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| Thread: Luck and Morale - a discussion |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 · «PREV |
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nocaplato
Adventuring Hero
Lover of Ancient Philosophy
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posted March 23, 2007 12:55 AM |
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Thanks for the welcome, I'm a long time lurker/occasional poster.
To go further with my earlier thoughts about underpowered skill sets, as a bit of mental err... self-gratification (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) it seems that some skills really are far better than others.
Because the game is so intricately adaptable in so far as hero development is concerned it's very hard to pin down any one without triggering a slew of disagreement. There are race specials, hero abilities and unique skills (e.g. Warlock's Luck, Silent Stalker and similar 'advanced' secondary skills). All this, combined with our own favored play styles and races makes a simple comparison very dicey.
Let's conduct a thought experiment...
What if, then, we assume a perfectly bland true-neutral hero as a starting point. This most boring of heroes should not have a race special, a hero special, or access to any advanced skills what-so-ever. The only picks this individual would get are the main skills, such as Attack or Luck, and the common secondary skills, like Arcane Training or Estates. The character's stats should also be considered in perfect balance (25% to get Attack, Defense, Power or Knowledge at any given level-up).
We should further assume that every other player in any particular game is stuck with this super-bland type of character.
Given such a hero, what sets of skills would be most effective? Since every skill should be roughly balanced, no one intelligently selected skill set should be completely annihalated by any other. Obviously the skill sets shouldn't be picked purely at random, but picked to enhance each other (no Sorcery if you're not using magic skills, for example).
The challenge is two fold:
1) Can you select a skill set that is indisputably (or at least very arguably) better than all the others?
2) Can you then select a skill set that, while well planned and intelligently applied, is definately going to end in disaster for the sap who uses it?
Two comments... First, you don't get a racial skill and you can only pick 5 primary skills (the number of primaries is simply too limited to allow for 6). Second, you can assume you're hero gets a total of 18 picks (I think that would be a 15th level character).
BTW: I don't intend to hijack this discussion. I think it is still relevant to the original question regarding the balance of Luck and Leadership, and to many of the excellent posts regarding Attack, Defense, Estates and so on. If enough folks volunteer heroes, I would be willing to bet both Luck and Leadership are high on the list of frequently picked skills.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted March 23, 2007 01:38 AM |
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Quote:
BTW: I don't intend to hijack this discussion.
No hijacking here, your post is very well considered, and highly on-topic! 
Without really entering on the premises you give, I will say that imo. Nival has done a pretty good job with the skills - none of them are bad or irrelevant, and that means a lot for the game for sure.
There are a number of abilities, however, that are not very good. Again, to their credit, most of the common abilities are pretty good, with the main exceptions being Estates and Recruitement in Leadership, and Arcane Intuition and Scholar in Enlightenment. Magic Insight also is a pretty lame ability (it looks extremely nice on the paper, but bottom line is that most spells are more or less useless at basic mastery). The Master Of ... abilities in Summoning Magic maybe are not quite on par with the other schools' ... Oh yes, and Resourcefulnes seriously needs an upgrade.
About the special abilities - well, it's not *that* much of a problem if they are not 100 % great, because most of them only are available to one or two classes. Again, Enlightenment is very badly off here (Graduate, Arcane Exaltation and Wizard's Reward!), and would be an obvious target for some more interesting abilities. Other abilities that would need change are Corrupted Soil, Battle Commander, Spoils Of War, Arcane Brilliance and Arcane Excellence. If we should take a full discussion of all this, maybe we should make a new thread about suggestions for skill changes, though. 
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What will happen now?
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