Hunters of Letrua OOC

[Dlover]

Burns is close enough to call it a correct guess, even though there are a couple of points that are a bit off. One of which being a rather large misunderstanding of what the runes were.

[Dlover]

Tomorrow's my last day of holiday, so after that... I dunno, I'll probably be perfectly able to update anyway, because I'm a terrible student who doesn't spend 90% of my time studying?

[Synch]

How much more of the day is there DLover? Should I wrap up and put Risu to bed?

[Dlover]

Late afternoon/early night. Maybe an hour or two to complete dark. If we don't mind a bit of a time difference or the others all decide to bed down we can call an end to the day.

[Dlover]

... I realised my error with the illusory area thing. I put a circle inside a pentagon and didn't consider the space around the corners. There should be a lot of space inside the corners where the grass isn't cut, if it's a circle. Did I ever actually say the cut area is a circle? It's not an important detail... Maybe it should be a pentagon instead. Or the illusion starts before the cut grass? Or further from the corners than the edges? Hm... This is a problem of minor details. Well, here's a rough idea, anyway;

Illusory place:

► Show Spoiler

Green is the calming aura, outside pentagon is the poles and lines between them, gray area is the space inside the pentagon that's not illusion'd, inside pentagon is where the illusion could potentially start, if it's to be evened out, blue is inside the illusion and uncut if it's a pentagon illusion and a circle field, brown circle is the field you've seen.

... You know what, okay, I've got this. The illusion starts with the interior pentagram, and the blue area is still long grass, then there's the brown circle of cut grass inside that, which it touches the edges of the illusion. If I modify one thing slightly it fits together with everything I had, okay, cool, no problem. It just means the edge of the illusion where you are doesn't lead straight into short grass.

[Dlover]

For the numbers people:
So Burns and I have been trying to work out how to handle Enchantment leveling. It's a bit more complex than other skills, but you basically gain SP for doing things with it, while other skills need training, so we know it needs to be harder to level than other skills. Initially I just had it start at 6, to make it harder to get into initially, then doubled it for each rank, but that's just way too excessive, given level 4 would have been around level 8 in any other skill. So then Burns thought of using the Fibonacci sequence, starting at 3 and 5, and that's a bit more reasonable, but then by level 10 it takes 233SP.
So, essentially, does anybody have any ideas of how to balance Enchantment leveling up?

For Gathers:
The Fibonacci change puts the starting point for level 1 back to 3. Which Loki has. So if we implement that Loki will actually have the Enchantment skill. How quickly do you want me to make that a thing, Gathers (Before or after the upcoming fight), and do you have any personality quirks you have preference for deciding Loki's Talent? Or will I come up with one based on how you use the Enchantment after a while?

For the creative people:
I also want to give a title to each rank in the skills, to make things a bit less number-y. So for example, evasion has Runner(1), Climber(3), Juggler(5), Dancer(7), Acrobat(9). If anybody's interested in coming up with names, I've got a google docs sheet with the stuff I've got here.

[thinkslogically]

Well, what speed do you want for the progression? Fibonacci is basically an exponential curve, so it'll be slow at low levels, but then Burns is going to go stratospheric in terms of power pretty quickly. You can balance that by scaling the level cutoffs at increasing intervals (like D&D).

[Dlover]

It's actually the inverse of what you've suggested. First level takes 3SP, the second takes 5, and so on, with each level taking exponentially more time than the last, until the tenth level takes a whopping 233, which is 203SP more than level 10 on any other skill (Other skills start at 3 and have a flat increase of 3 for each level). I'd like the early levels to be roughly equal to other skills, but at around level 4 I'd want it to get a bit more costly, without rocketing off. I could do that with static values, but I hate magic numbers (Values which aren't clearly based on anything).

[thinkslogically]

Ah, sorry, I thought the curve was like the XP curve, not the levelling one. But I think in general something like that could work. Maybe all you need to do then is scale the XP gain as well, so castingafter a low-level spell is worth say, 1 point; casting a harder spell is worth 2 points and so on. That way, someone who just focusses on minor tricks would take aaaages to get better, but someone who's constantly pushing themselves would get better faster. Maybe have a penalty for how close someone is to their theoretical limit (ie more likely to hit exhaustion or whatever) but that seems workable.

[spiderwrangler]

The way I would approach it is figuring out what you want the progression curve to look like relative to the standard progression curve. Once you know what you want, the progression formula can be tweaked. In my skill game progression, I started with a progression based on the D&D, but decided I wanted it to get steeper after the first handful of levels, so tweaked a formula to make that happen.

((Loki is an enchanter now??))

[Arch Lich Burns]

[spiderwrangler]

((I threw some in the spreadsheet that Dlover linked to, off to the side.))

[Dlover]

The way I would approach it is figuring out what you want the progression curve to look like relative to the standard progression curve. Once you know what you want, the progression formula can be tweaked. In my skill game progression, I started with a progression based on the D&D, but decided I wanted it to get steeper after the first handful of levels, so tweaked a formula to make that happen.

Trying to decide on a curve is one of the things I've been trying to do. I think I want it to progress to at most about twice of the standard cost. For which I think every other prime from 3 actually looks really good. Really good. Starts at a decent level so it's not too difficult to get into, getting to mediocre levels will happen over time, but getting to higher levels will take dedication. It looks good.

((Loki is an enchanter now??))

If the first level settles on 3SP he is. Korga's currently sitting at 2SP for it, but I don't think anybody else has any progress to gaining it.
Also, as a result in discussion with Burns, it's been decided that if Julius pushed enough Magic into Korga it'd have the same effect as drinking demon blood and give her that missing SP, but would still cause the half-day uselessness.

[spiderwrangler]

Also, as a result in discussion with Burns, it's been decided that if Julius pushed enough Magic into Korga it'd have the same effect as drinking demon blood and give her that missing SP, but would still cause the half-day uselessness.

Hmmm... interesting... not sure we'll have a half day to spare until we return to the arena though!

[Dlover]

Yeah, it's not likely to be useful, but it's an option.

[spiderwrangler]

To be honest, I've not been reading anything that the other folks back at the arena have been doing, so I would have been just as surprised to learn that Squirrel is now our Big Bad...

[Dlover]

Fun Fact: One of my initial (scrapped) ideas for the secret characteristics was for the person with the beast communion to be a hidden antagonist who would side with the animals. I decided that was something that shouldn't be imposed on a player, though, and just carried on with the communion as a standalone thing. If I hadn't realised how un-fun that idea was, Risu could very well have been the big bad. Instead she is Uncle Sam with her Eagle Army.

Edit: Okay, let's put this to a vote: Should the SP cost be every other prime from three, or every prime from 5? Standard skills require a total of 165SP to reach level 10 from 0, the EoP requires 336, the primes require 192. So the EoP hits roughly twice the requirement. I also did an SP comparison, to see just how much more Burns is getting, and they've earned 35 SP in Enchanting. The next highest single skill is Loki's Combat at 14. That said, Burns has trained basically nothing but Enchantment, and they've got slightly less than Loki, but still significantly more than anyone else (Loki has a lot of SP because of all the reading giving miscellaneous skills). Knowing that, I think I'm probably happy with twice the end requirement, but I'll ask for opinions.

[thinkslogically]

I think the higher cost might make more sense, but it depends on how youre awarding standard points. Can standard points be gained out of combat? The big imbalance I see is that magic is both a combat and utility skill so it's easier to use it more or less all the time.

[Dlover]

Yeah, that imbalance is pretty much the cause for higher cost. While other skills can also improve outside of combat, they mostly require time spent training or doing relevant activities, but Enchantment can be used in many situations, and Burns basically spends every moment available enchanting.
It basically works like this: In combat, if the combat style is focused around one of the skills the character gets 1SP for Combat and 1SP for that skill, otherwise they get 2SP for Combat.
Outside of combat, training a skill will get 2SP for it, or with a sufficiently skilled trainer you get 3. A training session is long enough that you can fit at most four of them into a day.
When enchanting, you can gain SP depending on the enchantment. Something menial for your skill level gives nothing, something relatively easy that still requires focus is worth 1SP, and something difficult gives 2SP.
Those are rough values, though; Particularly tough experiences can net more SP for the other skills. Being beaten up could increase Toughness, carrying a heavy burden could increase Strength, scaling a large wall could increase evasion (I should really start calling that Agility), or also Toughness based on how wearying the climb is, that sort. It's still less common and less impactful than Enchanting, though.

So, essentially, Enchanting be done relatively quickly for good SP, while other skills take more time. Those three runes Julius is making now, for example. That's three runes, for which I'm going to have to decide on a difficulty and work out how well Julius can pull them off, so he could be getting anywhere from 3 to 6 SP for that. Which is insane. I can't really cut the SP gains back without taking away the benefit of making enchantments, though, so the only option is to have higher requirements.

Since korga has posioncresist wouldn't she get over magic sickness sooner?

Edit and I would like EoP from 3

So Burns brought up a point. Similar to the time really early on, where Korga recovered from Felid venom rather quickly, she would also recover from magic sickness more quickly (Thanks to what Burns has referred to at "Poison Resist," one of Korga's unique abilities which was revealed early on). It'd still be a time eater, about a quarter of a day instead of half, though.
And let it be held for posterity! Burns has chosen The Expensive One! I'll still wait to see if anybody else has input on the matter, of course.

[Arch Lich Burns]

So olly should have gotten Strenghth from carring that crazy mage?

[Dlover]

Maybe, but I didn't see it being particularly difficult for Olly.

[GathersIngredients]

Since korga has posioncresist wouldn't she get over magic sickness sooner?

Edit and I would like EoP from 3

So Burns brought up a point. Similar to the time really early on, where Korga recovered from Felid venom rather quickly, she would also recover from magic sickness more quickly (Thanks to what Burns has referred to at "Poison Resist," one of Korga's unique abilities which was revealed early on). It'd still be a time eater, about a quarter of a day instead of half, though.
And let it be held for posterity! Burns has chosen The Expensive One! I'll still wait to see if anybody else has input on the matter, of course.

Not surprising, seeing just how much of a head start Julius has compared to any other PC...
I don't lean towards one or the other option strongly.

Also, as a result in discussion with Burns, it's been decided that if Julius pushed enough Magic into Korga it'd have the same effect as drinking demon blood and give her that missing SP, but would still cause the half-day uselessness.

How would "pushing magic into Korga" even work? I thought you could only use/make/focus magic by using runes. Which also was excessively described (in the books Loki read) as not working/really bad idea when it comes to living things, or more precise humans.

For Gathers:
The Fibonacci change puts the starting point for level 1 back to 3. Which Loki has. So if we implement that Loki will actually have the Enchantment skill. How quickly do you want me to make that a thing, Gathers (Before or after the upcoming fight), and do you have any personality quirks you have preference for deciding Loki's Talent? Or will I come up with one based on how you use the Enchantment after a while?

And I have no idea for the magic "talent" of Loki. I'd love for him to be able to read other people's minds or subtly influence/change minds of other people (like subliminal suggestions, seduction, negotiation, ...), as it would fit his background description of playing kind of dumb in order to get people to underestimate him (which I haven't really been able to play out, alas), but that would not work with runes ( ...unless I create e.g. an headband that enabled Loki to do those things, and then anyone who got their hands on the headband could do it ).

[Dlover]

Not surprising, seeing just how much of a head start Julius has compared to any other PC...

Yeah, the magic and a powerful Talent are Julius' starting characteristics, so it would've been sort of... Lackluster for it not to include a notable headstart on the matter, since other characters have special characteristics which will remain unique to them.

How would "pushing magic into Korga" even work? I thought you could only use/make/focus magic by using runes. Which also was excessively described (in the books Loki read) as not working/really bad idea when it comes to living things, or more precise humans.

Awkwardly, is how it'd work. That book you read was specifically about permanent enchantments (Runes, as opposed to temporary enchantments where the energy is focused through the Enchanter's body, which results in sickness if it's done too much), and in that case it is bad to put them on humans, but temporary ones are more variable. You could apply a direct enchantment to make a person move faster, but hold it for more than a couple of seconds and they'll be too busy retching to run anywhere.

Magic is basically a toxin to humans, though, so you have to balance the flow properly if you want to manage the level of sickness. Given that Enchanters have to grasp that toxin and accept it into their bodies, they need a certain level of resistance, which is where the forced exposure comes in, such as drinking demon blood; They're creatures of pure magic, so their blood is extremely condensed Magic. Drinking it is like drinking a poison; The right dosage enough times and your body builds a resistance to the toxin, too much and it'll be bad for you. Which is why a guy gave you a specific amount to drink when you did that.

... Did I explain that well enough? I've tried to explain it to Burns a couple of times before, but I can never really get it through well enough... OH! Think of it as being like Princess Bride. He's taken small enough doses of the poison enough times that he's built up immunity. The same thing happens with Magic, where you build up a resistance to its toxin. It's only once you have that resistance that your body can endure making Enchantments.

And I have no idea for the magic "talent" of Loki. I'd love for him to be able to read other people's minds or subtly influence/change minds of other people (like subliminal suggestions, seduction, negotiation, ...), as it would fit his background description of playing kind of dumb in order to get people to underestimate him (which I haven't really been able to play out, alas), but that would not work with runes ( ...unless I create e.g. an headband that enabled Loki to do those things, and then anyone who got their hands on the headband could do it ).

I can work with that. I'll modify it a little, so you won't know the specifics of it, of course, but that's not too important. Your Talent enhances your capability relating to it, and you'll be able to do things others wouldn't, but it's not like it would hinder you in other areas. We'll go with the EoP from 3, so Loki will get access as soon as we get it implemented (Which I think will probably go smoothest if Marie takes note and gives you some lessons).

... Actually, do we want Talents to be a secretive thing, or should I reveal them since they're not all-important secrets? The whole... Thing of being coy and keeping secrets gets kind of tiring sometimes.

[thinkslogically]

I'd like to find mine out in game I think

I'm also fine with olly not getting stronger for shaking the mage around. That was just for fun really and I figure he's done it a bunch to his younger brothers so he'll have the technique pretty much down

[Dlover]

Heeyyyy, so I was talking with Burns and they said I didn't set an actual distance/goal of any sort with the mapping team? Is that accurate? I could have sworn I said a day beyond the ruins? Does anybody remember what happened there? I'd like to look it up, but I'm right about to start class.