Author Topic: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z  (Read 93938 times)

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #140 on: September 04, 2018, 08:21:03 PM »
On King Frame, do you want people to not get other options in general or just not have King Frame apply to additional choices?
Not get the other options in general.

On Supers vs Reals, Reals also get damage growth on weapons that's comparable to or better than Supers, with far fewer compromises/relative investment in resources.

For example, at level 16 a real pilot gains access to Sledgehammer anti-ship missiles (VI), which does 22d12 base damage for an average of 149.5 with Disarming, Downfall, Brutal, Pushing, and range 75mu.

To match that weapon a Super must take: Combined paired weapon (2 points), growth x4 to Colossal (4 points), Great Power (4 points), King Frame (4 points), Emperor Frame (4 points), Dynamic (1 point), Versatile x2 (2 points), and Mighty x2 (2 points). That's a total of 23 upgrade points, or 5 and 3/4 levels worth.

Total: 2d10+16d6+76 damage base, spending 10EN for +12dmg more, averaging 149.5. It has Disarming, Pushing, and Brutal (can't get Downfall). It's better in some ways - EN cost 10 instead of only two ammo, and 100 mu range instead of 75mu. On the downside it lacks the +11 to-hit bonus of the Sledgehammer.

The thing is, the Super used more than 1/3 of all its upgrade points. It now has a base speed of 5mu due to Great Power, King, and Emperor. It also no longer has access to some of the options described by CKirk to have reasonable AC, and it lost even more to-hit and AC due to Growth.

Compare AshSaber, which has enough Arsenal space to equip the Sledgehammer and speed 65mu, without using any of its 5 hardpoints.

Or the Super Pilot could just take the Missile Body stance that at PL 16 grants 32d12 Heavy Missiles and grant the properties with a fraction of the upgrades. And the Super Pilot does get more stances/maneuvers than the Real, then can further buff them through Favored Maneuver.

I left out maneuvers since those end up pretty much comparable at the end. The Super gets only one maneuver and stance more than the Real, which doesn't help if we're comparing "best options". I couldn't find a maneuver that benefits enough from Favored Maneuver to outright beat things a Real can do. For example, the Real has equal access to Missile Massacre, and that's a stance so Favored Maneuver doesn't apply. Combine that with Careful Aim (ignore DR) and now at level 19 anyone can do more damage on average than the base HP of anything in the system (even alt!) other than maybe a hilariously minmaxed Machinery Warrior.

What if Favored Maneuver could apply to Stances? What if Favored Maneuver's bonus was increased?

Also Missile Body still needs to hit but lacks a basic to-hit bonus, so the Super Robot will have better acuraccy with Targeter, then there's your usual Defend/Guard/Invulnerability extra defenses. Plus the PL 19 option costs 180 energy to shoot, meaning most reals can't use it at all.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #141 on: September 04, 2018, 09:02:58 PM »
Suggested change on King Frame for clarification (added "only one of" to first sentence and rephrased last sentence for clarification):


King Frame: You need pilot level 8 plus only one of either Great One, Tek Knight, or Zero Pattern to pick this, it costs 4 points and you can only pick it once. Double the numeric effects of your previous choice, including any penalties, except for any extra effects based on size (or pilot level in the case of of Zero Pattern). So for example if your previous choice was Great One (Plating), you would gain +40 HP, +4 DR, +4 Natural armor regardless of size, and your Dodge bonus would be further halved, resulting in being 1/3 of its original value. You also gain +1 IL/PL to initiating maneuvers both you and your super robot know. Once you've picked this you can't gain Great One/Tek Knight/Zero Pattern outside of the choice you made to apply King Frame to.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #142 on: September 04, 2018, 09:20:07 PM »
I mean with a super, so far in my experience hitting things hasn't been my biggest issue. It's been surviving a hit.

Though... 35 STR gestalt, so take that value with a grain of salt.

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #143 on: September 04, 2018, 10:24:23 PM »
Reduced the Astranagant's hardpoints to 2 since it already gets two special properties base.

Suggested change on King Frame for clarification (added "only one of" to first sentence and rephrased last sentence for clarification):


King Frame: You need pilot level 8 plus only one of either Great One, Tek Knight, or Zero Pattern to pick this, it costs 4 points and you can only pick it once. Double the numeric effects of your previous choice, including any penalties, except for any extra effects based on size (or pilot level in the case of of Zero Pattern). So for example if your previous choice was Great One (Plating), you would gain +40 HP, +4 DR, +4 Natural armor regardless of size, and your Dodge bonus would be further halved, resulting in being 1/3 of its original value. You also gain +1 IL/PL to initiating maneuvers both you and your super robot know. Once you've picked this you can't gain Great One/Tek Knight/Zero Pattern outside of the choice you made to apply King Frame to.
Edited in, thanks. :)

I mean with a super, so far in my experience hitting things hasn't been my biggest issue. It's been surviving a hit.

Though... 35 STR gestalt, so take that value with a grain of salt.
An important point, there's plenty of extra sources for to-hit bonus in D&D for a pilot and not as many AC bonus. Bab for starters.

I think it's because it's spell completion but I don't have the rules compendium handy.

"These abilities can be activated by sacrificing 1 or 2 (delete as appropriate) spells of the indicated spell level. All caster level effects use the caster level of the class granting this ability (minimum CL1). Saving throws are equal to 10+(level of slot sacrificed)+ABILITY SCORE MODIFIER. Activating these abilities takes a standard action and provokes attacks of opportunity as if casting a spell."

Something like that? Then just format them as spell blocks like normal.
What's sacrificing a spell slot? Is it permanent?

What about SR? Spell Focus? What about all the other effects that specifically only work for spells like Spell Turning, metamagic, etc?

Basically they're supposed to work just like spells except only the Magitech Knight herself can use them, so that may just be me but it's easier to write the relevant exception than list down all the similarities.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2018, 10:32:50 PM by oslecamo »

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #144 on: September 04, 2018, 10:38:25 PM »
Hm, let's see...

"These abilities can be activated by rendering 1 or 2 (delete as appropriate) prepared spells of the indicated spell level impossible to cast until the caster next rests for eight hours. All caster level effects use the caster level of the class granting this ability (minimum CL1). Saving throws are equal to 10+(level of slot sacrificed)+ABILITY SCORE MODIFIER. They are modified by the caster's feats and abilities as if they were a spell, such as spell penetration, but are subject to spell resistance and any benefits that the target may have against spells. Activating these abilities takes a standard action and provokes attacks of opportunity as if casting a spell."

Either metamagic can't be applied or it's another paragraph saying you need to use X spells of the higher level uncastable, plus the normal spontaneous caster restriction of taking a fullround action (you ARE spontaneously applying metamagic).

Yes, it's a wordy thing, but it's still easier than trying to close every spell access loophole in the system.

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #145 on: September 04, 2018, 10:59:30 PM »
Thanks, applied with a few tweaks to cover bits like not all Saint Scripts allow for SR. And I let the no-item clause just in case, redundancy never hurt anybody.

Also in second thought metamagic needs not apply so that's an added bonus.

Offline Fzzr

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #146 on: September 04, 2018, 11:46:09 PM »
What if Favored Maneuver could apply to Stances? What if Favored Maneuver's bonus was increased?

Huh, somehow I thought there was a class with "Favored Stance". Wonder how that got into my head.

I think Favored Maneuver is fine honestly. The fact that it can't hold up to some heavy weapons is a problem with those weapons, not with Favored Maneuver. For example, if Favored Maneuver had increased effect, Unlimited Blade Works would become way too powerful. (That's already on the higher end for damage output - on a target above Large it's arguably already too powerful, potentially doing high double digits of d12s). Please don't nerf that one though because it's the only way my super can keep up in damage with the rest of the party these days.

I personally prefer balance by bringing the top down and the bottom up, rather than just bringing things up to the top. The problem here isn't that many things are too weak, but that a few things (certain heavy weapons, a few top-level reals, and some maneuvers and stances) are too strong.

Also Missile Body still needs to hit but lacks a basic to-hit bonus, so the Super Robot will have better acuraccy with Targeter

The to-hit improvement from Targeting ends up more or less breaking even with the bonus from Dual Sensor and its successors (Except T-Link sensor), with the exception that those take a swift to get the full benefit. I don't find that pairing problematic. Plus the previously mentioned issue of reals just ending up with more AC ends up cancelling that out. At some point you're almost better off skipping to-hit increases entirely and going all in on things to increase SP for more uses of Strike and Focus.

then there's your usual Defend/Guard/Invulnerability extra defenses.
Those are pretty much even all around too, though.

Plus the PL 19 option costs 180 energy to shoot, meaning most reals can't use it at all.

That's fair, with Hyper Generator only Alegrias, RapieCage, and Astranagant can use that among the high-tier Reals. It takes 8 points for a typical Super to have enough energy (either 8 battery, tek reactor + 4 battery, or tek reactor + King). Pilot traits can also make that attainable, but that's a different conversation.

I mean with a super, so far in my experience hitting things hasn't been my biggest issue. It's been surviving a hit.

Though... 35 STR gestalt, so take that value with a grain of salt.

My Super is up around 30 Str these days. I can eventually hit things as a Super after a few rounds of building up Predict + a Yell, though it takes longer if they have Predict as well. Prevail is also helpful there, but that cancels itself out if the target also has it. That's where Unlimited Blade Works, Chest Blaster, etc. come in. The frustrating part is that the Reals don't have to jump through the same hoops. Surviving hits is tough sometimes, but I invested hard in Reinforced and took Enduring Code, so I'm at least not in constant danger of getting massively overkilled, just incapacitated every so often.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #147 on: September 05, 2018, 12:01:06 AM »
Oh wait, 40 STR. Still, odd to balance for, since when this was made I was thinking Gunbuster and nowadays a lot more Getter Robo got into it, so exploding is almost expected.

And some G Gundam in that Born to Fight temporarily makes her tougher than the mecha... :lmao
« Last Edit: September 05, 2018, 12:03:48 AM by Raineh Daze »

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #148 on: September 05, 2018, 12:28:38 AM »
What if Favored Maneuver could apply to Stances? What if Favored Maneuver's bonus was increased?

Huh, somehow I thought there was a class with "Favored Stance". Wonder how that got into my head.

I think Favored Maneuver is fine honestly. The fact that it can't hold up to some heavy weapons is a problem with those weapons, not with Favored Maneuver. For example, if Favored Maneuver had increased effect, Unlimited Blade Works would become way too powerful. (That's already on the higher end for damage output - on a target above Large it's arguably already too powerful, potentially doing high double digits of d12s). Please don't nerf that one though because it's the only way my super can keep up in damage with the rest of the party these days.

I personally prefer balance by bringing the top down and the bottom up, rather than just bringing things up to the top. The problem here isn't that many things are too weak, but that a few things (certain heavy weapons, a few top-level reals, and some maneuvers and stances) are too strong.

Ok, can you please list those "few things" that you consider too strong and the middle point that you consider would be ideal?

Offline ketaro

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #149 on: September 05, 2018, 12:43:16 AM »
Why aren't they called "Magitechniques"!?  :lmao

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #150 on: September 05, 2018, 01:17:25 AM »
Realised there's one thing I failed to edit:

"Saving throws are equal to 10+(level of spells rendered impossible to cast)+ABILITY SCORE MODIFIER"

Offline Fzzr

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #151 on: September 05, 2018, 02:35:28 AM »
Ok, can you please list those "few things" that you consider too strong and the middle point that you consider would be ideal?

OK, I'll do it in stages since there's a lot to cover and I need to do things like sleep. Chances are other members of our group will have more examples.

Arsenal Weapons:
  • FXA-03M2 Hyper Mega Launcher (III) - Comparable in damage to the other T3 Heavy weapons, but wide crit range and special properties make it just too good. Suggestion: Reduce damage.
  • High Mega Cannon (IV) - This has the same base damage as the GN Buster Beam Sword (IV), but it's ranged, costs less energy, has a better crit, and takes up less than half the space. It's volatile and has three less to-hit bonus, but I don't think that makes up for its raw power. Suggestion: Increase space and energy cost.
  • Hv Ruin Cannon (V) - This series of weapons (the light/medium/heavy cannon trio) works at lower levels, but the multiplication means that at the highest levels the heavy variants are too much. Suggestion: Reduce damage and ammo.
  • Hv Orphan Cannon (VI) - This has a typo - I assume it's meant to be 20d10 currently. See Hv Ruin Cannon. Suggestion: Reduce damage and ammo.
  • Sledgehammer anti-ship missiles (VI) - Incredibly high damage even by Heavy weapon standards. The limit of two ammo and high space requirement mitigate it somewhat, but it still seems too powerful in raw numbers. As an ammo weapon, it's also affordable to twin-link. Suggestion: Reduce damage and space taken.
  • Hv Neo Cannon (VII) - See Hv Ruin Cannon. Suggestion: Reduce damage and ammo.
  • Satellite Cannon (VII) - Super high damage, long range increment, incredible crit, great specials, only ten space. Suggestion: Reduce the damage, keep the crit range and specials so it's still special. Increase space.
  • Anti-Matter Blade (VII) - Damage almost as high as Satellite Cannon. Crazy crit range. Same suggestion as Satellite Cannon: Less damage, more space.
  • Moon Class Hypermissiles (VII) - The highest damage arsenal weapon by dice, though 20/x2 crit makes it less egregious than the previous ones. This one seems mostly balanced by the space requirements. Suggestion: Less damage, but still higher than the other T7 Heavy weapons.

The main Arsenal issue is that Heavy weapons tend to have just too much damage output, particularly at high tiers. The one not-fun thing I want to avoid is a situation where almost any character is nigh-guaranteed to die instantly to any crit, with even Defend or barriers not giving a good chance to survive. At higher levels it gets easier to restore energy, so the higher EN costs for many of them have less balance impact within their tier.

This is exacerbated by Arsenal weapon linking. Early on being able to double/triple etc. a given weapon isn't so bad, because the results are comparable to the weapons of the following tier. At the higher tiers linking ends up being much powerful because the difference in damage between tiers is so far away from linear. This is less of a problem with weapons that cost energy since those still cost the same energy to use per-shot, even linked. Ammo weapons not having this restriction makes them significantly better for linking. For balance reasons I'd rather both types have the behavior of energy weapons, but I can't think of a logical way to express that for ammo weapons. The other way to deal with that would be to treat ammo as less significant than energy as a way to balance a weapon, but that would make ammo weapons underpowered within their own tiers. I don't have a good solution for that, honestly.

Something I consider a well-balanced heavy arsenal weapon is Graviton Cannon (beam)(VII). It has solid damage, a great crit, good specials, and fairly high costs. The difference from the others is that the lower base damage makes the crit merely very scary instead of utterly terrifying and isn't a nigh-guaranteed instagib on a pilot. Another good one is Rectangular Launcher (III), which has a good mix of damage, to-hit bonus, crit, and specials without being an answer to everything.

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #152 on: September 05, 2018, 04:01:54 AM »
Realised there's one thing I failed to edit:

"Saving throws are equal to 10+(level of spells rendered impossible to cast)+ABILITY SCORE MODIFIER"
Thanks, added.

Why aren't they called "Magitechniques"!?  :lmao

They are now.  :P

Ok, can you please list those "few things" that you consider too strong and the middle point that you consider would be ideal?

OK, I'll do it in stages since there's a lot to cover and I need to do things like sleep. Chances are other members of our group will have more examples.

Arsenal Weapons:
  • FXA-03M2 Hyper Mega Launcher (III) - Comparable in damage to the other T3 Heavy weapons, but wide crit range and special properties make it just too good. Suggestion: Reduce damage.
  • High Mega Cannon (IV) - This has the same base damage as the GN Buster Beam Sword (IV), but it's ranged, costs less energy, has a better crit, and takes up less than half the space. It's volatile and has three less to-hit bonus, but I don't think that makes up for its raw power. Suggestion: Increase space and energy cost.
  • Hv Ruin Cannon (V) - This series of weapons (the light/medium/heavy cannon trio) works at lower levels, but the multiplication means that at the highest levels the heavy variants are too much. Suggestion: Reduce damage and ammo.
  • Hv Orphan Cannon (VI) - This has a typo - I assume it's meant to be 20d10 currently. See Hv Ruin Cannon. Suggestion: Reduce damage and ammo.
  • Sledgehammer anti-ship missiles (VI) - Incredibly high damage even by Heavy weapon standards. The limit of two ammo and high space requirement mitigate it somewhat, but it still seems too powerful in raw numbers. As an ammo weapon, it's also affordable to twin-link. Suggestion: Reduce damage and space taken.
  • Hv Neo Cannon (VII) - See Hv Ruin Cannon. Suggestion: Reduce damage and ammo.
  • Satellite Cannon (VII) - Super high damage, long range increment, incredible crit, great specials, only ten space. Suggestion: Reduce the damage, keep the crit range and specials so it's still special. Increase space.
  • Anti-Matter Blade (VII) - Damage almost as high as Satellite Cannon. Crazy crit range. Same suggestion as Satellite Cannon: Less damage, more space.
  • Moon Class Hypermissiles (VII) - The highest damage arsenal weapon by dice, though 20/x2 crit makes it less egregious than the previous ones. This one seems mostly balanced by the space requirements. Suggestion: Less damage, but still higher than the other T7 Heavy weapons.
-Reduced FXA-03M2 Hyper Mega Launcher damage from 10d12 to 10d10 (average 65 to 55), just a bit higher than the rectangular launcher's 49,5.
-High Mega Cannon's energy cost increased to 55 from 30, arsenal space to 12 from 8. Takes less space than buster sword but still over half more expensive to use plus still volatile.
-Hv Ruin Cannon damage decreased from 20d10 to 16d10 (average 110 to 88), and ammo reduced from 10 to 6.
-Hv orphan Cannon damage changed to 20d10, ammo reduced from 11 to 7.
-Sledgehammer anti-ship missiles damage reduced from 23d12 to 18d12 (average 149,5 to 117), arsenal space changed from 22 to 17.
- Hv Neo Cannon damage decrease from 32d10 to 28d10 (average 176 to 154), ammo decrease from 12 to 8. A damage bonus of +40% over the Graviton Cannon but it's still a 20 space weapon with basic crit and only Rending for specials, contrasting with the Graviton Cannon's half arsenal space, much better crit (should now deal more damage in a crit besides higher chance of scoring them) and several specials.

The main Arsenal issue is that Heavy weapons tend to have just too much damage output, particularly at high tiers. The one not-fun thing I want to avoid is a situation where almost any character is nigh-guaranteed to die instantly to any crit, with even Defend or barriers not giving a good chance to survive. At higher levels it gets easier to restore energy, so the higher EN costs for many of them have less balance impact within their tier.
Well at high-tiers getting crit resistance/immunity also becomes easier too.

This is exacerbated by Arsenal weapon linking. Early on being able to double/triple etc. a given weapon isn't so bad, because the results are comparable to the weapons of the following tier. At the higher tiers linking ends up being much powerful because the difference in damage between tiers is so far away from linear. This is less of a problem with weapons that cost energy since those still cost the same energy to use per-shot, even linked. Ammo weapons not having this restriction makes them significantly better for linking. For balance reasons I'd rather both types have the behavior of energy weapons, but I can't think of a logical way to express that for ammo weapons. The other way to deal with that would be to treat ammo as less significant than energy as a way to balance a weapon, but that would make ammo weapons underpowered within their own tiers. I don't have a good solution for that, honestly.
A key disadvantage of going too deep with twin-linked weapons is that most maneuvers that allow to use a weapon allow only one weapon, so it may pay off to have a single weapon with high damage rather than two that technically have higher combined damage but can't be combined with a strike at the same time. Also notice that right now anything over twin-linked also means they can't ignore any DR at all.

At the top of my head I could also make twin/x-weapons unable to benefit from precision damage like multi-shot.

As for the balance between energy and ammo, although true that ammo is better for twin/x-linking, the thing with ammo is that it doesn't recharge passively, and several reload effects only reload one gun at a time. That's why I advise the use of mook waves to wear down party resources. I've also toyed with the idea of alternate more gritty campaign rules where recharging resources would be harder and thus energy-based attacks would be more valued.

Something I consider a well-balanced heavy arsenal weapon is Graviton Cannon (beam)(VII). It has solid damage, a great crit, good specials, and fairly high costs. The difference from the others is that the lower base damage makes the crit merely very scary instead of utterly terrifying and isn't a nigh-guaranteed instagib on a pilot. Another good one is Rectangular Launcher (III), which has a good mix of damage, to-hit bonus, crit, and specials without being an answer to everything.

Thank you very much for the detailed-analysis, I took those in account when tweaking the values above. Hope we can continue this way.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #153 on: September 06, 2018, 05:19:10 PM »
I'm on my phone and don't want to try and find the final writeup for magitechniques, but it might be easier to just call the spell-like abilities that are activated by expending spell slots.

That will automatically take care or rules interactions like AoOs and SR.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #154 on: September 06, 2018, 05:30:03 PM »
I'm on my phone and don't want to try and find the final writeup for magitechniques, but it might be easier to just call the spell-like abilities that are activated by expending spell slots.

That will automatically take care or rules interactions like AoOs and SR.

You can have SLAs that don't correspond to actual spells? Rarely looked deep in monster stats to check, thought all non-spells were su. I wouldn't have included that part if it weren't for the implication that there must exist a corresponding spell and thus items with it and thus it stops being class exclusive.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #155 on: September 06, 2018, 05:55:02 PM »
I'm 99% sure that there are monsters with unique spell-like abilities.

Even then, you could say something like "for the purposes of this class ability, treat magitechniques as spell-like abilities with a standard action activation".

What class is it in? I'll suggest a cleaned up version.

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #156 on: September 06, 2018, 06:22:26 PM »
Magitechniques are from the Magitech Knight, thanks.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #157 on: September 06, 2018, 06:24:02 PM »
Okay, I'll look at it when I'm not on my phone and editing is easier.

Offline Fzzr

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #158 on: September 06, 2018, 08:40:06 PM »
Ok, can you please list those "few things" that you consider too strong and the middle point that you consider would be ideal?

Peace Princess: The only really problematic feature of Peace Princess is the Royal Champion (and higher) Rags to Riches ability chain.

Even given the defense-only restriction on the Champions, it's crazy that a Peace Princess can get a cohort up to two levels above her own (four levels higher than a cohort provided by the Leadership feat!) I would recommend reducing this to at most the Princess's own level, except Queen allows it to go up to 21. The new version would read:
Quote
Royal Champion-You gain a Real Pilot Cohort that can only take Pilot feats and places your protection above everything else to the point of not starting fights unless absolutely necessary, meaning they won't willing go further away than 30 mu from you neither will they attack/hinder an enemy unless they try to attack you first or the champion themselves. The Royal Champion is level 3 or the Peace Princess's level, whichever is lower. You can take this multiple times, each one increasing the Royal Champion's max level by 1, up to 6. If Lost, it takes 1d12 days to get a replacement. You can only pick this option once per Peace Princess level.

I would also recommend making each tier of Champion explicitly depend on maxing out the one below. For example, you can only take Great Champion if you have taken Royal Champion four times. Higher tiers specifically allow increasing the level of the existing Champion further. (If this is already meant to be the case, please make it more clear in the text). Taking into account the suggested change above, Great Champion would read:
Quote
Great Champion - You must have picked Royal Champion four times to pick this. Increase the maximum level of the Champion by 1 per pick, up to a maximum of 9. You can only pick this option once per Peace Princess level.
Queen would read:
Quote
Queen: At 20th level the Peace Princess gains another two Rags to Royalty abilities of any level, which may be changed 1/day at her whim as a free action. If the Peace Princess has a Champion of level 20, picking one of the Champion abilities may raise the Champion's max level to 21, regardless of the Peace Princess's own level. The 21st level is in Super Pilot.

I also want to suggest a sorta-buff to the Champion ability: synergy with Leadership. This would be Leadership increasing the maximum Champion level without another pick. Modified with this suggestion, Royal Champion would read:
Quote
Royal Champion - You gain a Real Pilot Cohort that can only take Pilot feats and places your protection above everything else to the point of not starting fights unless absolutely necessary. The Champion won't willingly go further than 30 mu away from you, nor will they attack/hinder an enemy unless they first try to attack you or the Champion. The Champion is level 3 or the Peace Princess's level, whichever is lower. You can take this multiple times, each one increasing the Royal Champion's max level by 1, up to 6. For every two points of Leadership score, you may increase the maximum level of the Champion by 1 without taking another pick of Champion. This does not allow the Champion to exceed level 6 or the Peace Princess's level. Leadership score points used to increase your Champion's maximum level don't count toward your effective Leadership score for determining the maximum level of the Cohort gained from the Leadership feat. If the Royal Champion is lost, it takes 1d12 days to get a replacement. You can only pick this option once per Peace Princess level.
And Great Champion and higher would read something like:
Quote
Great Champion - You must have a Champion of level 6 to pick this. Increase the max level of the Champion by 1 per pick, up to a maximum of 9. For every two points of Leadership score not used to raise the Champion's level to 6, you may increase the maximum level of the Champion by 1 without taking another pick of Great Champion. You still must pick Great Champion at least once to increase the maximum level of the Champion above 6. You can only pick this option once per Peace Princess level.

Queen would be the same as the edit above.

I think those changes would give a nice balance of keeping the Champion's power under control while also allowing you to benefit from the feature without spending a pick on the Champion every single level. A reasonably attainable Leadership of 24 at level 20 would provide enough extra levels to require only one pick of each tier.

As a comparison "middle point", I don't consider the Royal Guard ability substantially overpowered. Even though it gives earlier access to Followers and potentially higher levels for them, it can't completely overwhelm what Leadership grants in follower level and number at the same time. Also the restrictions on the followers are harsh enough to make up for the difference in levels. The only change I would make would also be restricting the followers to the Peace Princess's level or below. It would also be possible to grant similar synergy with Leadership there.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: Great General Discussion and Suggestions II-Z
« Reply #159 on: September 06, 2018, 10:59:07 PM »
Okay, finally home.

Alternate Magitechnique language:

Magitechnique: A Magitech Knight may pick one of the following Magitechnique lists and must forget spells on her paladin spell list to gain  Magitechniques of the same level at the rate of 2 paladin spells per Magitechnique spell from that list. Such abilities can only be activated by an actual Magitech Knight, they can't be made in item form (no scrolls, wands, staves, wondrous item, etc of Magitechnique) and no other class or ability may replicate them.

These abilities can be activated by rendering 1 prepared spell of the indicated spell level impossible to cast until the Magitech Knight next rests for eight hours. Magitechniques are activated as if they were spell-like abilities using the Magitech Knight level as caster level (minimum CL1), except they require spell-components as listed in the magitechnique entry. Saving throws are equal to 10+magitechnique level+Wis mod.



Since the magitechnique is activated by expending 1 spell of the same level I changed the save to just use magitechnique level.  I also removed the word "cast" in a couple of places and standardized as the word "activated" since you had that in at least one place already and it helps keep the idea that these aren't spells.