Madrigal etc.

[marcus_sez_vote]

I have a moment in between things, in part because of the rain causing an impromptu study hall rather than doing various sports outside, to mention my weekend jaunt to Madrigal. The winner of the betting pool about me getting lost, kind of, is russiandude, as I did make one phone call to bitsyboo but not for directions! I have to say the GPS worked perfectly,

Comments

Polearms, arrows and healing

[create_universe]

I've heard the polearm comment before from NPC's. I know that in particular House Beacon employs then en masse, and for that reason a lot of NPC's are reluctant to face them. It is kind of an odd dynamic. I can easily understand why NPC's would not enjoy fighting that kind of formation, but does that mean PC's should not try to field effective formations? I guess that is the kind of problems you face when you try to turn war between enemies into a game between friends.

I am a dilettante archer, and I am making a good faith effort at trying the foam golf balls. I have been using the lighter unsealed neon colored ones though. When I saw the ones Monster Camp was using get employed it was pretty scary. After the little archery duel mod was run by jjmarika several of us started seriously considering switching to them.

The healing output of the town can in fact be pretty frightening at times. And I know I'm as much to blame for that as others. About halfway through the Ruby Circle fight I basically just stuck to running back and forth between the front lines and the tavern. One minute in the tavern to refresh my Aura of Healing, and then rush outside to spread it around where needed. Rinse, repeat. I honestly don't know whether to consider this good tactics or cheesy abuse of rules mechanics.

Re: Polearms, arrows and healing

[jjmarika]

The issue with the polearm wall is that they're not terribly fun to fight, because a two-claw fighter just gets torn apart by them. Which is good, because it's an effective methodology, but bad, because:

1. people don't want to fight them, which is less fun for the players who presumably want to fight things, and
2. the basic strategies for dealing with a line like that are also unfun for players. (By basic strategies I mean the things you do to polearm walls to make them not as effective - pelting them with spells or arrows, or unleashing some hideous maim-beast on them.)

Re: Polearms, arrows and healing

[marcus_sez_vote]

Yeah I pretty much agree with all you say here. Clearly a plotline should be developed for each effect.

"OKAY today we're going to take on the Agony Beast...not too hard...it's when we get to the Root and Maim beast that it gets tougher...Drain, Destroy, Paralyze, and Death are going to be rough."

Be well.

Re: Polearms, arrows and healing

[marcus_sez_vote]

I've heard the polearm comment before from NPC's. I know that in particular House Beacon employs then en masse, and for that reason a lot of NPC's are reluctant to face them. It is kind of an odd dynamic. I can easily understand why NPC's would not enjoy fighting that kind of formation, but does that mean PC's should not try to field effective formations? I guess that is the kind of problems you face when you try to turn war between enemies into a game between friends.

In part it comes down to how the polearms are constructed and how they are wielded. Also, unless the creature is mindless or suicidal, it would not advance into the teeth of polearms. What really needs to be done is to put out more casters/archers to counter the polearm lines. I don't think there's anything wrong with the PCs fielding effective formations. However when there aren't enough NPCs to field an effective formation (based on number of NPCs, number of weapons, etc.) then it gets tiresome after a while. The NPCs have to exert more energy to try and give the PCs a challenge or come up with wonky mechanics.

The healing output of the town can in fact be pretty frightening at times. And I know I'm as much to blame for that as others. About halfway through the Ruby Circle fight I basically just stuck to running back and forth between the front lines and the tavern. One minute in the tavern to refresh my Aura of Healing, and then rush outside to spread it around where needed. Rinse, repeat. I honestly don't know whether to consider this good tactics or cheesy abuse of rules mechanics.

If you've got it then why not use it? That's more of an issue with the system more than anything else.

Be well.

Re: Polearms, arrows and healing

[k_beckett]

I think that another aspect that increases the difficult of penetrating the healing bubble is that much of the healing I saw was incantless, did not require empty hands, or both. Regenerating healing pools are a factor, but on a much slower time scale. If it required more time to heal the damage done in a flurry's worth of strikes or required retreating from the line there would be a greater chance that a line might be imperiled.

Re: Polearms, arrows and healing

[marcus_sez_vote]

One of the things I thought the Isles did right was to have the healing be unlimited but limited in terms of time and also where you would want to set it up. Of course we cheated a bit with the racial package but still...it fundamentally altered fight tactics.

Be well.

Re: Polearms, arrows and healing

[k_beckett]

Yes, the Isles renewing pool and fixed-location healing did have an interesting impact on the dynamics of fights--it was even more restrictive on in the field healing. It would be interesting to see experiments with some median design. Perhaps any renewable healing requires 10 seconds to deliver.

For example, I really like the way that Soothing Touch (and other 10 seconds to Stablize effects) can spontaneously create new mid-battle goals for multiple players ("I need to stablize him, cover me!").

Re: Polearms, arrows and healing

[darkwhimsy]

Note that the Madrigal Soothing Touch is instantaneous - it does not require 10 seconds.

Re: Polearms, arrows and healing

[marcus_sez_vote]

The 10 second rule would actually make quite a bit of difference in the Heal by Faith healing that gets thrown around (as that "pool" of healing is based on the total number of spells and can be refreshed at a holy site...now there ARE ways to shut down that font of healing but that's a really drastic step). Even so there's still a lot of burst healing (the magic healing off of the Earth stat usually).

Be well.