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

[Dark Holy Elf]

Saga and Skies both feel like they have initiative moves all over the place (about 7% of Saga Frontier's abilities are!). That said Saga has bosses who get initiative so good it beats everything you do (mechanically it's a free "turn" before you get your first) so Saga initiative is pretty damn low on the list of initiatives to respect. Dunno if Skies has anything similar. Silver Nightmare? I forget.

[Nephrite]

If I am missing anyone in the current team list on the first page, please post and let me know, as I'm going to wipe it clean soon and start over.

[Pyro]

I think I had Rikku, Ryu2, Chemist, Lilka, and (Firefly) Rand?

Anyone got suggestions for this team? See major problems on floor 1? <_<

[Dhyerwolf]

Grenades are pretty great floor 1 though.

[Nephrite]

If anyone is looking for some inspiration, look no further: http://rpgdl.com/wiki/index.php/Old_Dungeon_Teams

[DjinnAndTonic]

My VBL team wasn't
"Djinn | Cloud, Raquel, Yulie, Aika - Violent Burst Law"

It had Aeris and Tear in there to truly abuse VBL! Having two WA4 PCs on a VBL team is detrimental to your resources.

Djinn | Cloud, Raquel, Aika, Aeris, Tear - Violent Burst Law

I only bother putting it here because I was gonna just edit the wiki but it's been so long since I logged into it, I don't have my login info anymore. Is there anyone who can look it up or make me a new account?

[Nephrite]

I can't promise the teams listed were the ones that got in, since they were just what I had C/P'ed from then. It isn't my fault if you change your mind!

[Nephrite]

All right, so I have a few suggestions on how to make things a little easier to vote on. Dhyer brought this up, so I'd love to get some feedback.

Assume the following:

All characters should be scaled to level 1, except in the following situations:
*Characters join at a much higher level in-game (Rune, Marcus)
*Characters join after the start of the game. In this situation, treat the character as with their stats that they join with -at the time of their joining- and scale them against that average until they would officially join. In effect, they stay static on their stats until they would have normally joined.
*Something terrible happens if you do this. (Suikoden characters, perhaps?)

Any character who joins later on should keep their skills and abilities, but they would get compared against the abilities of others at the time.


In addition, it would be -amazing- if some people could throw on the wiki some guidelines to characters, much like Snowfire did with DQ8. Take Mew for example, if someone could jot some notes down on something like 'Stats are 50% above average until Floor 5, damage should be considered to be easily in the 2HKO range' or something like that.

My goal for these ideas is to make things easier to vote on so this seems a lot less daunting to get into and analyze.

[SnowFire]

I don't follow.  What does "scaled to level 1" even mean?  The Ancient Cave example?  Just use "scaled to join time" except sometimes that join time is the start of the game.  (e.g. it makes 0 sense for Cecil & Kain to be scaled to level 1 when the game starts with them at level 10, and only Rydia joins at level 1.)  As far as staying static until they actually join, I think that's what everyone already does - so someone who joins on "Floor 3" should perform exactly the same on Floors 1-3.

Anyway, I don't think that makes anything any easier.  It's *harder* to make up fake averages where everyone levels at the same rate or something than just use the in-game rates.  Characters with a "minor" level bonus should still have that advantage, and that also creates a huge interp split for characters where it's not clear if they're "much higher" or not.

If people want to make it easier to vote on (and I know many / most people do this already), then I strongly recommend just taking a snapshot at the end of the floor and running with that the entire floor.  (Pretend a stat topic was made at the end of a Dungeon that's the end of Floor 2 or whatever.)  There are already issues with chopping a game into 6.5-7 equal parts; no need to chop it into 30 parts, and it also neatly escapes the problem that comes when more MP is acquired in the middle of a floor for the per-battle interp.  (Do Suikoden characters magically acquire a L4 charge upon leveling up mid-floor despite having their MP nuked to 0 earlier?!)  It also makes Floor 1 a lot more sane, as many casts are wacky in the VERY beginning and don't function at all like they do later, and screwing them over for that doesn't feel fair.

I will say that a few weird characters could potentially just use a forced interp to make their casting clear.  I'd always assumed that Mew was assuming you got gifted an L5 Mew at game-start for example, but Elf & others suggested scaling him to an endgame join instead.  No dog in that fight, just make it clear since his power apparently fluctuates a good deal based on that.

tl;dr: "Late joins are scaled to join time, scale to normal gamestate after they'd join."  (aka the status quo?)

[Nephrite]

The FF4 example is exactly what I meant. Cecil and (hypothetically) Kain would begin the Dungeon at level 10 with their stats since that's how they begin the game. I guess I should've made it more clear and say "Assume everyone starts the way they start in their home game and continue normally after that, except in the case of people who join after that, who should be scaled based on when they join."

Your idea of taking the snapshot at the end of the floor is probably a better way to handle the general idea as well.

It may have already been the status quo on the matter, but I thought it best to at least try and state what that status quo was in case other people had differing views that made it more complicated. I didn't mean to insinuate that people should level at the same rate, if you have someone who has a really high experience gain, that should be taken into account.

As for making specific rules for specific characters, yes, I think that would be the best for cases like Mew as well.


EDIT: Also, that was the idea on how to make it easier, if someone made, say a CT Miniguide that said something like:

Floor 1: Crono is average damage, Marle is below average, Lucca is also below average
Floor 2: All characters are average damage, Marle has Ice which is above average


And so on, it'd make it a lot easier to have that "Floor 2 damage average" or what-have-you.

[dude789]

With regards to Mew, it's probably safe to say he starts with stats around 150% average that converge at a fairly constant rate to his 120% endgame average (so about 5% per floor maybe?). Damage is a bit more complex. It probably stays above average most of the time which is especially strong around the mid game floors when Mew can run with Earthquake or Psychic around floor 2-4 before everyone else can get their endgame moves.

[Dhyerwolf]

Mew is aftergame so the easiest is just using the DL stats. I guess it's probably easiest to take whatever someone has at the end of the floor at the beginning.

[dude789]

Mew is aftergame so the easiest is just using the DL stats. I guess it's probably easiest to take whatever someone has at the end of the floor at the beginning.

I disagree. It's unintuitive to compare Mew's stats to endgame while limiting him to TMs by floor. If you compare Mew's stats to endgame then it makes sense to also give him endgame TM options. I think Mew is more interesting if you compare him to other pokemon available on the floor and it makes him more consistent with the other pokemon team options like Alakazam. Pokemon stats are fairly easy to scale backwards, especially for a pokemon like Mew who have the same value for each stat.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Mew stats are probably closer to 180-200% average for the first couple floors, using starters/Pidgey/etc. as a guide. Mew is pretty much the exact type of character I feel is a bad fit for the dungeon, though. Are its stats 120% average or 150-200% average? Who knows! It's a total wild judgement call because this is a character which doesn't exist in-game without hacking!

[Nephrite]

I'm not opposed to removing weird outliers like that, but I think if we came up with a very specific ruling on things like Mew it'd make it at least a bit less weird.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I definitely agree that characters like Mew need a specific ruling on how their stats scale (and priced accordingly) as the votesplit seen in Dhyer vs. dude is far too large otherwise. It worked well enough for Athos, as I recall.

[Nephrite]

It probably could have saved some heartbreak with Kyogre, too!

[Nephrite]

This is what I currently have for new teams as of this date. Please post if you have any additions.

Pyro | Rikku, Ryu2, Lilka, FFT Chemist, and Firefly Rand.
Jo'ou | Geno (3.0), Mei-ling (2.5), Yuri1 (3.5), Hope (1.5, Speed?), Beecham (0.5)
Andy | Ramza, Chemist, Ninja, Worker 8, Beowulf (Some sort of Synergy)
dude | Mei-Ling, Feena, Aika, White Rose, FFT Monk  (Vantage)

[Dhyerwolf]

Cecilia (3.5), Alys (3), Alakazam (2.5), WW (1.5), Jean (0.5)

Speed (?)

Thought process is I don't really see these people used at all. Obviously lacking in great physical slugging and I'll try to refine the team a little, but here's at least a start.

Modify to

Cecilia (3.5), Alys (3), Terra (2.5), Ronfar (1), Jean (1, Lunar 2)

Alakazam apparentally doesn't get a lot of skillset access early (Jeiganesque stats may make up for that, but not sure how he's intended to be scaled early), I misread WW's description, and Jean was just because no one picked up. So...better all around mage (losing speed and Reflect Later for Revival, not dying to physical and a few nice status blockers), healer who probably has an earlier spell selection, and Jean to help the team early with some decent physical damage.

[AndrewRogue]

Since it got lost.

The listed team already failed out in the dungeon. I made a new team that looks more like...

Team Tactics (10 pts)

Ramza (3 pts)
Chemist (2 pts)
Ninja (2 pts)
Worker 8 (2 pts)
Beowulf (1 pt)

Edit: If Neph is willing (I think my teams make him sad), I'd happily take a synergy bonus here.

[Random Consonant]

oh right i should make a new team shouldn't i

Team I Don't Know What The Hell I'm Doing

Yuri2 (3.5)
Hilda (2.5)
FFT Chemist (2)
Raquel/Speed? (2)
Raynie (1)

[DjinnAndTonic]

Team Initiative Shenanigans!

Mei-Ling (2.5) - QuickDraw Gunner!
Whimsicott (2.5) - Prankster Status Whore!
Nina 1 (2.5) - Initiative Healer!
Ryu 1 (2.5) - Initiative Dragons! (..eventually, damn he is overpriced)
Gilder (1.5) - Aura of Denial Status Blocker! (also overpriced)

[Dark Holy Elf]

Ryu1 feels more about decent MT physicals which hover around borderline 2HKO, off good speed, than he does about dragons. Would be good in conjunction with strength-raising things, I would imagine. (Might still be overpriced though.)

[Nephrite]

I'd only argue that the dragons do have status immunity and are initiative. I don't know if he's really overpriced, but I could maybe see him as a 2.0...

[Magic Fanatic]

Ness (Speed?), Princess Toadstool, Mesarthim, Arnaud, Ricardo.

Sure, why not?  Let's see how I crash.