be really gimmicky, you'd need very specific teammates or opponents for it to really contribute much.  It'd be a cute choice for 0.5 or so pick, though.

Quick Powder or Metal Powder would help Ditto get a turn to transform, but I have no idea if people would actually allow either of those and which floor if they did.

[Nephrite]

Ditto can indeed transform into its partner in 2v2.

5 shots max of anything seems like it'd kill of any healer idea, even if said healer had 20x defenses and 0.1x HP.  Ditto'd be really gimmicky, you'd need very specific teammates or opponents for it to really contribute much.  It'd be a cute choice for 0.5 or so pick, though.

Quick Powder or Metal Powder would help Ditto get a turn to transform, but I have no idea if people would actually allow either of those and which floor if they did.

I could simply add Ditto with one of those to the Dungeon in general, it would make it a 1.0 or 1.5 I guess?

On that note, I dropped Tear to 1.5 on a testing basis and also moved Maxim to 3.0.  Also Rosa to 2.5

[Sir Donald 3.2]

Personally, instead of Ditto, I would rather want:

Smeragle w/Technician Ability
Smeargle copies 1 Attack used by a foe in the first battle of each floor.  (Don't know if he opt for copying a friend's attack in the same way Ditto can Transform into allies... Serebii says "foe's move".) That attack becomes part of Smeragle's moveset.  If the attack normally does damage equal to or less than endgame party average, increase damage done by that attack 50% (Technician Ability).  The actual damage Smeargle does is 40% of that derived value.  (40 PAtk and SAtk versus average of 100)
Pros:  Can you say "Pyramid Hype"?  (Under existing floors.)
Cons:  Around 50% durability and doesn't resist status.

Not sure if this guy gets the Puny Status, might be good enough for Light (1.0) in dungeon, durability notwithstanding.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Who's Smeargle?

-Djinn

[Sir Donald 3.2]

GSC Pokemon.  Rarely found in the Ruins of Aleph, and in the Battle Frontier in Emerald IIRC.

Due to Sketch being its only natural move, doesn't touch the DL with a 100 Meter Chain.  However, moves gained by Sketch are permanent (and include the PP/MP/Spell Charge Stat), unlike Ditto's Transform (i.e. Ditto can't Pyramid the rest of Floor 1.)

[hinode]

New idea: Bibarel (Pokemon DP) with the Simple ability, which doubles the effects of all stat buffs.  The appeal of this should be obvious, but low stats limit its effectiveness on any team not built to abuse it.

Unaware would be a cool alternative if it were a field effect, but as it only applies to damage directly caused by/against Bibarel it kinda sucks. Oh well.

[Nephrite]

Bibarel could be added like Nall and take points but not a party slot. Or it could simply be a sealstone that I intend to add.

[hinode]

Err... I think you misunderstood.  Simple Bibarel is interesting as a dungeon option precisely because it's a PC, and used as a PC, not like Nall or a sealstone.  Moreover, neither of its abilities has any field effects so not taking up a party slot makes no sense, and duplicating the eithers of either as a field effect that can't be damaged would be rediculously broken.

[DjinnAndTonic]

What do you think of Lazlo from Suikoden 4?

He's not especially amazing as True-users go, but he has a nifty little team command that never gets to see the light of day in the DL.

His Rush ability has some interesting features to it that make it ideal for Dungeon use. First, the requirements: it's a Limit meter that takes kind of a long time to fill up, you probably won't see it filling up in a single battle. Likely, it'd be a once-per-floor ability for him. Second, it requires that Lazlo be in the party (obviously, but proven by S4 Ship Parties that don't necessarily require Lazlo!) and that all four party members are alive.

What it does: It's a free action that has initiative and takes the combined attack stats of the party and allows Lazlo to physically strike the enemy (MT). Not amazingly powerful in the lategame against bosses, but lesser enemies throughout the game tend to be pretty susceptible to it. Average endgame damage was about where Jeane's L2 Lightning Rune is, so pretty good overall.

Since it doesn't matter who Lazlo's party members are, I would think this ability shouldn't have any trouble being incorporated into the Dungeon setting.

Lazlo himself has overall decent stats (even if he has a crappy Rune) - speedy, dodgy, and durable. He's not much in the way of damage lategame, but earlygame Lazlo is a pretty good swordsman.

Maybe a 2.0-2.5? Getting a free turn once per floor to lay waste to some particularly tough enemies - AND THEN YOUR PARTY GETTING THEIR TURN NORMALLY is pretty devastating. But once per floor isn't helping lategame, and Lazlo's non-Rush abilities are lackluster.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Problem with his Rush ability is that it's OPF and not even available until like floor 2-3, and past that he's incredibly poor as a dungeon pick. He's not even worth a 2.0 to me with how his rune works until floor 7, and that's counting Rush. It's... eh. Not seeing the point.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Perhaps a 1.0, then? There's not a lot of physical options among the 1.0's, and Lazlo's Rush would make him an interesting variant. He also could opt to add elements to his weapon (though this is just a S4 quirk, not really a Lazlo-specific thing). The fact that he ends up as a mage by floor 6/7 would be another bit of variation on the 'basic physicaller' we see in the 1.0's (like Monk).

[Dark Holy Elf]

Lazlo's physical is never very good. Right from the start he's competing with the runic magic of Keneth and Katarina, which are substantially better than physicals; Paula gets The Shredding and Jewel/Snowe Breath of Ice reasonably quickly too. And then Tal has better Power than him.

Nah, what makes Lazlo really cool is when he first gets Eternal Ordeal (is that what it's called? The L1). That's a LOT of damage for that point in the game, even with a little backlash.

I'd never really considered Rush intuitively a Lazlo ability, but if it does go away if he's not in the party, then yeah, I'd allow it.

Getting a free turn once per floor to lay waste to some particularly tough enemies - AND THEN YOUR PARTY GETTING THEIR TURN NORMALLY is pretty devastating.

Rush causes your party to lose their turns, too. So basically it's just some free damage. Granted, in a really strong physical party, it might be a lot of free damage. I forget exactly how Rush worked for damage formula (you say it adds up all the Atk stats, which sounds right, but what does it do then? Does it depend on number of targets?). It also serves to nuke any enemy charge attacks, but I'm not sure how many of those there are in the dungeon. Owns GONER.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Lazlo's physical is never very good. Right from the start he's competing with the runic magic of Keneth and Katarina, which are substantially better than physicals; Paula gets The Shredding and Jewel/Snowe Breath of Ice reasonably quickly too. And then Tal has better Power than him.

Nah, what makes Lazlo really cool is when he first gets Eternal Ordeal (is that what it's called? The L1). That's a LOT of damage for that point in the game, even with a little backlash.

I'd never really considered Rush intuitively a Lazlo ability, but if it does go away if he's not in the party, then yeah, I'd allow it.

Getting a free turn once per floor to lay waste to some particularly tough enemies - AND THEN YOUR PARTY GETTING THEIR TURN NORMALLY is pretty devastating.

Rush causes your party to lose their turns, too. So basically it's just some free damage. Granted, in a really strong physical party, it might be a lot of free damage. I forget exactly how Rush worked for damage formula (you say it adds up all the Atk stats, which sounds right, but what does it do then? Does it depend on number of targets?). It also serves to nuke any enemy charge attacks, but I'm not sure how many of those there are in the dungeon. Owns GONER.

I don't remember the whole party losing their turn, but admittedly I'm not entirely sure on that. I'll have to do some testing to see how it works.

As for when he would get Rush... I thought it became available once you had a full party?

[Talaysen]

No one else acts when you use Rush.

[Sir Donald 3.2]

Just thought of a cool idea for a Floor 2 or a Floor 4:

Floor Name:  The Kids are Alright

Premise:  Parties of fighters containing "Child" and/or "Pre-Teen" PCs and/or Bosses.  "Baby Pokemon" (i.e. Pichu) or approved equal may be used to supplement parties if Dungeon Master desires.  (I work for an engineer...)

Special Party Rules:
If Floor 2:  None
If Floor 4:  Levels and Stats are reduced to Floor 2 values.  Equipment and Skills usable for Floor 4 are still valid even if level-dependent.  (Basically FF6 Dischord, Affects Contestant Team Only unless DM says otherwise)

[SnowFire]

A few more pricing ideas...  I think slow sluggers (that is, based more around durability and damage than some impressive status/buff/whatever) are probably still somewhat overpriced since the Dungeon doesn't tend to be the best place for them.  Having one in your team can be great, especially with Tidus or some other haste effect, and they can be vital for "cleanup" on bosses that can't be blitzed out...  but nevertheless, they're still a lot worse than you'd think in general.

Duelers who are slow damage dealers who might be reduced in price:
Robo: Robo's speed is just wretched until Floor 6 (where it's merely bad), as he can get insta-doubled by sufficiently fast opponents.  And his healing, while MT, just isn't that great.  He's certainly not useless- tanky and decent damage is always nice, but 1.5 might still be a bit high.
Bowser: Also in recently.  Slow and tanky, but his damage isn't even that great.  I suppose he gets Work Pants faster than Robo gets his Ribbon to up his speed, and Terrorize is nice, but aside from that, meh.  I could see him as a .5 pick for extra muscle.
Raquel: Her at 3.0->2.5 would be slightly chancy, but she's not even that great on magic resistance and HP even if she's a queen of damage.  Great against bosses, though, I'll grant.
Rudy: Slow and just deals damage, as far as I know.  2.5->2.0 would seem fair.

A few other slow duelers who are probably fine as is, but maaaybe:
KOS-MOS: Her at 3.0 is still kinda scary, considering her powerful MT attacks.  Probably fine as is.  On the other hand, vaguely comparable to Guv, except does slightly more damage and is tankier in exchange for not getting Omniheal, which is probably a losing trade generally.
Ziggy: A bit slow, but not that slow, and has MT damage.

[074]

Regarding KOS-MOS: She only has three sources of MT damage, all gained lategame--X-Buster(after the Encephalon, placing it at about Floor 5 or so), Dex Ethers (Late Floor 5/Early Floor 6), and Satellite (Late Floor 5/Early Floor 6).  She has high power and is rather tanky in general, as well as having the advantage of infinite damage on both physical and magical fronts, but her MT doesn't come until pretty late in the game (and even then, X-Buster doesn't START that awesome.)

Also, if going by XS rules regarding AP and whatnot, then she'd only be able to access six skills, and only two of those every round (S, X and T, X).  The other four (S, S, X; S, T, X; T, S, X; and T, T, X) would be accessible every other round by either guarding or using a single attack (which...cuts down on damage either way).



And she's slow.

[Nephrite]

Here is the proposed Sealstone list. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

On a side note, I will probably do one more pass of point values so now is a good time to give me feedback.



Life - Any healing effect now also allows for revival, but reduces the final effect of any healing by 50%. The healing also only revives characters with 1 HP.

Speed? - The effective speed of your team is reversed, but it may only act once per turn (i.e doubling is not allowed).

Resourceless - Your spells and abilities are now free but you may not use the same ability more than once a fight.

Multitarget - All of your team's abilities hit all friendly or hostile targets. However, this applies to enemies as well.

Violent Burst Law - Characters with system-specific gauges begin the floor with them filled. These gauges do not charge during the floor by any means.

Status Symbol Law - Team is fully status, debuff and ID immune, but has all their total statistics reduced by 15%.

Weakness: All attacks that hit a weakness have their damage increased by 100%. The Player chooses a weakness to exploit on every floor, but the Dungeon Master also chooses a weakness for the team to be exploited by. These weaknesses cannot be immuned, absorbed or resisted in any way ans this overrides any natural immunity or resistance.   The Weaknesses are: Fire/Earth/Water (and Ice)/Wind (and Lightning)/

Love Love: Damage is increased by 50% against same-sex targets and reduced by 50% against different-sex targets.

Elemental Advance Sealstone: Each attack of the same elemental type is used after the last one, it gets a 25% boost. Both sides may take advantage of the same level of damage, but also break the chain with an opposing spell.

Vantage Effect Sealstone: Counter abilities excecute BEFORE the attack that triggers them.

EDIT: Forgot one.

Firefly: A chosen member of your party will always be the target of enemy attacks but the character's damage is decreased by 50%. This does persist if the character dies and is brought back to life. However, multitarget moves ignore this effect.

[Taishyr]

How much are sealstones?

[SnowFire]

Namagomi: Yeah, somehow I thought KOS got multitarget damage earlier than she did.  In that case, yeah, I think she could probably be dropped to 2.5 - weird for such an awesome character in-game, but it definitely doesn't reflect as well in the dungeon.

--
Sealstones: Hmm.  I should say first that I'm not a fan of the more complex Sealstones because they tend to make voting much more complicated.  It can be tough enough to vote as is when there are some characters from games the voter hasn't played...  adding more complications seems rather meh.  It's one thing when three's a special effect on one floor that's been designed around it, but everywhere?

Life - I assume the healing effect is only reduced 50% when it's used as revival?  Might want to say outright that revival can never bring a character back with >50% health, or else it becomes important to remember which systems' healall heals the exact max HP amount, and which ones heal 999 or whatever, as keeping track of overkill healing is normally pointless but relevant without a 50% max proviso.  Anyway, seems balanced but very strong.  1.5 points?

Speed? - Messes with a lot of the pricing.  No idea how much it should cost, but speedy Raquel and Edgar seems reasonably scary.  2.5 points?

Resourceless - Seems pretty powerful.  2.5 points as a wild guess?  Easy to interpret though, which is nice.

Multitarget - Absolutely insane.  Needs a prohibitively huge price, probably, since this enables some really broken stuff, even against single boss enemies (Lenneth2's Heal, for example).  4 points?

Violent Burst Law - Might want to let people except certain characters on their team from the effect at team creation?  SO3 and VP2 characters notably get horribly screwed since AP/Fury starts filled anyway and now it'll never refresh, and SoA characters aren't real happy either.  A few interpretation questions, too - FF9 characters presumably would start with a full Trance gauge, but that can't exactly be saved until the next battle, so I assume they're stuck with blowing it in the first battle?  Or could they save their Trance a la FF7 Limits?  Arguably XG characters would start with max AP too, but that normally can't be saved between battles either.  At least XS is easy to interpret, as you definitely can save boost there.  Beats me how to price this.

Status Symbol Law - Interpretation suggestion: By "Stats reduced 15%," that should probably be fiated to something more like "all attacks do 15% less damage, weaker defense increases incoming damage 15%, HP & speed are reduced 15%, all attempted status attacks have a 15% less chance of succeeding, critical hit rate is reduced 15%."  Why?  Because not all games have linear statistics systems, such that a change in statistics might swing things far more than 15%, or not at all, and it'd be an extreme headache to have to look that kind of stuff up.  That said, with that adjustment, seems fine.  .5 points?  Maybe even 0.

Weakness: Tentatively this sounds unfun?  It seems like the GM can completely screw the team over by picking an appropriate weakness the floor can take advantage of, and there's no way to cheat around it.  Hence hurt feelings afterward.  The Dungeon is already a quickdraw, and this is one of those Sealstones that would magnify who got the drop even more, meaning that voting is more about who you think will go first rather than some kind of neat strategy matchup.

Love Love: I guess.  Seems a little annoying, but on the bright side it's balanced.  0 points?

Elemental Advance Sealstone: Interesting, but also makes voting yet more of a headache.  I'd be against it on annoyance/fun grounds.

Vantage Effect Sealstone: Sounds fine.  .5 points?  Makes Lyn even more awesome, sure.

[Nephrite]

The downsides to each sealstone is what the cost of it represents. I.e. none of these will actually take points or slots. They all have ways to backfire on you, or so was the intention.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Except the Vantage Sealstone, but I honestly don't see it as that useful anyway. Counters are highly niche, and it only helps so much, especially since none of the reliable counterers in the Dungeon OHKO things, and those can be avoided by targetting someone else at worst.