General Discussion

[Navilee]

Sorry for delay:  Preparation for Exalted games took longer than expected.  Anywho:

Eldritch Darts:  To be fair, they are more than likely intended to be backup weapons more than anything, I just kind of doubt she would be carrying a weapon around (and I forgot she had a dagger.  Although it's damage is even more shite...).  Although not having a concentration check will be nice.  And I can afford to take my feat out of Skill Focus: Conc.  I kinda wish the concentration skill was more that a one-trick skill, as an aside.  It's hard to boost it up too much with how little use it usually gets.

Ze magicks:  Yeah, I tend to avoid simple blaster-casters; besides, all Mastery 1 or 2 abilities are incredibly underwhelming, especially evocation.  IIRC, it's Eldritch Darts that cost mana.  Higher-levels, though, necromancy will come into its own (although the 4 mana/HD is a huge investment; I saw a hack that changed necromancy around to reduce it to 2 and allow it to inflict status effects) as healing, and the transmutation will allow her to explode weapons in goon's hands.  Not to mention Overwhelming Presence 2 will allow her to browbeat 1/round as a free action, which is going to help immensely (pity it lasts only a turn).  Expect stunts for such eventually.  On that note, though:  Arcanists get shit for feat masteries.

Das Session:  I enjoyed it.  While it did run a little long, it was fun.  Maya's epic assault was impressive, even if the amount of rolling on her turn was amusing.

I will try to think of more comments.

[Dracos]

Elise-chan, we're going to have So Much FUN!

~~~~~~~
Because the feat rules are really annoying.

Harrier special traits have a stupid "Cannot use power feats".
Finesse AND some defense feats have a "Cannot use power weapons".
Some feats behave odd with mis-matching power/finesse bits.

Bastard Sword is the only weapon that has "Power, Finesse" so technically I can treat it as a finesse weapon while still being a giant sword wielder (and thus avoiding major character changes).

Basically, it's so I can choose a non-boring feat route (now pasted at the bottom).

I am resisting doing weapon finesse at all since stacking sneak attack would steal Ataru's thunder ;3  So instead...EVERYONE FALL DOWN!

[Dracos]

Sorry for delay:  Preparation for Exalted games took longer than expected.  Anywho:

Eldritch Darts:  To be fair, they are more than likely intended to be backup weapons more than anything, I just kind of doubt she would be carrying a weapon around (and I forgot she had a dagger.  Although it's damage is even more shite...).  Although not having a concentration check will be nice.  And I can afford to take my feat out of Skill Focus: Conc.  I kinda wish the concentration skill was more that a one-trick skill, as an aside.  It's hard to boost it up too much with how little use it usually gets.

Ze magicks:  Yeah, I tend to avoid simple blaster-casters; besides, all Mastery 1 or 2 abilities are incredibly underwhelming, especially evocation.  IIRC, it's Eldritch Darts that cost mana.  Higher-levels, though, necromancy will come into its own (although the 4 mana/HD is a huge investment; I saw a hack that changed necromancy around to reduce it to 2 and allow it to inflict status effects) as healing, and the transmutation will allow her to explode weapons in goon's hands.  Not to mention Overwhelming Presence 2 will allow her to browbeat 1/round as a free action, which is going to help immensely (pity it lasts only a turn).  Expect stunts for such eventually.  On that note, though:  Arcanists get shit for feat masteries.

Das Session:  I enjoyed it.  While it did run a little long, it was fun.  Maya's epic assault was impressive, even if the amount of rolling on her turn was amusing.

I will try to think of more comments.

Everyone starts with lame masteries for the first 4 levels.  Everyone.

Are you taking a bow or anything?  Something to be alongside it?  Assuming you're taking misc powers/buffing as your main angle, so you've got something that you can pull out anywhere long term? :3

[Navilee]

I could pick up about any weapon and use it, but I have been thinking of looking into a bow.  But with the four of you 'round, I think combat's damn near

And Lore is my main mastery.  Oh boy.  Beast isn't too bad, though, it's just rather... inferior to the social ones.  Not to mention most beast encounters that I've seen don't benefit from token pools that vanish post-encounter.  Now, if they carried over...

[Merc]

About to go zonk out for the night. On the chance Drac isn't amused enough to set it as a board icon, I share the fruits of my geeky labor for most of today (I really, really, -really- need to get a job so I have other stuff to do):

[Dracos]

I am very amused.  Snip out the part after Aleph shooting and leave the ender and I'll put it up :P

And usually it's just forgetfulness.

[Dracos]

I could pick up about any weapon and use it, but I have been thinking of looking into a bow.  But with the four of you 'round, I think combat's damn near

And Lore is my main mastery.  Oh boy.  Beast isn't too bad, though, it's just rather... inferior to the social ones.  Not to mention most beast encounters that I've seen don't benefit from token pools that vanish post-encounter.  Now, if they carried over...

Odds are if you took buffing abilities, you'd use those in combat (Albeit I don't know what those are), but really the point of having a weapon you can use isn't about really contributing in combat so much as having options that don't have narrative consequences if you need to use them.

Technically, everyone should carry a bow, if we were talking combat twinking, in case we ever face flying guys...but thankfully that won't likely happen in iH, making the usual 'favorite weapon' deal more sensible.

[Navilee]

Odds are if you took buffing abilities, you'd use those in combat (Albeit I don't know what those are), but really the point of having a weapon you can use isn't about really contributing in combat so much as having options that don't have narrative consequences if you need to use them.

Technically, everyone should carry a bow, if we were talking combat twinking, in case we ever face flying guys...but thankfully that won't likely happen in iH, making the usual 'favorite weapon' deal more sensible.

Aye, but Mastery 1 Capabilities aren't too spectacular; I am noticing a trend.  Oh well, once I hit 3 I can start using actual spells regularly.  And I have <i>about</i> the same effectiveness with throwing force effects around as a shortbow (somewhat higher, rather, due to INT to damage).

Did I actually leave a sentence unfinished?  Wow.  Talk about great concentration.

[Merc]

House rules thread updated. Also, lore mastery is kinda weird, Drac, because none of the lore mastery stuff is honestly appropriate feel for an arcanist except possibly heal tree, since they have an aspect of power around that, and necromancy also allows for healing. It's one of those things that make magic have that 'last minute tacked on' feel to IH. Defense at least has stuff like mobility/dodge which still fits concept-wise with most of the classes.

I'm assuming generally that future splatbooks were expected to add more appropriate lore feats, but then system changed hands and kinda got relegated to obsoleteness. People still use it, like DnD 3.5e, but it's only got three books unlike 3.5's thirty plus books.

Generally, way to generate more feats is to export feats from D&D books since they generally don't unbalance IH. Then again, it's a bit more tricky with spellcasters because of how different the magic system is compared to normal combat mechanics which are largely unchanged.

[Namagomi]

But yeah.  Masteries typically don't start getting good stuff until about...Mastery 3, at least.  And only Aleph and Elise get that relatively early. (They get it two levels earlier, to be precise)

[Merc]

Okay, general thought on skill challenges/skill tricks/combat challenges/stunts.

1. Combat Challenges are pretty much like feats in the effect that they give, and are in fact weaker, so you can use as many as are appropriate for your described action. They're not exactly abuseable, I think. Obviously though, you can't combine similar challenges and their feat counterpart, such as reducing your attack by 5 to gain 5 damage with power attack, and then further reduce the attack by 6 with combat challenge to gain 6 damage.

2. Skill Tricks/Skill Challenges/Stunts can give you a pretty good advantage in comparison, though, and really, there's only so many actions you can take in those six seconds of activity. I'm debating on how much to limit them by.

For now, I'm thinking I'm going to rule that any trick/challenge/stunt that has an effect on combat modifiers, can only be used once per action.

So if you use a move action to do a trick, you can't use another one that uses a move action, but you can use one that uses a standard action. If it uses a full attack, you can't use other trick/challenge/stunts that affect combat modifiers.

An exception on the one per action is if you have an ability that lets you move before and after attack, such as Mobility mastery 3, in which case you could use one for each separate part of the move action.

You can otherwise chain as many of those tricks that don't have an effect on those combat modifiers and are appropriate for the situation.

For example, let's take a hypothetical Maya who has Mobility 3. She tumbles through difficult terrain, jumps up and grabs a flagpole, uses climb to get atop (using various skills to do all that), then jumps off the wall to do a leaping strike at the enemy (one move action skill trick), attempting a stunt to bluff him into thinking she's striking his face when she's going for his chest and leaving him winded (inflict penalty stunt using a standard action) while also taking a combat challenge to improve her damage (trading -4 attack to gain an additional +3 damage), then after the attack is done, tumbling to avoid an AoO as she takes her distance, and ending her move action by tumbling around some large object for a defense bonus stunt.

All that works.

She couldn't however, for example, both do a tumbling attack (move action that reduces active defense bonus) with a leaping strike (move action that grants +2 damage to a charge) as she tries to reach the target.

Of course, still not sure if that's too much happening still, and may just flat out reduce to one manuever you can use for your round that affects combat modifiers instead of allowing up to a potential three manuevers.

I'm also still a bit hesitant regarding all the tricks that can reduce ADF, as almost all defense bonuses are ADF, meaning a character is reduced to defense 10 (pretty much guaranteeing an automatic hit at later levels). One thought is that such tricks do reduce ADF, but the character still retains, say...half their base defense bonus.

In any case, I'm working on my spreadsheet to quickly adjust modifiers in combat right now, and pondering balance on the defense side of things. I'll look at all the updated sheets once I finish that spreadsheet, hopefully Ataru will update his by then.

Please also share comments on stunts/etc and how you'd like to handle them. Those restrictions fine? Restrict more (to just one combat affecting manuever)? Leave it was? What about the ADF reduction tricks? Leave them as is? keep half base defense bonus? think of something else?

[Dracos]

Hmm.

Restricting skill tricks or stunts will hurt my build the most as I have the highest skills.  Same with ADB.  That said, As I told you last night, my prediction is my build will stop missing at level 6.  In any way shape or form.  We'll have to see what happens when I get there.  I suggest holding off ADB balancing until there, as that will largely say how bad it is.  Either my prediction is right, or it can be balanced as soon as it starts having a meaningful effect (and gets balanced against Iteratives at that level too).  Until that point, ADB stealing is only taking away about 1/4th of your defense, which really isn't that bad.

Anyhow

Method proposed here:

Any combat challenges
Any skill checks.
1 stunt or skill trick per combat action type (Basically 2 per round).

That sounds reasonable and doesn't move me from awesome to crippled.  I'd personally prefer just a flat 'you can use 2 but only 2', but there's not much difference.  Really, I don't think anyone will have the BAB to take multiple combat challenges for a long time. 

Taking your example:
Maya does tumbling move...and then does attack stunt for +2 damage. 

Mmm, though maybe I'm off.  Hmm...I am.  That'd be restricted too.  I think that's a pity as it will lock me out of doing skill stunts (which are always 'combined with move action') whenever I do a skill trick (Which we classify Tumbling attack as).  But skill stunts are cool.  I'd like to do them.  They're more along my build than inflict penalty. 

It may be a reasonable balancing though it makes me sadface ;_;.

I'd prefer just a flat 'no more than 2 in one turn' (Challenges/stunts/whatever).

Actually...your example fails :(

Tumbling through Difficult Terrain is the same type of skill trick as Tumble attack as is AoO dodge.

So the example you gave had Maya doing 3 'skill tricks' (Ignore Terrain Effects, Leaping Strike, Dodge Foes), A combat challenge, an inflict penalty stunt, and a defense bonus stunt.

Six in one turn.  And that's a pretty cool set you offered.  THat's the kind of thing I'd like to do with Maya.

I dunno, think it needs more thought.

[Merc]

Well, to clarify: Skill tricks that don't affect combat modifiers count same as skill checks, ie you can use 'em infinitely.

So no, moving through difficult terrain does not eat your ability to do a tumbling attack.

Avoding AoOs I'm also not couting as a combat modifier. I technically could, since it's 'modifying combat' into nonexistance by not provoking it, but that's splitting hairs, I don't really count it as a combat modifier.

Also, the 2 per round, I hesitated because some stunts are considered full round attacks, and I also wanted to give option to do a third one if you have the mobility for it (Mobility 3 or Shot on the Run 1, I believe are the only ones that allow so).

So basically:
Take a full-round action - You can do one skill trick, skill challenge, or stunt that affect combat modifiers. You can do however many if it doesn't affect combat or is a feat/combat challenge.
Take a move action and a standard action - Same as above, except you can do two manuevers that affect combat modifiers.
Take a move action, a standard action, then a second move action - You get three manuevers instead.

So in that example, Maya did:
- 1 skill trick (non-combat modifier) - Ignore Terrain Effect (move action)
- Various skill rolls (non-combat modifiers, move actions)
- 1 skill trick (combat modifier) - Leaping Strike (move action)
- 1 combat challenge (standard action)
- 1 inflict penalty stunt (combat modifier, standard action)
- 1 skill trick (non-combat modifier) - Dodge Foes (move action)
- 1 defense bonus stunt (combat modifier, move action #2)

She got three combat manuevers (leaping strike, inflict penalty, defense bonus) due to her mobility, 2 non-combat skill tricks (though she could have done more, like, say also jumped atop a table before jumping for the flag pole), 1 combat challenge (again, she could have done more), various skill rolls.

[Dracos]

chatting with merc, I like it.  It's a reasonable framework that gives flexibility but limitations in a comprehendable manner.

[Merc]

Reminder for everyone, session tomorrow evening.