TOPIC: Suggestion: Jeff Tell Us What You Want to See

Fiddy wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Fiddy wrote:

smakdown wrote: isn't there a description on the player cards? would that be something jmartin envisioned for characters?

or maybe i am thinking wrong and am completely cattywhompus.

Some cards still have that text, but not all. And what is written doesn't give much guidance (other than that we should never care about giving Monks weapons).

Which ones don't?

Each of these has a 1 page description:

truedungeon.com/resources

The PDF they mailed out for VTD events doesn't include the backs, so is that what you're referring to?

The physical cards also don't have the textual backs any longer due to printing 4th on one side and 5th on the other.

There's also an aspect of the card telling you "here's how to play the character on the card", which isn't necessarily the same as what results at higher token levels.

Read 5th level druid.

Should "definitely" throw out one of these spells round 1 of each combat.

Don't hesitate to quaff this polymorph potion with your spellcasting build.

Druid is pushed as magic class that spells a mix of damage and heals, which certainly gives it an identity different from cleric or wizards. Yet, it has non-awful melee weapon options, non-awful armors, shields. And, it has polymorph option.

Can also define role of druid in comparison to cleric by how druid isn't bufftastic. More damage spells, polymorph, not as good armor, not buffy. So much of the archetypes make sense in a thematic sense, but, then, you run into mechanics at constructed build levels, like how cleric hasn't always been primary healer with the right tokens.

smakdown wrote: isn't there a description on the player cards? would that be something jmartin envisioned for characters?

or maybe i am thinking wrong and am completely cattywhompus.

I think this is a reasonable level of analysis on the situation but I don't know if it's the most helpful.

To me a better way to look at it is this:

Why would I want to play this class? What's fun about it? Why would I want to play fighter instead of wizard? What's a key aspect to this class that allows fighter to play differently than say barbarian?

Of course you could quickly reply with, well barbarian can use the two handed weapons!

I guess. But that doesn't sound all that exciting. At least to me.

This key aspect was why I was getting super exciting last year around wizard discussions. It sounded like wizard was going to get a distinct identity within the game that allowed it to stand out and *play* differently than everything else with the hp exchange for additional magic power and spell books for spell adaptability.

This is why I'm very against giving bard or cleric or druid a spellbook analog. I prefer to develop something unique about wizards and when that's done move on to make something unique about bard (or whatever is next).

There's plenty of smart people here. We can certainly come up with something really fun and interesting for each character in this game.

Not sure why wizards wouldn't have distinct identities already. Just going to use 5th level versions as standard for audience who is engaged with development.

Only three classes in the game are oriented to dealing damage through spells.

Most of the spells, possibly all if you spellswap, don't require a to hit roll. They have different typed damage to where Fire Dart and Frost Dart are not the same spell in all cases. They come in different levels so not all attacks are the same.

Druid does not have multitarget spells. Wizard has more than Elf.

There are some buff possibilities.

Druid polymorphs much better, but Elf polymorphs better than Wizard.

Force damage has special rules.

Alertness, Lesser Maze do different things from other effects in game and from each other.

Mage Medallion and Ashenne both open up additional options that will get used.

Meanwhile, get plenty of downside. Saves profile may be different but there are classes with vastly better saves in total. ACs hard to improve, not really worth bothering. HPs low. Spells run out (much less so now).

While tying HP to more options is not the most enthralling thing to me, seems to me that the complaints aren't about identity, they are about damage. If builds averaged 5/10/20 or whatever more damage per round, then what would people have to complain about? (Or, maybe average is a bad way to look at, let's say that could more easily double damage on one round per combat, not double base damage, double damage.)

Terrible defenses? I'd be in favor of more attention given to improving saves as improving AC or HP is a thematic fail. I'd be in favor of additional token slots in something like ring or wrist or charm or whatever, but I have a hard time seeing this fly from a balance standpoint even if it could be thematically justified. For instance, Robe of the Philosopher: +1 Charm, +1 Ring. There's an argument that that's horribly broken since torso slot is pretty much meaningless slot currently to a lot of wizard builds. I had a NM build where I didn't run anything in torso because it was funnier and meant pretty much nothing to the build.

If want to complain about identity, Human Fighter, aka "the easy class". The fighters are sold as hitting more easily, except Fighter only has +1 to hit over Barbarian and far less damage, while DF has no bonus to hit over Barbarian.

They have identities, but I'd say Monk and Ranger have confused ones. Ranger is pulled in two different directions. In some respects that pull to do different things is a good thing. But, melee damage output is just so insane and multiple attacks has a fundamental problem unless you miss that second attack a lot. Meanwhile, Monk identity is supposedly "class with lots of wacky differences" - no weapons, Stun, weird defenses. But, in practice, kill, kill, kill because it can, with things like Stun just making kill even better.

This thread had me looking at the character cards, specifically comparing the attributes for each class. I found it interesting that Paladins have a lower Con score at 11 than either Wizards and Druids, Barbs, and Monks have the highest at 15. Granted that's balanced a bit by class bonuses to HP, but it seems like something that should be addressed.

Brokkr wrote: This thread had me looking at the character cards, specifically comparing the attributes for each class. I found it interesting that Paladins have a lower Con score at 11 than either Wizards and Druids, Barbs, and Monks have the highest at 15. Granted that's balanced a bit by class bonuses to HP, but it seems like something that should be addressed.

You should add up the stat blocks, two classes outpace and one is left in the dust if I have any memory left at all.

macxdmg wrote:

Brokkr wrote: This thread had me looking at the character cards, specifically comparing the attributes for each class. I found it interesting that Paladins have a lower Con score at 11 than either Wizards and Druids, Barbs, and Monks have the highest at 15. Granted that's balanced a bit by class bonuses to HP, but it seems like something that should be addressed.

You should add up the stat blocks, two classes outpace and one is left in the dust if I have any memory left at all.

Is it really fair to value int (no in game function game function currently) and CHA (one extra Figurine is 16+) the same as Str, Dex, Con?

Wade Schwendemann (Dr. Uid) wrote:

macxdmg wrote:

Brokkr wrote: This thread had me looking at the character cards, specifically comparing the attributes for each class. I found it interesting that Paladins have a lower Con score at 11 than either Wizards and Druids, Barbs, and Monks have the highest at 15. Granted that's balanced a bit by class bonuses to HP, but it seems like something that should be addressed.

You should add up the stat blocks, two classes outpace and one is left in the dust if I have any memory left at all.

Is it really fair to value int (no in game function game function currently) and CHA (one extra Figurine is 16+) the same as Str, Dex, Con?

INT? Probably not.

CHA? Well, the right FoP can mean the difference between participating in an entire combat or not sometimes... what are extra rounds of combat worth? Seems at least non-zero value