Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Brainstorming Topic!

[Cmdr_King]

MT attacks are rare in the series (I've only ever seen them, and two of them at that) in FE10.  PCs don't counter them even if they're within range, however.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I would say no counters against MT attacks. A very rare exception might be if a character has an MT melee physical. I struggle to think of any of those, so just kneejerk 'no'.

[Bardiche]

Darn, full FE team with Vantage is a no-go then. =P

[Yoshiken]

Okay, this may be an... odd idea. But then, I'll leave it to you guys to reject it.

A potential character for the dungeon... Maria from FF2.
Maria can be given a choice of two potential weapons (Bows or Staves) and these can be changed between floors or using a turn in-battle. (Alternatively, if this is a no-brainer, maybe Bows & Swords or something? Swords for strength, bows for range (and obscure FE flier weakness?))
In addition to that, she can be given one spell each floor. These spells gain two levels for each floor. (e.g. Floor 1, she has Lv 1 Cure. Floor 2, she could have Lv 3 Cure and Lv 1 Fire. Floor 3, Lv 5 Cure, Lv 3 Fire and Lv 1 Life. And so on.)
Spells would be limited in much the same way as other dungeon characters, such as Cloud, of course.

Pros: Very versatile character. Magic? Healing? Attacks? Can do. Back row prevents ST physical damage while others are alive.
Cons: Whatever you don't do with her, she's terrible at. Has pretty horrendous defences regardless.

I'm thinking a 3.5/4.0 for this, but it'll take some work to actually get it set straight. I'd be happy to find most of the necessary information for this, so just need some feedback, methinks~

[Nephrite]

It's an interesting idea! I don't know how much enthusiasm there would be, but it's worth pondering.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Considering how few people with an interest in the dungeon have played FF2 and how we already have other fairly similar project build PCs in the dungeon, I can't say it'd add much, sadly. FF2 is also a hard game to gauge in a dungeon sense, which would hamper the idea further - or just make it used rather little, given how much metagaming is involved in the dungeon constructs. It's neat, but I'm just not sure it'd work.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Could be worth it as an option, just to give FF2 some representation in the DL somewhere.

I mean... did the FF2 cast ever even get into NR while it was still around?

Sidenote:  Does anyone have any feedback on the enormous Ivan build undertaking I posted? I tried to make it as legible as possible while still retaining all the flexibility that GS1 allows.

-Djinn

[Bardiche]

I can only say I am in awe of that list, and highly want Ivan in now. -realised there aren't a whole lot of SUPER SPEED demons, Ivan'd work very nicely as damage beast-

[Yoshiken]

I can only say I am in awe of that list, and highly want Ivan in now. -realised there aren't a whole lot of SUPER SPEED demons, Ivan'd work very nicely as damage beast-

My only thought other than this was that an extra con would be the difficulty in using the Djinn and retaining his skillset as desired.

[Dark Holy Elf]

If FF2 is used, I have to warn that bows suck. Suck suck suck suck suck. Sooo I wouldn't suggest any build that makes use of them unless the character is like a 0.5. (Characters with bows not only have the worst physical damage, but they can't use shields and thus have terrible "evade" which makes them both sluggish as hell and get raped by physical attacks.) Even if for some reason you want to hype the back row as ST physical immunity, you should use a staff+shield. Although using the back row in-game means that both your HP and your evade (read: speed/pdur) won't level much, so if you carried that penalty across (and I would) it would result in a character who is immune to ST physicals but gets owned by MT or by magic, and is slow as hell. Could have some use in a team with Barrier or similar magical protection, maybe, but isn't worth a 3.5.

EDIT: And honestly, FF2 back row doesn't seem any different from walling in a SRPG character, and we usually don't consider that in the dungeon, anyway.

[DjinnAndTonic]

RE: Bardiche on Ivan

Well he starts off a little slow. First floor he's basically OHKO bait with some decent GT Thunder magic damage. He makes a decent speedy ST healer on Floor 2, though still entirely too frail. If you can get him to Floor 3, he can start destroying things with his damage/status, though he's still a bit frail.

At Floor 4, he's a versatile Speedster who can do anything you like and you can even twink him to be somewhat durable (Most of the Mars-heavy classes give him durability/HP, though they have less versatile skillsets. Luckily Mars Djinni have great MT status unleashes so they are viable picks!). Basically, if you can take Ivan to Floor 4 he can become a great central piece of any team.

RE: Yoshiken on Ivan

Yeah, until Floor 4, Ivan doesn't have a lot of room for using Djinni without losing his class. In fact, he can't use any without dropping his stats on Floor 1, but he can use one on Floors 2 and 3 without dropping his class (these classes have a range of neccessary Djinni. For example, Magician requires 2-3 Jupiter Djinni, so if Ivan equips all 3 Jupiter Djinni available on Floor 3, he can use one Djinn unleash without losing his skillset). EDIT: I'm not sure on the exact numbers of Djinni for that example off the top of my head, but this is the basic idea.

On Floor 4 most of the Djinni open up and Ivan can equip some extra Djinni to buffer his class. Meaning, he can equip all the necessary Djinni of one element for his class, and then he can equip some different elemental Djinni in his extra slots to use for unleashes.

[Random Consonant]

Ivan stuff

Some of those skills look like they're gained a floor or two earlier than they should be.  GS isn't a terribly long game and a reasonable endgame level would be 30 at most (heck, the stat topic takes endgame levels at 27), so a lot of stuff should probably be moved down some.  I'm also kneejerking that you're overstating his damage in his fire/earth/water classes a bit, but I could just be imagining things.

[Yoshiken]

On the FF2 thing, okay, maybe Bows weren't the right choice. But you get the idea. Choice of physicals/magic and a complete magic skillset of anything is pretty much the main idea.
Having low durability was half the idea of this one, although I didn't realise it affected speed as well. Maybe much lower than I initially assumed, but still works along the same lines. Maybe a versatile character with a lower cost then, unlike most of the others with some freedom of choice?

As for the back row thing, I'd see that as something that could be added as a 'dungeon trait' of sorts. It's something that would actually make Maria usable as opposed to "I've got some points leftover."

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, if it's your intent to have a back row character and Neph gives his blessing to that being legal, I'm okay with that (although I do feel it's inconsistent with the fact that we don't let any other casts use back row to half physical damage, or get walled in if a SRPG character). Just warning you that it does result in bad speed and bad durability outside of the gimmick. This is generally a bad combination in the dungeon (or any other DL-ish setting).

[dude789]

Their are a couple of other options than Ryu 3 for durable healer. Ness comes to mind, and Jerin and Rosa are both decent on durability.

Re: Ivan
I like the Ivan build. I think he's more of a 3.5  than 4.0. He has a ton of versatility, but I don't think he's missing something to make him a 4.0.

Re: Maria
I think it would be best to let the person have complete control over weapons instead of limiting her to one or two. Additionally, I think increasing spell levels by two each floor is a good idea, but I don't think she should be limited to gaining one new spell per floor.  I think limiting spells to when they are acquired in game is enough. However, I think a FF2 character is interesting and they have a lot of interesting and unique options like MT revival and some neat buffs.

[Yoshiken]

Giving her every single spell seems pretty damn overpowered, though, especially considering how powerful magic can be in FF2. The idea of only giving her certain spells fits with FF2 (at least early) money issues and, if I'm not mistaken, FF2 characters have limited spaces for spells, anyways. Or, at least, they did.
The weapons, on the other hand, fair enough. And it'll make her better against any FE characters she happens to face~

[DjinnAndTonic]

Ivan stuff

Some of those skills look like they're gained a floor or two earlier than they should be.  GS isn't a terribly long game and a reasonable endgame level would be 30 at most (heck, the stat topic takes endgame levels at 27), so a lot of stuff should probably be moved down some.  I'm also kneejerking that you're overstating his damage in his fire/earth/water classes a bit, but I could just be imagining things.

Oh yes, this is definitely true. But I intentionally shifted some things to include his full skillset, making endgame level coincide with the level most classes learn their last skill (about 50).

Alternately, you could interpret this as going a little bit in to GS2 territory, and in fact, you could give him the GS2 Djinni on Floor 8 or something to buffer his current classes (and give him more Djinn unleashes). Though I wouldn't recommend bringing the GS2 classes into this as it adds WAAAAAY too many new options to map (GS2 allows characters to equip 9 Djinni total over GS1's 7 Djinni-setups. This adds roughly 10 more classes to Ivan's list!!!).

[Random Consonant]

Ivan stuff

Some of those skills look like they're gained a floor or two earlier than they should be.  GS isn't a terribly long game and a reasonable endgame level would be 30 at most (heck, the stat topic takes endgame levels at 27), so a lot of stuff should probably be moved down some.  I'm also kneejerking that you're overstating his damage in his fire/earth/water classes a bit, but I could just be imagining things.

Oh yes, this is definitely true. But I intentionally shifted some things to include his full skillset, making endgame level coincide with the level most classes learn their last skill (about 50).

Alternately, you could interpret this as going a little bit in to GS2 territory, and in fact, you could give him the GS2 Djinni on Floor 8 or something to buffer his current classes (and give him more Djinn unleashes). Though I wouldn't recommend bringing the GS2 classes into this as it adds WAAAAAY too many new options to map (GS2 allows characters to equip 9 Djinni total over GS1's 7 Djinni-setups. This adds roughly 10 more classes to Ivan's list!!!).

Not really sure why it'd be necessary to shift things, since it doesn't really give him much in the way of stuff he didn't already have, but whatever.  I guess it works if you factor TLA into the equasion, if you see floors 6 and 7 covering the 25-30% of what's left of that when the GS1 crew joins (though Pure Wish being available seems iffy to me even then), though I'm not sure if I'd take that view.

TLA Djinn for the postgame floors would be interesting, if only because it gives him a few more options that he otherwise wouldn't have, but I don't think it'd affect matters too much (most of those classes are just incremental stat bonuses over the classes he already has access to already, if memory serves, and I'm not sure how much mileage he'd get out of the three which require an item, which he might not even have access to.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I'm also kneejerking that you're overstating his damage in his fire/earth/water classes a bit, but I could just be imagining things.

I don't think I ever stated he really gets great Fire damage in any of his classes (Pyroclasm is weakest of the High-End spells, but still good). But he does spells well pretty much all around. The Plasma and Prism series spells are always pretty dominating for when they are obtained. And the only time he gets great Earth damage is as an Enchanter (Venus) using the high-end Gaia spell.

TLA Djinn for the postgame floors would be interesting, if only because it gives him a few more options that he otherwise wouldn't have, but I don't think it'd affect matters too much (most of those classes are just incremental stat bonuses over the classes he already has access to already, if memory serves, and I'm not sure how much mileage he'd get out of the three which require an item, which he might not even have access to.

With the endgame GS2 Djinni, Ivan would have access to (IIRC) 4 entirely new skillsets (they would require him to use all nine Djinni slots, but they exist), in addition to all of his current classes getting 1 or 2 (or even 3) new upgraded classes. If someone makes it to Floor 8 with an Ivan team, then maybe I could throw something together, but that's a lot of new stuff to add. It'd be simpler to allow him access to the Djinni unleashes and the buffering of his current classes than to allow a whole slew of new ones.

The item classes aren't bad options, but they are entirely universal and not particularly useful at endgame (Dark Mage has some stuff that Ivan might like, but for the most part, his current stuff should get the job done).

[Random Consonant]

I don't think I ever stated he really gets great Fire damage in any of his classes (Pyroclasm is weakest of the High-End spells, but still good). But he does spells well pretty much all around. The Plasma and Prism series spells are always pretty dominating for when they are obtained. And the only time he gets great Earth damage is as an Enchanter (Venus) using the high-end Gaia spell.

In terms of damage, not really.  The Plasma line has about the same base power as the Volcano line, but with a larger AoE (well, that and Ivan's innately higher Wind Power), and honestly, the differences between the big damage spells are fairly slight terms of base power, so I'm not really seeing as how his damage of any element is great at any point.

[DjinnAndTonic]

When I say 'great', I was thinking about 60%-75% to average durability. A solid 2HKO, which is about where'd I'd see Ivan's damage compared to the others (in their DL classes) throughout several points of the game. Against regular enemies in GS1, Ivan's 'great' damage is probably OHKO-ing, but that's not how we normally scale damage.

[SnowFire]

As a "for future reference" type thing, since I ended up researching it...  Garnet's spell loadout by floor.  Eiko's is presumably close as well.

White Magic:
Floor 1:
Cure: 6mp, Panacea: 4mp, Protect: 6mp

Floor 2:
Life: 8mp, Shell: 6mp, Silence: 8mp, Scan: 4mp, Blind: 6mp, Stona: 8mp

Floor 3:
Float: 6mp, Reflect: 6mp, Cura: 10mp

Floor 4:
Berserk: 6mp, Mini: 8mp, Confuse: 8mp

Floor 6
Curaga: 22mp

Summons:
Floor 3:
Ramuh

Floor 4:
Leviathan, Ifrit, Shiva, Atomos, Odin? (CAN be gotten from the Auction House, not certain if most people do it this early), Bahamut? (near Floor 4-5 border)

Floor 7
Ark

[Random Consonant]

When I say 'great', I was thinking about 60%-75% to average durability. A solid 2HKO, which is about where'd I'd see Ivan's damage compared to the others (in their DL classes) throughout several points of the game. Against regular enemies in GS1, Ivan's 'great' damage is probably OHKO-ing, but that's not how we normally scale damage.

I'm inclined to say that Ivan's relative damage with his psynergy is nowhere near that high ever, especially if he's in a class other than his base one due to lower power.

[DjinnAndTonic]

When I say 'great', I was thinking about 60%-75% to average durability. A solid 2HKO, which is about where'd I'd see Ivan's damage compared to the others (in their DL classes) throughout several points of the game. Against regular enemies in GS1, Ivan's 'great' damage is probably OHKO-ing, but that's not how we normally scale damage.

I'm inclined to say that Ivan's relative damage with his psynergy is nowhere near that high ever, especially if he's in a class other than his base one due to lower power.

You could be right. I haven't played GS since about a year and a half ago. And I wasn't doing any specific damage tests, just playing through the game. I certainly didn't try out all of Ivan's classes. Just a few of the ones that looked more useful (White Mage, Hermit series, Wind Seer series of course).

I wrote the comments based on my memories of the characters' damage throughout the game, and most of my memories were "Ivan goes first, Ivan MT-blasts a group of mooks, mooks die." So it's possible I was just overlevelled and Ivan's speed convinced me of his OHKO-ing prowess through repetition. If you're more familiar with GS1's damage curves throughout the game, I'm open to changing the commentary.

[Random Consonant]

I wrote the comments based on my memories of the characters' damage throughout the game, and most of my memories were "Ivan goes first, Ivan MT-blasts a group of mooks, mooks die." So it's possible I was just overlevelled and Ivan's speed convinced me of his OHKO-ing prowess through repetition. If you're more familiar with GS1's damage curves throughout the game, I'm open to changing the commentary.

Fair enough, GS randoms are sad (though probably not quite as sad as WA2 randoms), but Isaac and Garet have good damage themselves in their base classes (Gaia series and Ragnarok for Isaac, Volcano series and Heat Wave for Garet) and Mia isn't complete failure, so it's kinda hard to see Ivan's damage being that much higher than average.