TOPIC: Int, Wis,and Cha?

Matthew Hayward wrote: Spell damage could be boosted by INT and healing by WIS if you pass the skill check.

Having the skill check be worth 7-10 instead of 3 might make it usable at higher levels.

I really like this idea, but would it require modifying the party card? Separate column for skill check damage vs regular + damage?

Endgame wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: Spell damage could be boosted by INT and healing by WIS if you pass the skill check.

Having the skill check be worth 7-10 instead of 3 might make it usable at higher levels.

I really like this idea, but would it require modifying the party card? Separate column for skill check damage vs regular + damage?

So, it sounds like we should hold this discussion in the card revamp thread we create for 2021 and should leave stats outside the four with current benefits until then. This will not limit us going forward and can give us real benefits until cards are revisited.

Reposting:

Caster Bonus
Caster Bonus is a measure of a PC's supernatural power and control. Recorded on the party card, it is based on the attribute bonus for the PC's casting attribute. This INT for Wizards, WIS for Cleric, Druid, and Ranger, and CHA for Bard, and Paladin. If the player increases the appropriate attribute, the Caster Bonus increases as well. For example if an Elf Wizard equips a Token that gives her a +4 bonus to her INT, her Caster Bonus increases from +3 to +5. There may be other ways to permanently or temporarily increase your Caster Bonus, besides just increasing your Attributes.

When a Cleric, Druid, or Wizard casts a spell that allows a Skill Check, if the Skill Check succeeds, the damage or healing of that spell is increase by the PC's Caster Bonus. Caster Bonus does not have an inherent effect from Bard, Paladin, and Ranger, but it may come into play in other ways.

Then to add a bit to the above:

Amulet of Inclination
+1 to Caster Bonus
Usable by: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Ranger, Paladin, and Wizard

Bracers of Intent
Damage bonus to Favored Enemy becomes your Caster Bonus
Usable by: Ranger

Tome of Vibrato
While singing, if at least one melee attack hits a monster, it takes Sonic damage equal to your Caster Bonus
Usable by: Bard

Xavon's Mythril Trumpet
Party damage bonus from Bardsong becomes your Caster Bonus, and Bardsong applies to spells
Usable by: Bard

Librum of Divine Barricade
Prevent damage to one other player equal to your Caster Bonus (1/room)
Usable by: Cleric, Paladin

Ring of the Cabal
Increase your Caster Bonus based on the number of Rings of the Cabal in the party. 1: +1, 2-3: +2: 4-5: +3, 6+: +4
Usable by: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Wizard.

Newish:
We already know*[/b] that INT effects number of Tomes, WIS effects number of Beads, and CHA effects number of Figurines.

I think it should be:
INT 3-16: 1 Tome
INT 17-24: 2 Tomes
INT 25+: 3 Tomes

And similar for Beads and Figurines. I think they should be on odd numbers, so as not to overlap with the bonus. And I think two should be easy but three should be a bit of a stretch, for coaching and for creep.


* not published officially yet, subject to change by TPTB

Ian Lee wrote: Isn't slot expansion inevitable due to the need to constantly sell more tokens?

There was a time I got into the coaching room and ioun stone slots baffled me as I had never seen any. To me, bead is absurd with greaves pretty bad, as well, but, like a lot of things, just seems like more numbers rather than having RPG flavor.

There's so much that TD paints itself into a silhouette because of the attempt to connect to physical locations on an adventurer. As soon as you Boots of the Four Windsify a location, have to move on to BotFWifying the next location, then the next, then the next, with the open slots being new slots created to delay locking builds (at, admittedly, a certain level of buy in that isn't relevant to a ton of players).

I was looking at really old posts not long ago. TD conversations seemed to be way more thematics oriented with people caring about a character they envisioned for themselves. Most of the concern nowadays is with numbers, whether those are character stats or treasure draws or how many tickets sell.

Now, even putting aside thematic relevance, yes, there is added overhead with more and more slots (just as there is with more and more slotless items - I gave up on bothering to list slotless items that don't affect party cards when I use builders - I won't remember hardly any of the conditional tokens, anyway). But, how can it end given that it has grown organically rather than all being planned in advance to produce more meaningful restraints?

I don't think slot expansion is inevitable and I wish they would slow down on the new slots. Beads? Greaves? They already seem to be stretching. If they want to keep moving the power curve upwards in an effort to continue to fuel Token sales they can either add new slots or add more powerful Tokens in existing slots. I'd prefer the later. Adding slots can make creep happen quicker if they are fillable with low cost entry level Tokens. New slots = a quick juice to stats. Unless of course the only Tokens available for new slots are high end Tokens but that hasn't been the case to date. Adding more powerful Tokens to existing slots AND making them harder to come by (think level above Legendary) keeps creep in check while still giving players something to shoot for.

Rob F wrote:

Ian Lee wrote: Isn't slot expansion inevitable due to the need to constantly sell more tokens?

There was a time I got into the coaching room and ioun stone slots baffled me as I had never seen any. To me, bead is absurd with greaves pretty bad, as well, but, like a lot of things, just seems like more numbers rather than having RPG flavor.

There's so much that TD paints itself into a silhouette because of the attempt to connect to physical locations on an adventurer. As soon as you Boots of the Four Windsify a location, have to move on to BotFWifying the next location, then the next, then the next, with the open slots being new slots created to delay locking builds (at, admittedly, a certain level of buy in that isn't relevant to a ton of players).

I was looking at really old posts not long ago. TD conversations seemed to be way more thematics oriented with people caring about a character they envisioned for themselves. Most of the concern nowadays is with numbers, whether those are character stats or treasure draws or how many tickets sell.

Now, even putting aside thematic relevance, yes, there is added overhead with more and more slots (just as there is with more and more slotless items - I gave up on bothering to list slotless items that don't affect party cards when I use builders - I won't remember hardly any of the conditional tokens, anyway). But, how can it end given that it has grown organically rather than all being planned in advance to produce more meaningful restraints?

I don't think slot expansion is inevitable and I wish they would slow down on the new slots. Beads? Greaves? They already seem to be stretching. If they want to keep moving the power curve upwards in an effort to continue to fuel Token sales they can either add new slots or add more powerful Tokens in existing slots. I'd prefer the later. Adding slots can make creep happen quicker if they are fillable with low cost entry level Tokens. New slots = a quick juice to stats. Unless of course the only Tokens available for new slots are high end Tokens but that hasn't been the case to date. Adding more powerful Tokens to existing slots AND making them harder to come by (think level above Legendary) keeps creep in check while still giving players something to shoot for.

Along a similar line, I think that both the power creep and slot creep could be combatted if more powerful tokens started competing with existing legendary slots - so the choice then has to be made between 2 legendaries for a slot (based on party build or whatever).

Being new to TD, I don't have the experience to know if this would be a workable solution, but it seems that if a Barbarian had to choose between +5 Deathcleaver or some other (new) legendary item it should achieve a few objectives -
1 - I would maintain (or increase) token sales from players striving towards the new legendary
2 - New legendaries don't need to move the power curve upwards to be desirable
3 - The should be no need to increase slots to maintain token sales (see point 1)

My other thought (again as a noob) is that power creep is not necessarily a bad thing if it is "contained" meaning the players who can cope with Elite+ monsters should be able to take them on. To facilitate this, there should be dedicated runs listed as Elite+ (or whatever level). To keep some sort of balance at the lower difficulties, possibly a token restriction could be placed on these runs - so if you were doing a normal run, you'd be allowed No legendaries (or 1 for the CoA), and limited relics, for Nightmare it moves up a bit, and so on.

I know that this adds more overhead from a coaching POV, but just my thoughts on TD's self preservation.

Much rides on maintaining an influx of newbies. If I’m going to replace a legendary, I’m going to want to see a healthy resale market for my old one, or I’m going to think twice about investing in a new one.

Cliff Scott-Williams wrote: My other thought (again as a noob) is that power creep is not necessarily a bad thing if it is "contained" meaning the players who can cope with Elite+ monsters should be able to take them on. To facilitate this, there should be dedicated runs listed as Elite+ (or whatever level). To keep some sort of balance at the lower difficulties, possibly a token restriction could be placed on these runs - so if you were doing a normal run, you'd be allowed No legendaries (or 1 for the CoA), and limited relics, for Nightmare it moves up a bit, and so on.

Can't work. Say I'm playing at GenCon, and I secure 9/10 of the tickets for a slot. Since -all- players have to agree to play at a different difficulty than Normal, if the additional player did not agree to the difficulty change, all other players now have to have an extra set of "level-appropriate" equipment on them. I'm not seeing that as viable.

isauteikisa wrote:

Cliff Scott-Williams wrote: My other thought (again as a noob) is that power creep is not necessarily a bad thing if it is "contained" meaning the players who can cope with Elite+ monsters should be able to take them on. To facilitate this, there should be dedicated runs listed as Elite+ (or whatever level). To keep some sort of balance at the lower difficulties, possibly a token restriction could be placed on these runs - so if you were doing a normal run, you'd be allowed No legendaries (or 1 for the CoA), and limited relics, for Nightmare it moves up a bit, and so on.

Can't work. Say I'm playing at GenCon, and I secure 9/10 of the tickets for a slot. Since -all- players have to agree to play at a different difficulty than Normal, if the additional player did not agree to the difficulty change, all other players now have to have an extra set of "level-appropriate" equipment on them. I'm not seeing that as viable.

I get that - what I'm saying is that the slots are sold at a level - if you buy a ticket for the slot - you are accepting the level as the minimum level you will play at. This would obviously impact on how scheduling works, but I would have thought that at least 30% of tickets are sold to players who have played several times before and would be able to buy up those slots.

isauteikisa wrote:

Cliff Scott-Williams wrote: My other thought (again as a noob) is that power creep is not necessarily a bad thing if it is "contained" meaning the players who can cope with Elite+ monsters should be able to take them on. To facilitate this, there should be dedicated runs listed as Elite+ (or whatever level). To keep some sort of balance at the lower difficulties, possibly a token restriction could be placed on these runs - so if you were doing a normal run, you'd be allowed No legendaries (or 1 for the CoA), and limited relics, for Nightmare it moves up a bit, and so on.

Can't work. Say I'm playing at GenCon, and I secure 9/10 of the tickets for a slot. Since -all- players have to agree to play at a different difficulty than Normal, if the additional player did not agree to the difficulty change, all other players now have to have an extra set of "level-appropriate" equipment on them. I'm not seeing that as viable.

Well, it could work, either via capping stats / values (ex: all + damage >10 = 10 on normal, or all str > 24 = 24) or via token restrictions which would require better equipped people to have extra tokens. We have a separate thread on it here: www.truedungeon.com/forum?view=topic&catid=53&id=248911 . Its pretty much at an impasse though.

The tl;dr is:
1) players with expensive tokens don't want their effects reduced because they spent lots on tokens.
2) Equipped players should nerf themselves on normal PUGs via the honor system, not as a hard requirement. Refer to #1
3) reserving runs for higher difficulty at Gen Con while technically possible, is not worth the effort. Refer to #2

The end result seems to be:
A) a non 0 number of runs at Gen Con have someone who does not follow the honor system on a pug
B ) A non 0 number of those pug members complains here or on social media
C) Discussion / proposals are made, but refer to #3 above.

Cliff Scott-Williams wrote:

isauteikisa wrote:

Cliff Scott-Williams wrote: My other thought (again as a noob) is that power creep is not necessarily a bad thing if it is "contained" meaning the players who can cope with Elite+ monsters should be able to take them on. To facilitate this, there should be dedicated runs listed as Elite+ (or whatever level). To keep some sort of balance at the lower difficulties, possibly a token restriction could be placed on these runs - so if you were doing a normal run, you'd be allowed No legendaries (or 1 for the CoA), and limited relics, for Nightmare it moves up a bit, and so on.

Can't work. Say I'm playing at GenCon, and I secure 9/10 of the tickets for a slot. Since -all- players have to agree to play at a different difficulty than Normal, if the additional player did not agree to the difficulty change, all other players now have to have an extra set of "level-appropriate" equipment on them. I'm not seeing that as viable.

I get that - what I'm saying is that the slots are sold at a level - if you buy a ticket for the slot - you are accepting the level as the minimum level you will play at. This would obviously impact on how scheduling works, but I would have thought that at least 30% of tickets are sold to players who have played several times before and would be able to buy up those slots.

True dungeon tried that in the past. There were runs that were supposed to be Nightmare runs. But no one reads. It is a mad dash to get tickets that will sell out in a couple hours. You get what you can. So you end up on a nightmare run and haven't a clue what that means because you didn't read, you were just concerned about getting tickets.

jedibcg wrote:

Cliff Scott-Williams wrote:

isauteikisa wrote:

Cliff Scott-Williams wrote: My other thought (again as a noob) is that power creep is not necessarily a bad thing if it is "contained" meaning the players who can cope with Elite+ monsters should be able to take them on. To facilitate this, there should be dedicated runs listed as Elite+ (or whatever level). To keep some sort of balance at the lower difficulties, possibly a token restriction could be placed on these runs - so if you were doing a normal run, you'd be allowed No legendaries (or 1 for the CoA), and limited relics, for Nightmare it moves up a bit, and so on.

Can't work. Say I'm playing at GenCon, and I secure 9/10 of the tickets for a slot. Since -all- players have to agree to play at a different difficulty than Normal, if the additional player did not agree to the difficulty change, all other players now have to have an extra set of "level-appropriate" equipment on them. I'm not seeing that as viable.

I get that - what I'm saying is that the slots are sold at a level - if you buy a ticket for the slot - you are accepting the level as the minimum level you will play at. This would obviously impact on how scheduling works, but I would have thought that at least 30% of tickets are sold to players who have played several times before and would be able to buy up those slots.

True dungeon tried that in the past. There were runs that were supposed to be Nightmare runs. But no one reads. It is a mad dash to get tickets that will sell out in a couple hours. You get what you can. So you end up on a nightmare run and haven't a clue what that means because you didn't read, you were just concerned about getting tickets.

Right. We know this won’t work because for two years it didn’t. Even if people were willing and able to kit out the unprepared, a lot of them were newbies, so forcing them to play beyond Normal is just cruel and unusual.

The only way to guarantee a difficulty level for a slot is to buy all ten tickets and pick your party ahead of time.

There is only one way I can think to make this work. Sell a single $800 ticket for “you and up to nine friends,” and handle it like the lottery runs.

Only the richest and silliest of newbies would wander into THAT.

Brad Mortensen wrote: Only the richest and silliest of newbies would wander into THAT.

And yet some would because they want to play TD so bad they would buy without reading. That is why EVERY year somone ends up in grind thinking it is a dungeon.