Talk:Warrior 3.0

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Issues with Warrior

Discussion of the perceived problem with Warrior.

Defence

It appears that many people ignored this, so agree it should change. -- Ross

The Warrior Weapon Rank dependency is too complicated

This is a ranking issue, calculation is not required is real time. Are that many people making mistakes? -- Ross
I just look at what would be required to match Mebh rank under the proposed rules - Currently I need 7 categories at rank 5 and 4 weapons at 7 or above. under the new rules I would need 10 categories at rank 5. It seems a little odd to be insisting warriors have a broader base and making even more of a time sink before they can excel in a weapon. I also find that some weapons do not rank to 5 but are currently options under the warrior categories.. ie Net.

I would like it if warrior was less of a time sink and the EP requirement was raised a little --Mebh 01:59, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Defence Bonus (2/rk) is greater than Attack Bonus

Do we want bloodier combats - unsure? This wont contribute significantly to speeding up combats. Combat speed is driven primarily by the GM presenting sufficient information to allow/forcing players to pay attention and make quick decisions. -- Ross

Well I agree with the general direction. Combats with high defence in relation to SC are really boring... "Do I hit this time no oh well I get to try again soon" vs "Another hit, and a death. I leap over the guy to my right and attack the mage" I know which combat I prefer. If you want to think about it mathematically more changes in more sets of numbers occur when a hit is scored and this means more is happening and makes it more interesting.
does it speed things up? well you can spend a whole evening striking and missing and no one dies so the combat does not end. Will this change on it's own speed up combats? No; but its a step in the right direction. Also Bigger strike chances and less defence makes combat more tension filled for the players who are more likely to receive a SG or endurance. Hamish
Its a red herring, even if you add 2000% to you SC the combat will be slow if
(a)the players are slow "What, its my action. Oh, I wasn't paying attention. What figure is that? Hang on I need to count the distance between me and the monster....12 hexes...ok. What was the monster carrying? What did you guys hit? OK, what do you think I should hit etc..."
(b) the GM is not keeping the action moving and encouraging/forcing the players to maintain pace. "Start of pulse 4, you have 35 seconds for mil sci timeout starting now.", "Bob, you performed a cast action last pulse and your 10 hexes from the monsters but don't have line of sight to these three." etc
Speaking of red fish... both a & b are absolutely correct, lack of attention, lack of preparation & forethought, and dithering are the biggest slow downs in combat - in any game, regardless of the rules. Hamish hit the nail on the head with his comment above. -- Stephen 21:28, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Real time recalculations

Completely disagree with this comment. Combat in DQ requires real time combat calculations whether or not one is a warrior - situational combat modified are required as because of combat rules and magic. If players are not comfortable making real time calculations then they should pre-calculate their number before the game - column A without warrior mods and column B with warrior mods. -- Ross


The additional number of numbers on my defence spread sheet with warrior as is is 79. this change lowers it back to 6. Hamish

It's just a bunch of numbers

Agree, the skill is bland. Subskills are a welcome addition. -- Ross

Barrier to entry (NEW)

The requirements to obtain warrior are too high. Discuss... -- Ross


I would front load the time requirement so that the warrior needs 4 weapons at rank 7 before they start getting subskills, then require only a weapon to level 5 for each level after that. The reason is that IMV we want only dedicated warriors to get subskills and making them take too long is a way to achieve this. Hamish

Arrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

Arrrrggggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!! if I have to explain Warrior to one more numbers-challenged player I will go insane!

Benefits

"When using ranked melee or close rated weapons, or weapons from a category where they have a higher ranked weapon..." does this mean if I have rank 10 in a weapon it doesn't get these benefits as I do not have a higher ranked weapon? This would also imply that it's better to get rank 10 in a weapon and then use another weapon from the same category at as high rank as possible. Shouldn't these bonuses be rewarded to the highest rank weapon as well? Eltan, Dec 2013

The benefits apply to all ranked melee and/or close rated weapons. AND the benefits apply to unranked weapons from a category in which you have a ranked weapon. A Warrior who is ranked in Scimitar can pick up a Tulwar for the first time and be competent with it. Or at least more competent than the non-Warrior with the same weapon ranks. - Stephen (talk) 21:50, 23 December 2013 (MST)

Subskills

Would like to see Subskills that provide the player options rather than just more numbers. Many of the subskills as written are binary and just provide more numbers to the spreadsheet, a player will never consider them again. If there are rank based modifiers and downsides a player will consider whether or not to use the subskill. -- Ross


1. +2 on Parry, Repulse, and Withdraw from Close rolls (the three D10-based 'success' rolls).

2. I'd prefer +1 extra hex movement on all attacks, rather than full TMR for charge, and Step&Attack being 3 hexes. There's enough grid teleporting.

What I want out of these is to give the Warriors the option to get into Melee and start attacking faster. With just the bonus to step & attack, the half tmr charge will become irrelevant for anyone under 7 tmr. With the bonus to both the average 5 tmr warrior has the option of 1-Hex then Multiple/Multi-hex Strike, 3-Hex S&A, or 5-Hex charge (at -15% or +20% dependent on weapon). - Stephen 22:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

3. A sticky hex skill? Perhaps a warrior can step through (into and out of) one sticky hex in a single action, if they start unengaged?

Sounds good, care to have a go at some exact wording for the ability? - Stephen 22:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
Thinking further, I'm against this as a standard ability. It makes it harder for PC Warriors to hold a front line, what it means is that the skilled-Warrior bad guys get to breeze past the front line and lay waste to the mages while the front line is bogged down with weaker fighters. - Stephen 21:14, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

4. The pre-engaged IV should mean that the warrior must melee/engage the enemy group within range, not use the skill to cast spells more quickly. Perhaps the skill could be based on movement rather than warrior - i.e. count as engaged with a group if their action is to move to the group and make a melee attack (obviously then combines with movement subskill, but also combines with glaive!).

That was the intention, I'll attempt to re-word for clarity. - Stephen 22:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

5. Special action penalty reduction. This is similar to ambidextrousity - reduce penalty of a special manouver/attack by -2/Rank. i.e. become a specialist multi-hex or disarm attacker.

2 new abilities added, one for Multi-Hex, the other for Disarm. -- Stephen

-- Andrew W


Precision Evasion

Had a thought last night. What about a sub-skill that allows the warrior to modify spec grevs on them by half rank points up or down? Receiving a spec is an exciting part of combat because it creates unexpected challenging conditions to work around however GM's might feel free to hand out more Spec's if it was possible for the warriors concerned to avoid the really nasty ones sometimes - no fun in being dead. Hamish

Agree - no fun being dead or otherwise unable to interact any more. But SGs are also the biggest risk of entering combat, if the risk is reduced too much then the tension is reduced. I would prefer for this to be left in the hands of the GM to fudge the SGs to players or not as they see fit to provide the best drama, tension and overall fun of the game. -- Stephen 04:09, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Close-Evasion (General)

Dislike completely. Close is dangerous and should be. -- Ross

Close-Withdraw (General)

Pre-Engage (General)

Situational and will slow down combat. -- Ross

Situational - please explain. Is this good, bad, or random word association?
Slowing combat - maybe, but not much. Fighters generally act in engaged, then the mages act in unengaged. This ability gets the fighters into engaged a bit faster and means they're not constantly switching between engaged and un-engaged as they dispatch one opponent then move onto the next. This may even make combat slightly faster. -- Stephen 02:56, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Advanced Charge (Weapon)

Advanced Multi-Hex (Weapon)

Draw and Strike (Weapon)

Like to see a rank based modifier. -- Ross

Should we remove: Draw and Strike (Weapon) - may prepare a weapon and strike as a Special Attack? It is a replication of the Kinlu skill and as such it removes some of the specialness of the Kinlu warrior option from the game. -- Hamish 02:20, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes they are mostly the same ability, with Iajutsu being the more interesting of the two. Iajutsu has a SC penalty but gains a Dice Modifier, harder to do but more lethal, especially when combined with Piercing Thrust. For the same training time (7/8 weeks) Iajutsu has -26% & -2 d.m., usually not worth the loss in SC; for the same XP cost (10,500/10,000) Iajutsu has -14% -8 d.m.
I don't agree that this diminishes Kenjutsu and I don't see why it should only be available to 'Eastern Warriors'. - Stephen 03:33, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
If a skill exists in another form is should not be duplicated exactly as it diminishes the uniqueness of the existing skills.

Off-hand (Weapon)

Overstrike (Weapon)

Would like to see a ft cost for this otherwise is an always odd modification. Not providing options as its always on. -- Ross

It isn't always on. It is a Special Attack, you can only do one. Choose whether to use this ability to hit one person harder, do a multi-hex strike to hit 3 people, Double Attack to attack twice (with both hands/weapons), or charge or trip or disarm etc. -- Stephen 00:09, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Precision (Weapon)

(1) too tough, the SG table is very unbalanced (2) removes too much randomness. -- Ross

This is the ability I am most unsure about in terms of toughness. At a simple level it increases the chance of a Rk 10 Warrior getting an actual SG result by 10% with B-Class and by 5% with A/C class - and I'm fine with that aspect of it. It also means that a Warrior can choose to change accidentally killing just because they rolled too well into a mere maiming - This is something many GMs already allow and is a good aspect of it (IMO).
The aspect of it which I'm not sure about is that when a Rk 10 Warrior with an A-Class weapon gets a potential SG, any roll from 06 to 16 can be turned into an instant kill (11); similarly modifying C-class 90-100 becomes 95-97 (Unconscious); A-class 17-18 becomes 13 (1 in 10 chance of death); B-class 63-74 becomes 68-69 (3 in 10 chance of death). This may be too much and too tough.
On the other hand, you still have to roll under 5% of your modified SC and then roll close enough to the right range of numbers. And the SGs are the fun and colourful part of combat from a player perspective, if we have a few more be-headings and heart-shots than we used to, is that detrimental to the game or beneficial?
This is one I'd like to see used in Play Test to see if it has a noticeable effect and whether it is good or bad. -- Stephen 03:39, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
The discussion of the SG change should be removed from the scope of this argument. We are looking at the results of the SG, not the change of a SG.
Beyond the identified statistics there is also the severed limbs, and more importantly the ability to ignore the minor results. One reading of the table would would be (variable by personal taste)
1-15 = no result
16-20 = chest wound (21-25)
21-29 = lost hand (26-27, 28-30)
30-41 = lost arm (35, 36)
42-45 = Bleeding slash (44-50)
46-57 = hamstrung (51-52)
58-62 = crippled arm (53-60, 61-67)
63-74 = Potential head lost (68-69)
75-85 = Massive Chest wound (75-80)
86-100 = no result
The results are significantly more lethal than the normal table.
30% no result
26% chance of lost/crippled hand/arm
12% Change of potential head loss
11% chance of Massive Chest wound
12% chance of hamstrung
5% change of chest wound
4% chance of bleeding slash
I'm pretty convinced this is a bad idea. PCs suffer more Spec. Griev. injuries than NPCs, because by and large, NPCs die and are never heard from again. PCs persist from injury to injury, and even death cannot put them down for any great length of time. NPCs that use this ability sensibly will be aiming to kill PCs outright, or disable them. 30% of B Class Spec. Griev. injuries chop some useful body part off.Jim Arona

Repulse (Weapon)

Strong Guard (Weapon)

True Disarm (Weapon)

Disarm is a broken skill and this would slows combat down. -- Ross

True Riposte (Weapon)

Far too tough. All character would always take this as its potential bonus attacks for free. First pick for any character. -- Ross

If you are fighting inferior opponents, then yes, it is extra free attacks. Weak opponents are more likely to miss by more than 30 and you probably have sufficiently higher weapon rank to get the free attack. So Warriors get to cut through the chaff faster - sounds appropriately heroic to me.
But as most of us who have attempted to Riposte an equal or superior opponent have found out, while you can get free attacks, you also risk losing future actions which is frustrating and can be crippling. A tough opponent will rarely miss by more than 30 when you're not evading and even if you do get a Riposte opportunity, you may not necessarily take it. -- Stephen 02:43, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


I am finding that this ability slows down the flow of combat. Sometimes I am having in effect 4 actions a pulse to other peoples one - and this is not a good thing for making sure everyone has fun. --Mebh 10:55, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Standard wording for additional sub-skills

Additional weapon categories may be gained without increasing in rank by the expenditure of 5,000 Experience Points and 8 weeks of training per ability. Additional special abilities may be gained without increasing in rank by the expenditure of 10,000 Experience Points and 8 weeks of training per ability. These costs are discounted by 25% if the warrior has reached rank 8, or by 50% if they have reached rank 10.

Andreww 07:17, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Restrictions

Weapon requirement Comments

I like the max-weapon requirement, it feels good. However, it might be a bit steep? Need to look at more cases; if a 326 week shortfall is typical, then it is not good.

I know its a mind set shift, but to me the way to create some differentiation from mages is to make people choose between the two a little more i.e. high ep cost. My main objection to the high time approach is the requirement that people spend so many sessions not being able to play their warrior. Hamish

Understand what you're saying. Just one quibble, just because there's a lot of ranking time involved, doesn't mean you have to stop playing. Most adventures take less than 3 weeks game time, those that take longer often include shipboard training time. That leaves 10 weeks per session for ranking, that's a couple of lower weapon ranks or part of a rank > 5 which can then be finished in the next session's ranking. If you're starting as a non-mage and concentrating on fighting skills, you'd probably pick up rk 5 Warrior in about 4 years playing every season or just 2 or 3 a year if preferred. A fighter mage would be a year or two behind that assuming they are not ranking rituals. Then you choose to push on to mastery in Warrior (over the next 4 years), or simply dump XP into Special Abilities at 10k each to become ultimate with your one or two main weapons.
General feeling is that Warriors should be capable with a range of weapons. So then we run into the issue that Weapons take lots of time. Solutions to that are we change the time/xp ranking structure for weapons (sounds like more work than I'm willing to volunteer for); or we grant Warriors some form of fast-track weapon ranking scheme (Andrew objects to this, haven't heard from anyone else either way).
The max-weapon requirement is simple, but it is harder than the current restriction. We could go for more complex requirements structures (1 melee weapon, 1 close weapon, 1 shield, etc.) but the main reason to change the requirement is to make it simpler, if we're going to make it more complex I'd rather just leave it with the current requirements.
Potentially we could make the Weapon Categories every other rank (0,2,4,6..), that halves the time involved, but gut feel is that makes it too easy. Maybe 0,1,3,5,7,8,9,10 or some similar variant. - Stephen 04:07, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
Hmmm well my suggestion is to leave the time and weapon ranking requirements as they are. That is more likely to be accepted by more people and will require less work in re-ranking for everyone. Balance can be created by tweaking ep requirements for the new skills. It might also be good to create an additional restriction to the effect that the player has to have their primary weapon + shield at maximum rank (and it must be a weapon that goes up to 7+) before being able to learn the warrior skill. This would mean that the new skills are not available until a bit later. Hamish
Still seems a bit steep. Have you looked at Dean's suggestion that you have to get Rank 5 in a new weapon cat, rather than max rank? There is a minor problem with shield going to 4, but this is a manageable inelegance. Otherwise, this feels like a better conversion, - it still leaves Kit as having the prereqs for Rank 2, but only 102 weeks to get back to Rank 8, not 326 weeks. I like the 3 weapons at Rank 4, 1 close, 1 melee entry requirement.

--Andreww 08:46, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Rk5 in the Cat seemed too easy and encourages Warriors who are mediocre in their weapons. IMO A Warrior should be the best with the weapons they use. In the end I decided that I preferred Warrior to be hard, it should not be a skill casually learned to gain a few %, it should be a significant character choice to be a high rank Warrior. -- Stephen 00:41, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
Hard is fine. *Much harder* than current seems odd. 326 *extra* weeks of ranking is an eternity. Dean's ranking proposal requires an additional 102 weeks, which is still a huge back-loading of ranking. Your suggestion means that some/many existing warriors will never be able to gain another rank. This makes the new requirements *silly*, unless you are trying to reduce the number of warriors, in which case make that an explicit goal. Andreww 02:54, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
Ok, Warrior is serious, an accusation of s***y is too much! Changes made: must achieve Rk 5 before next rank. Ranks 5,8,9,10 require a weapon at rk 7.
At rank 5 the War2.0 requirements are 7 weapon categories to rk 2, 4 of those to rk 3, 1 weapon at rk 5 and 1 at rk 6. Now under War3.0 it is 5 cats at rk 5, and 1 weapon to rk 7 (an additional 60 weeks).
At rank 10 the War2.0 requirements are 7 cats to rk 5, 4 weapons to rk 7. Now under War3.0 it is 10 cats at rk 5, and 4 weapons to rk 7 (an additional 93 weeks).
Not as simple as the max rank requirement, but easier to achieve. -- Stephen 04:36, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for considering my comments, given the 'silly' accusation. Crunching numbers, the EP spent on the minimum weapon requirements drops from 60+k to 20k (or up to 30k for better weapons). Perhaps we could require warriors to rank a weapon to Rank 5, and also pay the EP (but not time) for max rank in that weapon in advance, which represents a commitment to improve the weapon. This approach also hurts mages but not fighters, and will scare off people (mages) from the first few ranks. The warrior can then slowly whittle away the ranking time from Rank 5 to max Rank at a later date. The disadvantages of this approach should be blindingly obvious. The advantage is that the time requirement only goes up slightly (maybe 20%?) from the current system, while the EP cost goes up significantly, but not in a way that hurts fighters, or those who plan to max all their weapons anyway.
I suspect this is the real silly idea, but it meets my and Hamish's complaints, and uses the damn elegant requirement of max rank in a weapon per weapon cat. Andreww 05:21, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
Well if we're encouraging silliness, we could expand the scope of the change, halve the time requirement for weapon ranking (to Rank Weeks the same as skills) and put back the max rank in category requirement. Or maybe only Warriors halve the time for ranking weapons in their categories. -- Stephen 06:29, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
What about my suggestion of requiring rank 7 for the first four levels rather than the last 4. It will tend to make warrior for the serious and after rank 5 things get easier for the serious who put in the time and effort to get to rank 5. It also keeps similar ranking requirements as currently but simplifies them and it front loads the weapon requirements rather than back loading them as is the case currently. Hamish
Back loading keeps it closer to the current requirements, hence less extra ranking for existing Warriors. If we front-load then there may be existing low ranked Warriors who face a couple of years ranking before they can advance again which was the big issue with max rank requirement. -- Stephen 23:03, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
hmm well im happy if we have any mix of half level 7 and half level 5. I think the balance with this approach is about right. -- Hamish
Does max rank Shield (4) count as a Rank 5 Weapon Cat? I guess onot, otherwise max rank 4 handaxe would too. This means a Rank 10 warrior needs every weapon cat except shield ranked to 5 (and will have shield ranked to 4). It also means they can't get shield as a weapon category. No real problem, I guess, as shield attacks getting warrior bonus always seemed funny. Need to tweak the Raphaelite warrior example, which has Shield as first weapon cat. What say we drop the shield category altogether, and maybe add thrown weapons instead (dart, spear thrower, any melee weapon when thrown) (not rock, grenado)? Andreww 02:48, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
As written, the Shield Cat is useless in terms of meeting the requirements. I'm starting to think it's a bit useless in general. It is a category of 1 weapon. Removing it and adding Thrown seems reasonable.
btw You only need 10 of the 12 (or 11 without Shield) Categories to rk 5 to achieve Rk 10, you only need the 11th cat to rk 5 if you want to advance to rk 11 Warrior. -- Stephen 04:26, 1 September 2010 (UTC)


yea its crap. unless we change shields so you have to train em to 5 for the same amount of defence - but thats way to complicated. None of my warriors uses shileds, one uses Main Gauch and the other a Katana. Hamish
Given the amount of time and requirements to meet shouldn't the bonuses of having warrior be more significant that others? Surely it's cheaper and easier and overall better to learn a weapon spell? Just looking ::::at the numbers and comparing to weapon of flames, weapon spell beats warrior skill in every way. Need this skill to be balanced with with other skills as well as being appealing to use. Eltan, Dec 2013
It doesn't need to be balanced. The Warrior Skill and its abilities are additional to, not instead of, a weapon spell. If learning the spell ruled a character out of advancing as a Warrior, then some comparison is valid. -- Jim

General Comment

An issue I have with warrior is:

One of the issues I have with warrior is; as it currently stands as no real value of Ft within the system and I would like to see a Ft cost associated with abilities so that when a warrior goes out of Ft it means something. I would like to see them be able to use Ft to add effects within the game for a tangible result.

A warrior of any rank with any shield skill can attempt a Shield Bash costing 3 Ft and doubling the total damage that Shield Bash does. A rank 6 warrior can attempt a Multi-Hex blow (to a 4th target) costing 2 Ft per attempt. Normal multi-hex attack requirements and penalties apply.

Any way ... for the most part it has been said before, and I'm sure it will be said again ... --Jono 08:35, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Repeating and summarising my email reply... I'm happy to see Quasi-Magical Warrior abilities that cost FT in the game, but I think they should be GM awarded only, not part of the standard skill set. -- Stephen 00:41, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Adding a FT costs allow more interesting subskills to be offered used as a limitation exists - they skills they're are not always on. Additionally

  • gives a warrior character something interesting to do with their FT, rather then just acting as an EN barrier.
  • helps differentiate warriors over mages. A mage is more likely to spend their FT on spells rather then these abilities.

-- Ross


Subskills for Weapon Cats?

Rather than subskills being bought for individual weapons, perhaps these being bought for weapon categories might be better. Not sure it affects balance, and as the other requirements revolve around weapon cats, and you get a new weapon cat each rank, it makes sense to be able to get the funky ability for the whole cat. Otherwise, there is even more pressure only to use the min/max option within a class. That was, you can use a broadsword, and it is only a bit worse than a hand-and-a-half, rather than worse in every way and has no special abilities. --Andreww 08:46, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I prefer the abilities to be Weapon Specific, a Warrior is better than a regular fighter with most weapons, but (after spending large amounts of xp and time) they are exceptional with their specialist weapons.

Taking the A-list weapons (H&1/2, Glaive, B. Axe) and adding Special Abilities is the way to be most effective. But I'm hopeful that some of the abilities will boost the B-list weapons into being competitive for those that choose to use them. A Warrior specialist in Broadsword should be more effective than a non-warrior with H&1/2.

I'll leave trying to fix and balance the weapons for another decade. -- Stephen 00:41, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, I prefer it the other way, for the reasons you outline. Andreww 02:54, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Experience Point change

The proposed new skill appears to be significantly tougher than the current skill. What is the increase in the skill cost?

Sub-Versions

3.01 Summer 811wk

Making the following changes based on feedback from the first session of Play Testing.

  1. Restrictions - Reverting Warrior Weapon Rank requirements back to the table as per Warrior 2.0. The new weapon category requirements did not reduce the complexity, just changed it, insufficient benefit to justify a change.
  2. Special Abilities: True Riposte - removing the ability to riposte when not evading, number of attacks for high Defence Warriors got too silly. Increase the bonus on Riposte Calc. from +2 to +Rank/2.

3.02 Spring 813wk

  1. Removed Precision - refer to all the reasons stated above.
  2. Added Multi-Hex for 2-Handed C Class and Double-Hex for 1 handed B/C Class.
  3. Added Definition of Quasi-Magical (FT consuming) Abilities
  4. Edited, standardised and incorporated most of the abilities in the Suggested list.
  5. Renamed some of the abilities, still not happy with some of the names - they're boring. Ideas for self-descriptive, flavour-full, concise names would be appreciated.

NB Some of these abilities will not work with the proposed Opposed Roll combat, especially the Parry/Riposte related abilities. If anyone wants to use these with Opposed Rolls they'll need to agree with their GM what effect they will have.