TOPIC: Changing Token Powers: OK, Meh, or Bad?

Harlax wrote:

Rob F wrote: I haven't been following the forums closely at all so was scratching my head a bit when I saw this topic posted. After reading through these initial comments I think I get it now. Sounds like some people are pushing to have Tokens changed. Not sure why though? If they are I'm now curious as to which ones people are pushing to have changed??

Oh and in response to Matt's question if I were TPTB I wouldn't make changes to a printed Tokens powers unless I felt it was game breaking in some way.

If I understand correctly, this was an outgrowth of the Fighter Legendary discussion and the desire was not to constrain current legendary design based on a speculative class redesign. Or maybe I have it all wrong.

Probably mostly spawned from listening to me on my thoughts on Fighter/Cleric/Wizard... though maybe it was someone else bringing up changing the Druid Legendary that was the spark for this thread.

I do not feel that every token should be looked at with a fine tooth comb and say “well this rare neck gives 4 stats and this one two years later gives 5, so we need to change the old one to fit the new “. Token development Should be on a sinusoidal in nature.

I do feel though that the class legendaries should be talked about and adjusted when they are all done, these are special supposed to be highly coveted tokens and I can’t imagine what this years arguments are gonna be because last year it was very numerous. Some grew in power and some were destroyed all in a matter of weeks but in the end they should all have desired effects and a desire to obtain them, not an “ill pass” attitude.

I prefer “rewrite” to “errata,” which implies there was a mistake.

Given an average set is about 180-ish tokens, and that we have seen about five “rewrites” in ten years, the odds of any token seeing errata is under 0.3%. Anyone who is anticipating wide-ranging and frequent rewrites of existing tokens isn’t basing their opinion on history.

Maybe you count token exchanges as rewrites. That would affect the percentage a little. Let’s not quibble on what fraction of a percent it is.

I’m fine if things change for major game balance reasons. A character card redesign shouldn’t require any token rewrites, though it might as it did for Ring of Stunning Fist. Note RoSF was just a rare. It was saved from uselessness, but other newly-useless tokens have been relegated to the transmute pile (various scrolls) or landfill (rumors). So that could happen again.

IMO the class-specific Legendaries were/are a mistake, so I’m pretending they don’t exist. (Even the pending cleric one.) It won’t bother me if they do or don’t see rewrites in the near or distant future. So that’s all I have on that.

Fiddy wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Fiddy wrote: I also don't see how you can expect to design a token that will be both balanced now and after class cards get adjusted, without knowing what adjustments to the class might be made.

TD is presently on (at least) it's 3rd character card design for the base classes, and has cycled through at least 5 different character cards per class when considering past cards, L4, L5, and RoSP cards.

In all of that, a token was changed exactly once as a result: Ring of Stunning Fist - because the change to Monk would have made the token do nothing at all as written.

I just don't think designing new character cards is that big of a problem, and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, if ever.

In my opinion it's much more reasonable to design future character cards in light of existing class legendaries, than it is to say "the effects of class legendaries are provisional and should be revisited when classes are redesigned."

So, based on the above, do you feel like it is ok for some class Legendaries to be more powerful, in order to shrink gaps in how well the different classes can currently contribute to team success at the Legendary level?

I know we have been talking about Iktomi's, but as someone who mains melee ranger, I am not all that upset about having a class legendary that isn't worth using in my build. On the other hand, if the ranger legendary was as good for melee rangers as Widseth's is for bards, I think some folks would be more than a mite upset. I support what TPTB did as far as not making all class legendaries created equal.

I am apparently in the minority, but I believe that if tokens are made with keyword powers and the knowledge that what the keyword does could change, that's all we need.

Whether the power actually changes or not is a future discussion.

I think the idea of changing them is a hood thing, in case we overshoot.

Fighters, Cleric and Wizards seem to need the most help to get in line with where those primary players feel they should be. Fighters and Wizards for damage, Cleric for support, heals, bluffs, etc.

Ultimately we should make an effort to bring them all up, but leave some room to adjust in case we overshoot.

Keywords are a way to do that, with the knowledge that they may be adjusted later.

I like the idea, I think it gives us more design space.

Druids seem to want their legendary dialed up in power. I definitely want the Paladin one dialed up. That seems to he a completely separate discussion from the idea of keywords and keyword changes.

Playing a barbarian during V1a, fury was insanely good in a couple places. It *could* be adjusted if necessary.
The monk one is also ridiculously good, but doesnt have the ease of a keyword.

Either way, I'd say changing existing tokens should be a different discussion.

Fiddy wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Fiddy wrote: I also don't see how you can expect to design a token that will be both balanced now and after class cards get adjusted, without knowing what adjustments to the class might be made.

TD is presently on (at least) it's 3rd character card design for the base classes, and has cycled through at least 5 different character cards per class when considering past cards, L4, L5, and RoSP cards.

In all of that, a token was changed exactly once as a result: Ring of Stunning Fist - because the change to Monk would have made the token do nothing at all as written.

I just don't think designing new character cards is that big of a problem, and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, if ever.

In my opinion it's much more reasonable to design future character cards in light of existing class legendaries, than it is to say "the effects of class legendaries are provisional and should be revisited when classes are redesigned."

So, based on the above, do you feel like it is ok for some class Legendaries to be more powerful, in order to shrink gaps in how well the different classes can currently contribute to team success at the Legendary level?

Please take that topic to a new thread.

To answer questions as to: “why are we talking about this?”

The answer is in the first lines of the first post. It’s no one thing.

Several people in several contexts have begun supposing/proposing that this years/last years/all tokens are open to ongoing redesign, and that concerns me - because I don’t think it’s true/should be true.

I don’t want to see incomplete or undesirable designs Published this year because “we can fix it later.”

I don’t want to see people be upset down the line because their hoped for (which will surely become remembered as promises) changes never materialize.

Worst of all, I don’t want to see class legendaries become an ongoing free for all that leads to never ending debate and refinement. I don’t think that would be good for true dungeon.

Daniel White wrote:

Fiddy wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Fiddy wrote: I also don't see how you can expect to design a token that will be both balanced now and after class cards get adjusted, without knowing what adjustments to the class might be made.

TD is presently on (at least) it's 3rd character card design for the base classes, and has cycled through at least 5 different character cards per class when considering past cards, L4, L5, and RoSP cards.

In all of that, a token was changed exactly once as a result: Ring of Stunning Fist - because the change to Monk would have made the token do nothing at all as written.

I just don't think designing new character cards is that big of a problem, and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, if ever.

In my opinion it's much more reasonable to design future character cards in light of existing class legendaries, than it is to say "the effects of class legendaries are provisional and should be revisited when classes are redesigned."

So, based on the above, do you feel like it is ok for some class Legendaries to be more powerful, in order to shrink gaps in how well the different classes can currently contribute to team success at the Legendary level?

I know we have been talking about Iktomi's, but as someone who mains melee ranger, I am not all that upset about having a class legendary that isn't worth using in my build. On the other hand, if the ranger legendary was as good for melee rangers as Widseth's is for bards, I think some folks would be more than a mite upset. I support what TPTB did as far as not making all class legendaries created equal.

Right! With one, maybe two exceptions (looking mostly at the Monk), I think TPTB have done an awesome job at propping up aspects of classes that could use a boost, rather than just raising the overall power level. I personally love using Iktomi's and Widseth's. I haven't had a chance to try out the others yet.

I'm hoping that similar boosts happen for Clerics and Fighters (and maybe Wizards) via their Relics and Legendaries despite the fact that the individual tokens may be seen as "but that's more powerful than class X's Legendary". But I think long-term it'd be better to fix some of those aspects at the card level.

What I've probably poorly stated (here and on other threads) is that in my mind, when(if?) the card adjustment time comes, I'm cool if those tokens need to be toned down as a result. That's because I assume that a fix at the card level that addresses issues across the token spectrum can more easily avoid unneeded complexity if we don't have to worry about "how do we make the change so that those Legendaries don't break things?"

So I've expressed that (again, perhaps poorly) maybe it'd make sense to simply have that later possible adjustment mentioned as part of the current plan, so that if it does happen, people aren't caught as surprised as they were on the LoDS or Eldritch Set changes. I'm cool with not having that potential written down, just raising the suggestion.

My general stance is, "Avoid when possible, ameliorate where practical, enforce when pressing."

If not changing leads to more problems than changing, change. If it will reduce perceived value, do what you can to ease the transition for the owners.

Singsalot wrote: My general stance is, "Avoid when possible, ameliorate where practical, enforce when pressing."

If not changing leads to more problems than changing, change. If it will reduce perceived value, do what you can to ease the transition for the owners.

+1
I dislike tokens changing out from under me, but realize sometimes all good alternatives have been exhausted.

I haven’t read most of this thread.

There is a +8 wisdom charm that I believe should be reprinted/errata to give 4 wisdom, and I believe it is completely reasonable to do so for the health of the game. UR’s have already done it.

I also believe “class legendaries” shouldn’t exist for the most part. Bard isn’t going to share. Everyone else could have probably shared something and it makes class selection less important. Sure, make it primarily for one class, say cleric to heal or actually change to a nexromancer cleric casting harm instead. Druid and Paly may not be able to use all of the abilities, but can be croupted also. Monk can throw weapons, and get psychic powers. Rangers can probably throw monk weapons they’re proficient with also. And fighter and dwarf fighter can share so we don’t need two fighter necks, although the first one should probably be better for one, and the second for the second class. Yes, I just said there should be more neck legendaries.

I am probably in the minority here, as I pug run and try to organize 8/10 runs.

Wade Schwendemann wrote: I am apparently in the minority, but I believe that if tokens are made with keyword powers and the knowledge that what the keyword does could change, that's all we need.

Whether the power actually changes or not is a future discussion.

I think the idea of changing them is a hood thing, in case we overshoot.

Fighters, Cleric and Wizards seem to need the most help to get in line with where those primary players feel they should be. Fighters and Wizards for damage, Cleric for support, heals, bluffs, etc.

Ultimately we should make an effort to bring them all up, but leave some room to adjust in case we overshoot.

Keywords are a way to do that, with the knowledge that they may be adjusted later.

I like the idea, I think it gives us more design space.

Druids seem to want their legendary dialed up in power. I definitely want the Paladin one dialed up. That seems to he a completely separate discussion from the idea of keywords and keyword changes.

Playing a barbarian during V1a, fury was insanely good in a couple places. It *could* be adjusted if necessary.
The monk one is also ridiculously good, but doesnt have the ease of a keyword.

Either way, I'd say changing existing tokens should be a different discussion.

I must also be part of the minority. I like the "keyword" powers concept as well.

1) It allows us to do some post-production refining

2) When it comes to Legendary tokens, the token ends up being mostly a lot of words that have to be condensed almost to the point of not conveying their meaning anyway. Example: Ralson’s Pendant of the Elder Yew


3) Less cluter makes for a more visually appealling token.