TOPIC: Why equip resistance when all damage unstoppable

darkangel866 wrote:

Druegar wrote: As was I. A quick chat with the AC got that misunderstanding cleared up.

But, with as narrowly defining as TD has been with tokens and non usage, that would not even cross my mind. And I stay up on the forum and rules.

Consistent misunderstandings....

If your room has webbing is it really that hard to know what effects will fix it?

I HATE that the consistent communication is call the AC to get the room to actually work as designed.

It seems like the cheapest of all cheap shots, but if puzzle damage is meant to be unstoppable, you should probably just call it Eldritch damage, and be done with it.

If a thing is called "Fire", protection from fire should counter it, whether puzzle or combat (and you shouldn't be circumventing Fire protection by calling it "heat" or "lava" and saying that fire protection doesn't help). If a spider uses poison, poison immunity should counter it. Calling it "psychic space poison" shouldn't be the way to get around poison immunity. If a damage has a type, protection from that damage type should apply, puzzle or combat.

And the types should probably be streamlined. If you say, "Well, fire, cold, shock, sonic, and acid resistance are pretty common now, so if we want to damage token collectors, we need a new damage type. How about 'primal' or 'stygian' or 'semisonic'?" No - don't go down that rabbit hole. There's literally no end to the ways you can negate last year's tokens with this year's new modifiers. But, it's very unsatisfying to face that, over and over again. (Yes, I'm still annoyed by Darkrift. WTF is Darkrift?)

It's all about color and atmosphere. If you just understand a couple things it's simple.

1) Push damage is never soakable. It doesn't matter whether they call it eldritch, magic, acid, or fairy sprinkle power. It's not meant to be soakable and never will be. What they describe that damage as is just fluff and stage setting.

2) Because of items like the Supreme Ring and similar, you should almost always assume last room/boss monsters have damage that is not soakable. Again, whatever they call it is simply color and fluff. To allow it to be soakable creates a huge strata between those with a ring and those without. Imagine how much lightning damage a creature would have to do to account for the soak on a nightmare group while also not having everything be instakill for everyone without that one or two tokens. It's the downside of even making huge soak tokens and improved evasion in the first place.

3) Puzzles are generally not meant to be solved with tokens. Environmental conditions are. The former often breaks the puzzle which ends up reducing the fun for everyone while the latter is accounted for an expected.

henwy wrote: It's all about color and atmosphere. If you just understand a couple things it's simple.

1) Push damage is never soakable. It doesn't matter whether they call it eldritch, magic, acid, or fairy sprinkle power. It's not meant to be soakable and never will be. What they describe that damage as is just fluff and stage setting.

2) Because of items like the Supreme Ring and similar, you should almost always assume last room/boss monsters have damage that is not soakable. Again, whatever they call it is simply color and fluff. To allow it to be soakable creates a huge strata between those with a ring and those without. Imagine how much lightning damage a creature would have to do to account for the soak on a nightmare group while also not having everything be instakill for everyone without that one or two tokens. It's the downside of even making huge soak tokens and improved evasion in the first place.

3) Puzzles are generally not meant to be solved with tokens. Environmental conditions are. The former often breaks the puzzle which ends up reducing the fun for everyone while the latter is accounted for an expected.

Well said.

Yeah, well, please don't introduce "fairy sprinkle damage".

And that Eldritch ring is the most broken bit of power creep in the game. But people got that gear to, presumably, make runs easier. This goes back to the original post: What's the point of having gear that protects you from things you aren't going to encounter, because too many people have the gear that protects them from that?

Jason Brown wrote: Yeah, well, please don't introduce "fairy sprinkle damage".

And that Eldritch ring is the most broken bit of power creep in the game. But people got that gear to, presumably, make runs easier. This goes back to the original post: What's the point of having gear that protects you from things you aren't going to encounter, because too many people have the gear that protects them from that?

The supreme ring has had a nasty effect on dungeon design. I would be happy for it to get errata swapping the two numbers; result in 3pts elemental protection and 10 retribution.

henwy wrote: It's all about color and atmosphere. If you just understand a couple things it's simple.

1) Push damage is never soakable. It doesn't matter whether they call it eldritch, magic, acid, or fairy sprinkle power. It's not meant to be soakable and never will be. What they describe that damage as is just fluff and stage setting.

2) Because of items like the Supreme Ring and similar, you should almost always assume last room/boss monsters have damage that is not soakable. Again, whatever they call it is simply color and fluff. To allow it to be soakable creates a huge strata between those with a ring and those without. Imagine how much lightning damage a creature would have to do to account for the soak on a nightmare group while also not having everything be instakill for everyone without that one or two tokens. It's the downside of even making huge soak tokens and improved evasion in the first place.

3) Puzzles are generally not meant to be solved with tokens. Environmental conditions are. The former often breaks the puzzle which ends up reducing the fun for everyone while the latter is accounted for an expected.

OK then publish these as rules and make them part of the training room. Don't make us discover them through fun reducing frustration.

Herid Fel wrote: If a player is able to swim through the lava and take damage, or walk on the lava and still take damage, then it's a worse-than-useless token because it makes players think that it has a function but doesn't do anything.

In our first time in that room, we were told that the Boots would halve the fire damage. Not sure if that changed after Thursday morning, but they did have an effect for our party.

I'm just seeing this thread now but +1000000000 to this. This right here is the reason I sold my Supreme Ring of Elemental Command - its essentially worthless with all of the caveats.

In 2012 there was a puzzle involving using planks to pick up hot beakers and pour them into a forge - it conveyed no damage prevention... from HOT... really??

Time and time again this issue pops up. I have started just boosting my parties stats and screwing the circumstantial bonuses. They are essentially pointless and waste otherwise usable slots as the way they are judged and worked around.

Even if they release "eldritch damage protection" with the 3 set eldritch set next year, prepare for a new damage type to completely bypass your protection.

WHAT BS.

And I didn't even go to GenCon this year - and im STILL upset about this happening every year for the past 3 years.

PLEASE guys, fix this or don't even bother printing the tokens in the first place.

Fizzikx wrote: I'm just seeing this thread now but +1000000000 to this. This right here is the reason I sold my Supreme Ring of Elemental Command - its essentially worthless with all of the caveats.

Well, despite the occasional acid and darkrift damage ,
the Supreme Ring is still incredibly helpful in True Grind, for what it is worth!

If your dungeon design is specific to the 1%, something is terribly wrong.

I really agree with the sentiments presented in thr majority of this thread, with the caveat that the benefits for common/uncommon tokens are exceptionally specific.

So while I 100% agree that if you place lava in a room, puzzle or combat, and you make boots that allow someone to explicitly walk on lava, that should totally count. That also said, if a room Is designed where one token gets you past, that isnt player fault and shouldn't fall on the player to be punished - that is on token and room design.

I know it is tough to track all the odd tokens that have been created over the years, but in most cases, an experienced, purpled out group aren't going to give up a precious slot for an exceptionally limited token, and they have tokens to grant extra treasure stamps anyways. So in the end, immunity tokens or exceptionally limited tokens need to come into play.

And as for the SRoEC, Eliminating a benefit that came an such an exceptional price also seems ridiculous. It's extremely powerful, but that was a choice that was made to appease high end collectors. And this trend will likely continue when the Eldrich boots get released, as well as the set bonus. The spread between common tokens and high end continues to grow (with the addition of more slots in recent years speeding up the process).

In many cases, and I hate saying this, but maybe there should be a designation that parties can take if they want further difficulty beyond nightmare.

Honestly, I don't know what the solution should be in the end, but negating a decent chunk of the token abilities in any given year isn't an answer I personally like.

Generally, players like to be rewarded for being prepared - they get limited slots to fill, and besides token crazed maniacs, most folks only bring in enough stuff to be reasonably prepared.

Templar wrote: I know it is tough to track all the odd tokens that have been created over the years, but in most cases, an experienced, purpled out group aren't going to give up a precious slot for an exceptionally limited token, and they have tokens to grant extra treasure stamps anyways. So in the end, immunity tokens or exceptionally limited tokens need to come into play.

I agree with Templar's points especially this one. No highend player is going to drop their Boos of X Wind for Boots of Lava Walking. But if the Boots of Lava Walking gets you past the Lava Puzzle or if the Fire Salamander is standing in a pool of Lava (so melee take damage) the Boots of Lava Walking should help the new players. Note unless the entire party had Boots of Lava Walking someone in the group would be taking damage unless they solved it.

Ed