Nyarlathotep's Dungeon: Brainstorming Topic!

[Tide]

Sealstones. There are certain combinations I'm really not pleased with. For example, the MT stone, then using abilities to boost the damage back to normal, which basically invalidates the sealstone entirely. I don't like that -- I was going to nerf the ability to add attack to people with it, but some people expressed concerns that they're just becoming more problematic than fun.

It can't be helped that people are going to want their broken and eat it too. People build teams from synergy, so it can be expected that people will try to circumvent negative effects of Sealstones. My thoughts on it if its really bugging you...you have a few options:

1) Remove it completely. Not a good option, but one that exists. This flat out avoids any exploitation since there's no option to exploit. I seriously do not recommend this unless you really really hate the idea >_>. Just noting it, but yeah. Not something I would do

2) Add restrictions on to it. There's a fear that it may be more problematic, but you could just add a restriction such that abuse of it in the most simplest way is no longer possible. People will just need to get creative. This is similar to how TL got that OD once per floor restriction when everyone started abusing OD.

3) Bigger trade off. Seal stones right now as far as I know, do not cost any character space or ratio points. In VP2, Seal stones made a trade off by giving you seal stone pouches so you can only carry so much broken at once. In the dungeon, you can make certain seal stones take up character space, ratio points or add a non restrictive function to the seal stone which costs points to do. This would be a noticable nerf without changing the actual function of the stone.

4) Modify the way the sealstone works. You can add more side effects to some of them such as a MP cost per round, HP cost per round or something similar. 

My personal idea was to have certain people who only come with sealstones. For example, Rand with Firefly, Ricardo with Life. Those would be the only people who got them and would help make them a little bit more... unique.

Going to second Tal on this. Restricting certain people to certain seal stones has the problem with whoever gets the seal stone may end up being an arbitrary decision. It also specifically locks a character and prevents creative usage or project ideas as a side note.

It was also commented I should just leave them in and I'm okay with that too. I think I just need to come to a consensus on each one that I'm not unhappy with.

You can always throw in the list of seal stone exploits you are not happy with and we can try and adjust them such that we can figure out what to do with them. That's always one option.

[Nephrite]

I can assure you that the idea of them isn't going anywhere, that's a last resort.

Um, hm, I guess the only one that really bugs me right now is the Multitarget stone. People have been using spells that double / increase attack value on those who wield it such that it negates the penalty from the stone itself. That's something I never wanted to happen -- the penalty is a penalty, not something you should be able to work around.

Firefly was one I was annoyed with, but I'm changing it to only work on the first single target attack of the enemy's so that I don't have to give it such bizzare downsides anymore and can also remove it's restrictions from Worker 8 and Jane, too.

Beyond that, no one else has really used any of the others, so maybe they aren't as good.

[Bardiche]

The idea of buffing Lucian's Atk with Deis came later. Initially it was just supposed to be Might Reinforce...

But I can see your point; giving high-damage attacks MT and then buffing them back to high-damage does sort of make the Sealstone disadvantage obsolete. (afterall, it's much easier to buff Atk than it is to buff Matk oftentimes)

On the other side, there are few characters able to buff it back to normal levels. Deis's Pwr Up is a specific case where she doubles Atk Power, which only Lucian and Emily can really profit from a whole lot, since their damage is obscene on the damage scale to begin with. The others, however, tend to not profit as much, and there's little reason to MT bad damage into awful MT damage.

The way the Sealstone works it really only is actually profitable when you make it an MT Nuke attack, like Lucian, Emily or Ted's Judgement (potentially OHKO damage even with Sealstone)─ the way it works, it's just not very good for much else other than buffing perhaps; but then, a buff needs to be fairly significant, and healing must be full-healing to work proper.

You can always just disallow buffs that boost damage/healing on a character with MT to work.

[Yoshiken]

Alternatively, make all positive spells/status do half to the sealstone bearer as well. Means that buffs can still be used, but take a lot more than usual, and healing is a problem as well.

[Nephrite]

My initial thought was simply to dis-allow attack boosting spells to work on the MTed character which would solve a lot of the general issues surrounding it.

You are right that there aren't many people who can outright remove the downsides, but there are enough (Jessica, Angelo, Deis2, Brey) that I should probably put a cap on it. Perhaps make it cap at 75% of the normal damage?

[Talaysen]

I will point out that buffing the sealstone bearer is NOT removing the penalty.  If they didn't have the sealstone they would be doing twice as much damage.  They are still doing half damage.  It also requires setup: a person who can buff on the team, said person needs to get a turn, said person needs to go before the sealstone bearer, said person has to use their turn buffing instead of doing something else, it takes resources, etc.

It's not like anyone's getting a free lunch here.  This takes effort and setup, has ways of being spoiled (MP busting, enemy blitzers, stalling fights, etc.).

Let's see:

Jessica is fast, but she could be using her turn to use Twin Dragon Lash anyway, which is powerful MT damage so you're not even getting a whole lot turn 1 by buffing the MT sealstone user. 
Angelo's slightly above average speed, so your MTer has to be average speed or so to get a turn 1 boost, and Angelo could be MT defense buffing or healing or something instead.
Deis 2... is faster than I remembered.  She's losing a turn 1 ID to buff though.
Brey is also only a bit above average speed (Alena wrecks that curve so hard), and has poor durability.  He can't do a lot besides the buff so he's kind of dead weight after turn 1.  Still means the MTer has to be around average speed or lower.

Deis 2 is the only one that seems abusive with this sealstone due to the speed, but she's pretty expensive (...isn't she?), so a good MTer + her doesn't give you much left to work with.

[Nephrite]

I will point out that buffing the sealstone bearer is NOT removing the penalty.  If they didn't have the sealstone they would be doing twice as much damage.  They are still doing half damage.  It also requires setup: a person who can buff on the team, said person needs to get a turn, said person needs to go before the sealstone bearer, said person has to use their turn buffing instead of doing something else, it takes resources, etc.

It's not like anyone's getting a free lunch here.  This takes effort and setup, has ways of being spoiled (MP busting, enemy blitzers, stalling fights, etc.).

Is your argument really that an MT'ed 100% physical is somehow the same as a 200% ST physical? Which do you honestly think is more valuable in a setting like the Dungeon?

It doesn't take effort or setup, it requires the use of a character who have many other things to do that can also be used to buff someone's attack. How about Nei, then, for example? She'd be Song of Madness-ing anyway.

[Talaysen]

Is your argument really that an MT'ed 100% physical is somehow the same as a 200% ST physical? Which do you honestly think is more valuable in a setting like the Dungeon?

And a 50% MT physical is not as good as a 100% ST physical.  My argument is that the penalty is the same.

It doesn't take effort or setup, it requires the use of a character who have many other things to do that can also be used to buff someone's attack. How about Nei, then, for example? She'd be Song of Madness-ing anyway.

I have no clue how good Song of Madness is because the stat topic doesn't even list it...  But Nei's buff goes away when she dies.  Personally I'd think sticking Firefly on someone else so she DOESN'T die is a better use of her than using the MT sealstone on someone.

[Bardiche]

I have no clue how good Song of Madness is because the stat topic doesn't even list it...

I think it was somewhere around the 200% extra damage. It's comparable to Peppita's Power Dance at full power.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

2.5x damage at max, IIRC. It's basically damagex2+Berserk effect in practice.

[Clear Tranquil]

*nods*

It doesn't take effort or setup, it requires the use of a character who have many other things to do that can also be used to buff someone's attack. How about Nei, then, for example? She'd be Song of Madness-ing anyway.

I'm a bit confused Neph do you mean you could be doing many other things with that character (i.e Nei) or that we should forget Nei and use another character entirely? >_>

[074]

Tal: Until you take into consideration that most of the dungeon fights are against multiple enemies.  Sure, the 50% hurts when you're trying to take out a single lynchpin enemy or a single boss, but when you're fighting a group, you're benefitting from the MT.  The problem Neph is having...is that it appears MT's penalty is too easy to mitigate as far as damage goes, anyway--without having to go out of one's way to do so.  (And that's not counting the other oddball cases like Arnaud's statrape, or any REALLY good ST buff like Copper Flesh or Quick, which gain more than they lose, or Orlandu's breaks suddenly going MT.)  So...I can see where Neph's coming from.

CT: What he's getting at is that you don't have to go out of your way to get a massive benefit from the MT sealstone.  By 'many other things', he's talking more about cases like Yuri or Deis2, who have very notable buffs in addition to other things (Pwr.Up is just one of MANY good things Deis-2 has going for her, and the boost on that is roughly comparable to Song of Madness).  And then there's other cases like Nei who don't care because their buff is the only real reason they have value to begin with.

Neph: To be fair, some may be more niche in who can benefit from them versus who can't.  You -really- need to build a team well to take advantage of Elemental Advance (I tried!), for example--either with strong damage of one element or with heavy variety...and the characters with heavier variety are not cheap.  Life basically is a one-way conversion from a healer to a reviver--sometimes worth it, sometimes not, and it hurts if you have actual revival.  VBL is even more picky (FF7 limits are something you want to, and will likely get to in this setting, use a LOT).  Status Symbol hurts your stats--so you either need to pick characters without certain stats(VP/FE), or that are good enough at what they have that it doesn't hit you as hard(Fogel hype, likely).  They all have potential that you can squeeze out of them.  Just that MT and FF are the two easiest to use due to their more 'versatile' effects.

[DjinnAndTonic]

You could make the MT Sealstone's drawback effect the whole party, but its benefit only works on the equipped party member. That would make it harder to mitigate the drawback without losing what makes it beneficial. And there are still work-arounds, but they aren't as easy to come by so the master team-tweakers will have to really work the kinks out of their strategies.

[dude789]

You could make the MT Sealstone's drawback effect the whole party, but its benefit only works on the equipped party member. That would make it harder to mitigate the drawback without losing what makes it beneficial. And there are still work-arounds, but they aren't as easy to come by so the master team-tweakers will have to really work the kinks out of their strategies.

That would make the MT sealstone almost compltetely unusable.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Isn't that the point of nerfing something?

[Nephrite]

I would certainly like people to still use it, but I would not like people to use it simply because it gives them a free ride because of a combination they've come up with. I still think just not allowing damage augmentation to work on the person with it is the best idea.

Alternatively, I could just remove the MT stone since it is a bit of a headache anyway. The others are pretty easy to understand.

[Clear Tranquil]

Well I was going to use it for Lenneth so she'd have MT healing with reduced buffs because from the discussions I've had with people her damage isn't all that hot until she gets Glance Reaver and even though the MT Sealstone might make her damage a lost cause I'd then have Peppita with Power Dance so her damage might not be a lost cause entirely
(Lenneth/Chaz/Peppita/Eiko/Lise/Nall) but ...

(I was also planning to experiment w/th the sealstone on Lise buff/debuffs)

Elemental Advance- There's ... no real way that team can take advantage of this I don't think ... Peppita has ice/water, Eiko has ... wind/earth/fire/holy ... o'wait Chaz might have holy? >_>

Life- This Sealstone is awesme and more people should use it as Tai says. Peppita could have MT revival with Healing Dance! Unfortunately she doesn't learn it until L40 so F4/5. Eiko could have MT revival off the bat with Cure/Cura but considering she's the only MT healer I start with I don't think that would be a good idea.

Vantage Point- Peppita's counters have invincibility frames anyway so I dunno if it really makes a difference her going before the enemy instead of during their attacks >_>  I dun remember Lenneth having counters and don't know about Chaz.

*insert thoughts on more sealstones here later*

*muses*

I was thinking about this last night and Violent Burst Law came to mind - I was thinking Dble Whte magicky goodness from Eiko then I remembered it's only once a floor >_> The idea came from that Eiko's Trance doesn't usually see much use in the DL/dungeon anyway and it would've been good to have that (it -is- awesme when it -does- pop up in game but again getting Trances in FFIX is still rather chance based there) I wouldn't have minded once per floor if Eiko already say joined with Holy or something but she doesn't get that for a -while- I dunno if there's much point in her casting MT healing or Life x2 at the start when peeps probably aren't hurt or ded yet <_<

I can't vouch for anyone else but Bard's team isn't getting a free ride as far as I'm concerned (no offence Bard~) They (well Bard) are still having to work to convince peeps despite Lucian w/th MT and buffs. Snowfire, etc brought up FFT Reflect Mail and how Eileen wasn't getting a free ride with Earthquake due to that, giving Algus time to MP bust etc. Storeboughty goodness. I brought up FFX-2 and what people might allow for that for those that abide by the opponent gets everything within reason clause of the dungeon. I've since re-discovered that FFX-2 has storebought elemental protection and if Deis's skills are indeed elemental she's nerfed by that if people allow it. Maybe people are just being generous in favour of the dungeon challenger's team because it's still early on in the dungeon (and I know I've been guilty and probably still will be guilty again) but they won't be so forever. If Bard's team runs into any other issues later on in the dungeon people won't be so lenient. At least I think not.

Tai just got flat footed by Hatbot too =-(

[Magic Fanatic]

Life - This is the first actually useful Sealstone on this list.  Stick it on a fast healer who doesn't get early revival (or those with power/resources to spare - hi Mint!), and then move it around to someone who gets crappy/situational late healing, like...  Uh...  WAo Jack?  S4 Ted?  Who else has crappy/situational late healing?

Speed? - Another very nice Sealstone.  It's main use is for either Buffers, or Tanks that have overkill, OVERKILL MT damage but probably see a turn once an enemy has seen four.  I'm almost thinking Jeff would like this later on in the dungeon (going on the IF-statement that his speed would be changed enough for the formula for Big/Multi Bottle Rocket accuracy formulas).

Resourceless - Ah, the Blitzing Stone of the Gods.  Yuri1 loves you forever once Seraphic Radiance opens up.  Sasarai loves you early...  Riddel or Serge for the mid-game?  Certainly a very situational stone, but by all means powerful when used with the right team.

Multitarget - Ah, the center of the most recent debacle.  Halves the power of everything, but hits the whole party.  Also not immune to buffs from other characters to get around this downside!...  Yeah.  I'd almost want to say that in addition to its current penalties, that buffs wouldn't affect the holder at all, even though the user can be debuffed (and have those debuffs healed).  Would that help the controversy, maybe?

Violent Burst Law - The only games that can arguably use this...  Actually benefit from draining those bars quickly.  Raquel?  Maxed out at 4 shots of Intrude, where she'd normally get MUCH higher further on.  Also makes Moonlight -> Intrude chain for Physical charging useless.  Cloud?  One shot, then no real scary damage anymore.  Tidus won't get multiple Overdrives a floor, Yuna...  Really doesn't care anyway...  In fact, I'm pretty sure that the only character that completely benefits from this is Lilka, and that's if she agrees to never die (unless VBL would keep her from losing all her FP upon death) and to never use Mystic (the only of her Force Abilities worth using anyway).

Status Symbol Law - Positive?  Never worry about enemy status whores!  Negative?  Die anyway, since you're now slower and frailer!  Yeah.

Love Love: So, what happens with genderless targets, like Ditto and Worker 8, or generics that can actually have different genders in-game, like FFT Ninja, Pikachu, or even the FF5 Blue Mage (Having Lenna/Faris/Krile vs. Galuf/Bartz?)?

Elemental Advance Sealstone: This is one of those that's really situational.  Build a team of characters that can each use two elements (and each picking up the two SAME elements makes this harder).  Not only that, though, but enemies can also either punish you for it, or mess up your strategies.  This Sealstone suffers from the fact that if you focus on one element, you make yourself FAR more likely to get walled/messed up.

Vantage Effect Sealstone: I...  Don't even know how this is used, much less how it can be useful.  There's not a lot of counter abilities - counter-attacks, yes, but not counter abilities.

Firefly: So...  Just waiting for the proper reapplication for this Sealstone.


There, anything I missed?

[DjinnAndTonic]

Violent Burst Law - The only games that can arguably use this...  Actually benefit from draining those bars quickly.  Raquel?  Maxed out at 4 shots of Intrude, where she'd normally get MUCH higher further on.  Also makes Moonlight -> Intrude chain for Physical charging useless.  Cloud?  One shot, then no real scary damage anymore.  Tidus won't get multiple Overdrives a floor, Yuna...  Really doesn't care anyway...  In fact, I'm pretty sure that the only character that completely benefits from this is Lilka, and that's if she agrees to never die (unless VBL would keep her from losing all her FP upon death) and to never use Mystic (the only of her Force Abilities worth using anyway).

Vantage Effect Sealstone: I...  Don't even know how this is used, much less how it can be useful.  There's not a lot of counter abilities - counter-attacks, yes, but not counter abilities.

Pretty sure Vantage Effect works on FE-style counters, so most SRPG characters love this sealstone.

As for VBL... it might just be because I personally love this sealstone, but I think it benefits a few more characters than you're mentioning, and the drawback for it is perfect in most cases. Cloud has damage options apart from his Limit, for one thing, but having that one shot of damage is really great. He trades away his 'I get an instant turn if someone damages me too much gives me a Limit' game though. But that's not what I would use him for in the Dungeon anyway. Also, Tales characters would -love- this stone if there were more Tales PCs to choose. As it stands, Tear really likes having a free battle of speed-casting->Mystic arte damage.
FF9 characters might be able to use Trance with this, too. I know that the stone protects against Limit meters draining under normal gameplay restrictions (i.e. WA3/4 PCs don't lose their FP just because a new battle starts - it -only- drains when the PC 'spends' the points). So it's possible that FF9 PCs can Trance at will once per floor. I don't remember the Trance mechanics well enough anymore to be sure how appropriate that would be.
On the flip side, SoA, G3, and Lufia2-type characters don't benefit from this much at all where they rely on the constantly-refilling aspect of their Limit meters.
And no one really knows how VBL works with VP1/2 Soul Crushes.

[Nephrite]

Changes proposed:

Vantage Effect: Characters attacked counter with any damage attack from their skillset when damaged. This resets their CT to 0.

Multitarget: All effects are now multitarget, but they are reduced by 100/Targets in effectiveness. For example, a move that is 100% accurate being targeted at 4 individuals has a 25% chance of working. This effectiveness caps at 100%, even if the ability can go above that normally.

Violent Burst Law: Gauges start at 50% but you gain the gauge 50% slower.

Status Symbol: Damage reduced by 10%, Damage taken increased by 10%, status immunity.

Body Charge: Damage increased by 1.2x, Damage taken reduced to .8x after defenses, effective speed increased by 1.2x, cost of the PC increased by 1.5x

[DjinnAndTonic]

Violent Burst Law: Gauges start at 50% but you gain the gauge 50% slower.

This is 100% useless as a lot of people already allow characters to start battles with 50% gauges. And making the the gain slower means that a lot of characters will never see limits anyway. I don't see what was wrong with it before?

Also, kind of changes the meaning of 'Violent Burst'... >.>;; I mean, the key use of Violent Burst is to have access to a burst of damage (or other difficult-to-get effect) to use at will in a strategic manner.


All the other proposed changes look really good, though. Status symbol and Vantage Effect got a lot stronger though. Still, I really like the proposed change to Status symbol as it seems a lot more appropriate. Vantage Effect's change just sounds broken if used on someone like Yuri or Raquel. The original version would be more useful if there were more PCs in the Dungeon with counter attacks/effects (more SRPG PCs, essentially).

Multitarget is nerfed, but it really makes sense and is easy to interpret. My only question is whether the user can choose which/how many targets to attack, or if the choice is only ST or the whole enemy party? The latter makes sense, but the wording of the effect makes me think that there might be some choice in the number of targets you select.

Body Charge might be -really- good on average-speed low-cost options. DW Hero comes to mind for some reason.

[Nephrite]

I didn't like the fact that people were entirely cut off from using the gauges at all. I am also not familiar with this idea of automatically starting with 50% whatever gauge.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I didn't like the fact that people were entirely cut off from using the gauges at all. I am also not familiar with this idea of automatically starting with 50% whatever gauge.

I understand where you're coming from... but that's kind of the point of the drawback. Having instant access to big damage/awesome effects is great, so the drawback is that you -can't- do it again. (Or in some cases, like Cloud, it means you lose insta-turns; Or for Virginia, it means you lose the stat boost that comes from having full FP.) It was probably your most elegant sealstone you've made to date. For the few characters who this really -doesn't- benefit in any way (SoA PCs, Lufia2 PCs, Aeris, and VP PCs, arguably), the challenger probably just wouldn't use them in a VBL team.

EDIT: And personally, I could probably find a use for having full starting SP/IP/Limit meter for SoA, Lufia2, and Aeris.

VP PCs just hope that VBL doesn't effect them. It really wouldn't be doing them any favors.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Also... if you don't like the fact that they can't charge the gauges at all... You could change the wording of the original effect from 'These gauges do not charge by any other means' to 'These gauges do not charge by their normal means.'

This means that PC abilities designed to charge limits would give challengers another option for using the gauges. Aeris has a limit ability that does this. IIRC, SH3 has something that does this too?

LoD might have something like this too? Can't remember.

[Nephrite]

That's certainly an idea. Hopefully other people will post their thoughts too!!