New Nyarlathotep's Dungeon Topic, Updated 10/1/14 with new rules

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

It's an effect that kicks in, on average, every -three fights-. That's a once-in-a-floor deal that can't even be rigged to work where you -want- it to. That's not worth even a 0.5. =/ It's hilarious, but way too poor to be worth even adding.

[Nephrite]

Clearly I need to invent a Perfect Accuracy sealstone.

[Nephrite]

Oh yeah, Citan is going to 3.0 and Seifer is going to 1.5.

BC is being changed to increase effective speed by 1.3x and reduce damage taken to .7x, no more health increase. It also can no longer be moved at all, under any circumstances.

[SnowFire]

What about damage?  I'd be in favor of keeping that on BC.

I think Citan is safe to keep at 2.5, actually.  Just don't give him a Speed Ring.

[dude789]

What about damage?  I'd be in favor of keeping that on BC.

I think Citan is safe to keep at 2.5, actually.  Just don't give him a Speed Ring.

I agree with Snowfire on both counts. Citan is way to ST oriented to be worth a 3.0. As long as you don't give him a Speed Ring he should be fine where he is, and Body Charge really needs the damage buff to be worthwhile at all. 

[Nephrite]

Oh right, derp, yeah, it also increases damage by 1.3x too.

[Nephrite]

Here is the Presidential Team:

T260G, Mesarthim, Yulie (Body Charge), Marco and Raynie.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Also, since I'm still in High-School Science 101 mood, let's play a little game:

Team Phantasy Star 4 After-School Special

Rika (4.0), Rune (Body Charge, 3.5), Kyra (2.0), Raja (1.0), Nall (0.5).

Let's see if PS4 PCs are as brokenly good as they're vaunted to be in the dungeon.

[Nephrite]

I'd suggest for Deis1 (and any other latejoiners with strange spikes in use after they do join) to be removed from the roster in the future to avoid this, because I don't think there's a good, intuitive solution for such duellers.

I think this particular topic deserves some intense merit and consideration.

I honestly had never considered it to be an issue, but in light of recent scrutiny, it may be a better idea to get rid of people who join late. Deis2 may also be in the same camp, but you can pick her up much earlier than 1, so maybe not?

Orlandu is another but he's a lot easier to interpret since you can just assume he's there from the start and can get his skillset and everything by Floor 2.

I'd love to hear some discussion on this topic though, as I definitely want things to be less... hmm... bizzare? If I can make it so.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The main problem that, say, Orlandu, avoids is that FFT is a game where stat growth is nearly linear (that is, if PC #1 has more unequipped HP than PC #2 at Level 1, he will have more unequipped HP at every level), which is a property BoF1 does not share. It is very easy to say "pretend Orlandu joined at Level 1 with start-of-game equips, and scale appropriately" because Orlandu's pre-join performance can easily be extrapolated and predicted, and official word of mod settles the Excalibur issue nicely.

Deis2 I could see being slightly problematic but I'd expect her to be far less so. Her start is better than her end but whether people extrapolate her start backwards or do something more handwavy and extrapolate her "overall" performance backwards ultimately makes relatively little difference (nothing that should cause a large swing in her rating).

Deis1's problems feel fairly unique to me among the current roster but there's a chance I am forgetting someone.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Actually, that hits a fair deal of the PS4 cast. Rika, who starts underlevelled and just soars in levels, just happening to get that spike a lot earlier also due to joining considerably earlier and having better base stats. Raja, who actually endures it in the reverse - latejoiner who starts overlevelled and gradually loses his edge (how do you scale him early? Taking his overlevelled stint or endgame-like?). Rune arguably suffers from that as well due to an idyosincratic early showing. Then there are cases like Toadstool, who joins midgame with durability and damage of complete suck and spikes in stats in a manner not entirely unlike Deis1, albeit less extreme and not reliant on different XP curves. The line between what's simple to extrapolate and what isn't is honestly very thin (it feels like the extrapolation is clearly an issue with Deis1, while it isn't with Toadstool, and I say that as a fairly intuitive gut reaction of mine. But why outside of sheer stat scale scope and possibly BoF1 mechanics being rather wonky with stuff like fixed power for spells? The fundamental issue is similar).

[Nephrite]

I think in the case of Deis1 vs. Toadstool is there's... way less actual "game" in SMRPG than in BoF1. Maybe that's just me, though.

I feel like the issue of Raja had come up before and we figured what abilities he'd have at level 1. I guess that is irrelevant, though.

[Dark Holy Elf]

In the case of Rika, she joins so early in-game that I hardly consider it a big deal (and unlike Deis, her initial weakness is gone after a few battles, not a few dungeons). Rune absolutely does curbstomp floor 1 to me (he even has a temp appearance in-game to let you know this). Raja... I dunno, again, he doesn't feel like he's vastly hard to deal with. None of them have completely unintuitive stats at join time or anything like that.

[Dhyerwolf]

Toadstool also has a lot more notable lag in game (as in, you will very strongly notice it upon her joining) so people who pick her are going to remember and adjust for this more (I wouldn't have remembered at least that Deis 1 was bad on joining for dungeon, but always remember when Toadstool comes up).

[SnowFire]

I don't think it's a big issue.  As noted, Peppita is in the Dungeon, and she is utter puny-bait on early floors if scaled to the *moment* she joins, but give her a single dungeon, and she merely has a level penalty, not a horrific disadvantage.  Give her 3 dungeons, and it's pretty well gone.  I don't really recall any problems with her the last time she was used - the "problem" with Peppita was that she was actually *under*priced at first and earned herself a price increase.

It's the same with Deis1.  Her level penalty does not last very long, so while I can see an argument for a stat penalty on Floor 1, it really shouldn't be a problem on Floor 2.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The issue is that it isn't a level penalty. That may not make a difference to you, but I think it does for me, and it certainly will to some others.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Yeah, I think that's what nails the fundamental problem. Deis1 joins at a level compatible with the rest of the party with bleh stats and then experiences sudden spikes. Thing is she joins something like late floor 4  and are we going to say that Deis1 spends -half the game sucking- when this just isn't true in-game? But no other choice even makes any sense. Toadstool makes more sense, since her spike is more gradual (she spends at least two floors at game-worst durability even after she joins), and then there's the fact that Deis' stats jump from subpar across the board to near game-best all-around within two floors. It's kind of a bitch in that sense.

Peppita scaling is at least simpler because her growths are linear. Deis' growths certainly aren't.

[SnowFire]

Ah, I see.  That said...  basically you already nailed it.  The actual number next to "level" isn't really relevant to me.  I don't care what level my character is, I care how much hurt they emit & how much hurt they can take and how fast.  The effect with Deis is comparable to a level penalty for me.

I didn't play Phantasy Star 2, but IIRC for whatever reason Nei's levels give her half the stats of other characters, but she gains them twice as fast.  If hypothetically a Nei-like character joined halfway through the game at the exact same level as the party, she's not underleveled to casual examination, but in actuality she is - her stats are half as good as they should be for that level number.  (Now what matters is how fast she catches up...  the problem with say FE7 Nino, as you pointed out before, is that she doesn't really catch up fast enough without kill feeding her, so she deserves a level penalty for a really long time.)

Jo'ou: Well Deis1 joins more like "early Floor 3" I'd say at least, which is something.  I do agree that characters whose stats don't scale easily throughout the game can be headachey.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I haven't played BoF1 or 2, but I always thought the point of Deis1 was "uberfast damage beast for the entirety of Nyarlie's Dungeon", thus her pricetag. As such, I've always just scaled her based on her worth. You could just make it a hard rule for late-joiners? I mean, you already have a hard rule for them that they start with whatever their skillset was at joining, despite the fact that this doesn't really reflect an in-game experience for the player (VP2 Lenneth starts with all those healing spells on F1, but you certainly don't have access to those with any PC available in VP2's earlygame).

The point of most of the latejoiners in the roster was to give us access to slightly more diverse PCs early on because Nyarlie's Dungeon is slightly more difficult than most JRPGs and requires more careful team balance rather than the emphasis on -progression- you'd get in an actual game.

tl;dr: It's already artificial, her point value clearly shows how she's supposed to be taken, just go with it~

[Dark Holy Elf]

I see no reason to "go with" something that is actually a lie personally. People misremembered Deis and the point value caused them to buy into this misremembering, but now that we know better there's no reason for the character to continue to exist.

Jo'ou: Well Deis1 joins more like "early Floor 3" I'd say at least, which is something.

As per previous discussion which I thought you agreed with, you don't get dragons until after F2, and Deis is way later than them. In fact, Deis joins notably after the game's clear halfway point (the one with the music change when you get Gobi) and as such late floor 4 seems if anything a bit generous for Deis' joining point. Also as per previous discussion, the first boss entry in Meeple's stat topic where Deis is actually impressive is Mothro, i.e. five dungeons from the end of the game. (read: F6, or maybe late F5.)

[SnowFire]

Re interps: Eh, "lie" seems over the top.  It's just the difference between pretending a late-joining character joins at level 1 early in the game (hence no interp problems for Orlandu or Peppita) vs. attempting to scale their performance at their rough time-of-join to earlier floors.  I believe both approaches are valid, and I like to go with the approach that appears to reflect the character better.  I'm not 100% sure Deis even ends up horrible via the first interp - we'd have to make up XP charts for her initial levels, so it's possible she'd be "caught up" and more by Floor 4, although impossible to say for sure.

Re join floor: Oh, oops.  No that was just me misremembering slightly, you're right, it's Floor 4.  (And the fact that Deis's early spells aren't damage-breakers of doom isn't under dispute, to be clear, I'm more litigating on the point of "is Deis slow and uber-frail" that comes from joining underlevel, which - correct me if I'm wrong - IS resolved fast in-game.)

[Talaysen]

My two cents.

I generally disagree with anything that involves extrapolating stats and skillsets.  If the character doesn't exist in-game for floors 1-3, then the most reasonable way to scale them is however you would on floor 4, not try to extrapolate something to earlier floors that doesn't actually exist in-game ever.  It's still kind of weird, which is why I'm okay with not keeping characters who join that late in the Dungeon.

[dude789]

It has come to my attention that we have not yet added the ultimate dungeon pick. I feel that this should be rectified so I present:

LUVDISC (Pokemon Black and White with egg moves available) .5
Pros: Neat skillset with healing, buffs, debuffs, status prevention, and cool miscellaneous skills like Mud Sport. Pretty speedy.
Cons: Is Luvdisc. Is 2HKOed by almost anything and lightning damage is extremely dangerous. No damage and Safe Guard is late.

[Yoshiken]

I would love the cons there to say:
"Terrible healing, ST buffs and debuffs, status prevention is late, and dies to Electric without Mud Sport. Nothing but speed."

Otherwise, I wholeheartedly support the idea of adding more Pokemon~

[Clear Tranquil]

Bit late but yeeah I'm sure people don't actually let the likes of Lenneth, etc start the dungeon at L60 or whatever it is she joins at in game >_> At least not for health stats~

Usually these type of characters come with an "interp issues" warning flag on the wiki and that's enough for me. I dunno using a project character is always a risk, and it's always been that way I think but it might be boring otherwise =P General rule of thumb is not to make an actual whole team of project characters unless you want it to explode for amusement value or even more hilariously even actually work out for a while if it somehow comes altogether depending and something just clicking, coming together out of the blue is where the fun is~

Alternatively you build your team round your project character with non projecty/non obscure characters

**

Sooo ... apparently Rena doesn't get revival till L60 ;o Yeah screw dat noise. Apparently Mint doesn't get it till late either? =/ Unless her Narakiri Dungeon/Radiant Mythology forms are legit >_>