I'm mostly looking for ideas for Guts, but I'm also open for any ideas for my other skill mods, Applied Combustinetics, and Charmomancy & Mana Bolter(Link in my signature.) Essentially, I want to make a warrior focused combat mod. There's very little in the way of warrior skills(Tons of passives, though,) and I wanted to change that. I got the name of Guts from Final Fantasy Tactics' main character's skill. I know I want to implement a type of 'Whirlwind' ability, which I know how I can put together, but I need other ideas to help flesh it out. I'd also like some feedback on Applied Combustinetics' list of skills. Applied Combustinetics: Who needs magic? We have bombs. Type: Rogue All abilities apply at least 1 stack of Powder Residue to enemies. All abilities apply 1 stack of Fire Hazard to the player. Powder Residue: -2 -2 Your armor is less effective while you're covered in black powder! Lasts 10 turns. (Max stack:5) Fire Hazard -1 -1 Frequent use of high explosives is dangerous. Be careful with those things! Lasts 50 turns (Max stack: 25) Firecracker Boomstick Explosive Bola Breaker Bomb Blood to Boom My Little Friend Mon Ami! Firecracker Downtime: 2No passive bonuses.On Use(MIssile): Deals 1 on impact. Deals 2 in a 3x3 square. Applies Powder Residue to enemy.Applies Fire Hazard to player.Description:"It's not much, but it's a start." Boomstick Downtime: 6No passive bonuses.On Use(Adjacent Enemy): Performs a melee attack. Deals 0.2 x in a 2x3 rectangle, and knocks enemies back.Applies -3 -3 for 5 seconds, stacking up to 3 times. (Boomstick)Applies Powder Residue to enemies.Applies Fire Hazard to player.Description: "You use your boomstick, or other applicable melee weapons(and in times of desperation, your foot) to strike an enemy with explosive force." Explosive Bola Downtime: 20No passive bonuses.On use(Missile):Locks down an enemy for up to 10 turns. Deals 2 on impact. Every 3 turns(3, 6, and 9), the bola's bindings will explode in a 3x3 area, dealing 3 + 0.25 x Applies Powder Residue to enemy on hit.Applies Powder Residue to enemies(including first target) each explosion.Applies Fire Hazard to player.Description: "You throw an explosively modified bola at an enemy. It has a chance of locking them in place. Even if they don't stay still, they will still explode 3 times. Watch out!" Breaker Bomb Downtime: 3No passive bonuses. On use(Missile): Explodes in a 3x3 cross, dealing 5 + 0.4 xApplies -3 , -3 , -3 for 5 seconds, stacking up to 3 times. (Breaker Blast)Applies Powder Residue to enemy.Applies Fire Hazard to player.Description: "You throw an exceptionally penetrating breaker bomb. Its a small, but powerful explosion." Blood to Boom Downtime: 20No passive bonuses.On use(Target):Paralyzes an enemy for 3 turns.DoT(Nitro Blood) spell: 1 1 , every turn for 3 turns.DoT(Nitro Blood) applies: -3 , -3 , lasting 4 turns, stacking 3 times.After 3 turns(Blood Detonate): Enemies in a 5x5 star-cross pattern take 8 + 0.5 x Leaves behind a 5x5 perm mine (Powder Cloud) that inflicts Powder Residue every turn. The cloud lasts 10 turns.Applies Fire Hazard to player.Description: "You replace an enemy's blood, or other applicable fluids, with sweet, sweet nitroglycerin. No one is really sure how this works, but it's hard to argue with someone who can blow you up from the inside." My Little Friend Downtime: 30No passive bonuses.On use(Target Floor)Summons a Blobby(Same attributes as the Fungus Arts Summoned Slime, only its brown.).Casts 'Living Bomb' on the Blobby. (The Blobby deals an additional 1 )After 7 turns, the Blobby will explode in a 5x5 star-cross pattern, leaving behind a Powder Cloud and dealing 8 + 0.5 x Applies Fire Hazard to player."You summon a little blobby with an exceptionally short life span. The average blobby summoned by this ability has the following thoughts: 'Hello, world! Hello, creator! What a marvelous place! Are these things your friends, creator? Creator, why do I feel funny inside? This is really starting to hurt. I don't feel very well.' then the rest is silenced in a deafening boom." Mon ami! Downtime: 120No passive bonuses.On use(Self)Buff lasts 30 turns..+25 +25 Melee strikes have a 50% chance to use BoomstickAll Thrown weapons have a 75% chance to set off Breaker Blast.Applies Fire Hazard to the player every turn for 30 turns.Description: "Your explosive powers are downright mutant. For 30 turns, you have a significant chance to make thrown weapons explode, even if they are not normally explosive. Thrown explosives will explode twice. Can you do that? Can you explode twice? The answer: Yes. In addition, melee attacks have a chance of triggering Boomstick for the duration of this ability."
Update: Haven't gotten any feedback, but having more time to brain storm on my own has paid off some. Applied Combustinetics is largely done, but if I can get feedback on it, I can probably balance it a bit better. Will upload later today. Guts: It's not what's inside that matters. It's whether or not what's inside stays inside. Type: Warrior Moxie Intimidate Cleave Ground-Pound Devastating Blow Whirlwind Revenge Moxie Passive Bonuses: +1 +1 +1 "No one's sure what it is, but it's said that you have it." Intimidate Downtime: 10 turns On use(Target) Fears an enemy for 5 turns. Mutes an enemy for 5 turns. "You're pretty good at giving dirty looks and saying mean things. Intimidated enemies will flee, and will not use magic while intimidated." Cleave Downtime: 2 turns On use(Adjacent/Template) Performs melee attack. Enemies in a 2x3 rectangle suffer 1 + 0.25 x "You cut into nearby enemies. Somehow, maces, staves, and your foot are just as effective as axes and swords at doing this." Ground-Pound Downtime: 7 turns On use(Template) Paralyzes enemies next to the player for 2 turns. Enemies next to the player suffer 1 + 0.5 x "All that door-kicking finally payed off. You can stomp the ground with enough force to stun enemies right next to you." Devastating Blow Downtime: 3 turns On use(Adjacent) Performs melee attack. Targeted enemy suffers 1.5 x "You're capable of inflicting some serious damage to one enemy. That's gotta hurt." Whirlwind Downtime: 10 turns On use(Self) Applies Disoriented debuff effect to player for 5 turns. (-35 -35 ) Mutes player for 3 turns. Enemies that are next to the player suffer 1 x every turn for 3 turns. "You spin like a record, baby. Right. Round, like a record, baby. Nearby enemies will take constant damage as you spin, but you have a harder time defending yourself, and it is impossible to focus enough to cast spells while you're spinning. You spin for 3 turns." Revenge You have a 15% chance when you are struck in melee to receive the following buff: Buff lasts for 1 turn You have a 100% chance on melee to inflict 2 x damage "Revenge is a dish best served cold. You don't really care how its served, so long as you're not the one eating it."
I really like Guts. Applied Combustinetics is harder to see how it plays out from just reading the notes, but it suffers a very real risk of being useless on floors with a lot of fire/blasting damage.
From my testing of it, it depends on how you use it. Mon Ami! will almost certainly get you killed if you're not invested in something that provides bonuses to trap detecting. I walked over a trap on the 7th floor and lost about half my health after having essentially blown myself up. Outside of traps, I don't think there's much blasting damage in the game, which is why there is also a building fire vulnerability. Blood to Boom and My Little Friend both actually work very well against Zoos, especially if you're a fan of crossbows or thrown weapons. Even when the pet from My Little Friend dies, it will still explode after the duration, and Blood to Boom's effect can be dropped in the center of a zoo from the door and apply the debuff all around, and it makes the otherwise mitigated damage punch through. Mon Ami! has a weird problem with the thrown buff, so I've got it assigned directly to the skill right now instead of to the buff. That said, it does some pretty incredible damage to zoos, provided you don't run out of throwns or get blown up by some fire ability or another. Blood to Boom by itself will wreak havoc on a single enemy. I popped it on an enemy from an evil chest, and lit it up with fire bolts and watched it melt. Worked fairly well into 11 and 12, though I haven't tried anything below that. When I got to the fire floor, though, I stayed away from everything but Exploding Bola, Blood to Boom, and My Little Friend. I'd like it if someone could try it, though, and see how it feels to them. I made it, so I'm a bit inclined to overlook its faults. :/
I hadn't put it up yet when I said that. I'll put it up in a few minutes. Actually, it's going to have to wait. I just realized I didn't send the last bit of code to myself from work.
"Guts" can be taken two ways. One is that a person is gutsy, aggressive and takes risks. The other is that a person carries enough weight to be mistaken for plumbers who's name rhymes with Warrio. My guess is that you're aiming for the first meaning with your mod. That said, I kinda feel like Guts doesn't really live up to its name. Moxie is a good first level to this skill, it fits the idea I get from the name of the skill, though I might cut the Burl and double the other two bonuses. Intimidate is both thematic and useful. Cleave doesn't really feel like anything other than a generic weapon ability pasted onto the tree. Why is it here? What does it have to do with being risky and caddish? Ground-Pound feels much like Cleave, a thematically different version of a weapon skill, except this one causes paralysis, which makes it measurably better than the Axenado. Devastating Blow is a nice headhunting move, but again it doesn't feel particularly gutsy. Whirlwind is almost what I expect: A move that applies a debuff, making life riskier, in exchange for a powerful attack. If the player is supposed to be whirling around, I think it should also paralyze them for the duration. Also, the Disoriented debuff should penalize Counter as well as Dodge and Block if we're aiming to be symmetrical. (If the idea is that people get countered because you're spinning and can hit them when they attack I guess I'm OK with that, but I'd rather the ability be symmetrical.) Revenge is OK, because at least it requires that I get hit in combat to trigger the buff, but it feels more like a Berserk Rage ability than a gutsy ability. Right now Guts seems kinda vanilla. The name makes me think of a risky gambling style skill tree, one where all the moves have fast cooldowns but a chance of hurting me or level stacking debuffs, like a warrior's Necronomiceconomics, but what I'm seeing feels much more like an improved weapons skill tree. That's not necessarily bad, it's just not exactly exciting.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm not entirely married to the concept of calling it Guts, so I'm not opposed to a name change. Essentially, what I wanted to accomplish was to make a warrior's combat skill. Without breaking his archetype, the warrior has very little other than weapon specific skills and his melee attacks. Guts was just the name of the Squire skillset used by Ramza in Final Fantasy Tactics, and I'm a fan of that game, so I went along with it. Obviously, the skills from Guts from FFT didn't migrate over(I always had a hard time with the game's most powerful spell belonging to a class that hardly had anything to do with magic,) but I wanted the game to have a generic Warrior combat tree. A thing you pointed out is that the moves included in guts are vanilla. All of the abilities are generic warrior abilities, this is true, but it's hard to be any more creative with the concept without breaking the archetype. Functions that extend his mobility break into Roguish territory, and functions that extend his reach border on the wizardly or roguish archetype. Warriors, to me, have always felt to be comparatively slow to the rogue, but significantly more dangerous when he's in reach of enemies. I have two options in regards to making modifications based on your recommendations. A) Change the name and make the abilities more interesting Or B) Change the abilities that don't fit the definition of guts(Bravado or Intestines. Intestines angle seems like it would be hilarious, and screams Earthbound references) and make the abilities more interesting. A couple of things I could do to spice up the abilities that you've indicated are lackluster: Cleave: Change Style A1) Cleave has always been about striking multiple enemies based on certain conditions(Most modern RPGs use cleave as a melee AOE, while older PnP used Cleave as a triggered effect when enemies were killed in melee.) I could fall back to the PnP style and cause an 'On enemy death' effect to trigger the cleave ability. Scale the damage upwards. Essentially, it would make abilities like Devastating Blow, Revenge, and Whirlwind a great deal more powerful, since each enemy slain could result in a chain reaction of cleaves. Great Cleave, a D&D feat, exploited this very mechanic quite effectively. Change Style B) Could really just rename the above effect to something more in line with the bravado definition of guts. It wouldn't be a hard sell, because the concept of being driven to a killing spree based on the death of one enemy doesn't seem that far out of line with the idea. Ground-Pound: Change Style A) Change Ground-Pound to be a conal using template 601 or semi-circle using 602 (Think a directional shockwave or a single direction stomp ability from a handful of ARPGs) Change Style B(Intestines)) Change Ground-Pound to be a conal/semicircle using template 601 or 602, and rename it something to the effect "Belchlord's Roar." Change the damage type to asphyxiation or toxic and keep the paralyze effect. Find a belch SFX and use one of the poison cloud effects. Playing on the double meaning seems like fun. Devastating Blow: Change Style A) Keeping the ability name and changing the skill name away from guts would make the skill fit better. Change Style B(Bravado/Intestines)): The skill would likely need an overhaul/removal. Bravado doesn't necessarily mean strong, and the ability as it stands is direct brutality and overwhelming power. Whirlwind: There's really not much to change here. The risky exchange of power for defense requires as much guts as anything else. I disagree with the idea of paralyzing, but only because it restricts movement. If there were a way to restrict the player from using any skills, spells or otherwise, without locking them to their tile, I would do that instead. I wasn't thinking of counter when I wrote it up, and I agree that it should be in there. Revenge: I like the ability as it stands, but I agree that it fits in with Berserker Rage. I could potentially change it into something along the lines of 'CHARGE!', which could force the player several spaces in a cardinal direction, but I hate the idea of giving warriors more mobility without taking away something significant. Anyway, thanks again for the feedback. It's really helped me get a better idea of where I should direct the skill. Thankfully, I'll have time to re-write portions.
OK, that's what I didn't get reading over the skill the first time. Starting the skill with Moxie reinforced my idea of Bravado, so if you're going to change names I'd change that as well. Cleave: I like the idea of a skill that gives a trigger on death proc, but be careful with it. A high- character can kill as many as five enemies in a single turn on rare occasions, two or three consistently when knee deep in a Zoo. You might want to put a stack cap on this buff to keep it from getting out of hand, depending on how long the buff lasts. Ground-Pound: I find the idea of belching skill hilarious. Also: If I take this skill, why can I not Yell?
Sorry for the delay. Diablo 3 caught my attention and I've had a family vacation coming up, so I've worked very little on the mods. This will get done, eventually.
Because I can't think of a way to keep Yell true to its nature in FFT without making it painfully imbalanced.
Key changes: Cleave has been renamed to Frenzy. It is now an on-kill effect that hits nearby enemies instead of its original effect. It also adds a small, short-lived stacking melee power buff. New flavor description: You can cut your enemies down with surprising effectiveness. Somehow, you can do that with staves, maces and your foot just as well as anything else. Any time an enemy is killed, you lash out at other enemies near by, and gain a short-lived bonus to melee damage each time this happens. Ground-pound has been renamed Belchlord's Roar, and will have a different AOE pattern. New flavor description: Drinking and eating things found in a dungeon gives most heroes indegestion. It gives you power. You unleash a mighty roar from the depths of your bowels, or the bowels of your depths, that is downright toxic. Devastating Blow has been renamed to Bravely Bold Strike. New flavor description: This technique is only for the bravest of the brave, and the boldest of the bold. Likewise, only the boldest of the brave and bravest of the bold can master it. Basically, there's very few people who can even comprehend the braveness and boldness required in this bravely bold strike. You strike an enemy with incredible bravely boldly force. Whirlwind has been renamed 'Tenacious Twirl.' Revenge has been renamed Payback
Does anyone else feel like revenge/Payback is a crappy capstone? The more I look at it, the more I want to change it. More changes: Intimidate's duration has been increased. (5 turns to 7) Frenzy's melee power bonus has been removed. Felt too Berserker Ragey. Frenzy is supposed to be a bit like rage, but the bonus to damage following death of an enemy doesn't feel right. Tenacious Twirl(Previously Whirlwind) will cause the player to be disoriented(5 turns) longer than the actual duration of Whirlwind(3 turns), adding a bit more for the player to consider when using it. Counter has been added as a debuff along with block and dodge. Belchlord's Roar(Previously Ground Pound) paralyzes enemies for 2 turns, and fears them for 4 Ideally, this should mean 2 turns of paraylze, and 2 turns of fear after the paralyze. The damage type has been changed from Crushing to Toxic. Considering making the damage scale off of health instead of melee strength. (0.15 x ) These changes should allow warriors to use it as a source of exotic damage, and as an opening move against large packs of dangerous enemies/zoos. Bravely Bold Strike now has a chance(25% at the moment) of causing the 'Exhaustion' debuff(-5 melee power, stacking up to 5 times, lasting 40 turns.). I did this because Bravely Bold Strike's scaling (1.5 x ), and the fact that it initiates an attack made for some outrageous melee damage late game, especially when combined with Revenge's proc. A single stack of the debuff causes players to lose about 12 damage off of a Bravely Bold Strike(Max being either all damage, or 73~ damage). Further balancing will probably be needed. Still thinking about revenge. Revenge has a similar problem that BBS has, but how it is delivered makes it a bit less of a problem, since its effect is only usable so often, and only for so long.
Consider the belch dealing putrification rather than toxic damage. Toxic is really, really weak in that it is resisted by just about everything, particularly on later floors.
More changes. Renaming Guts to Combat Training. After thinking about it for a while and struggling with the concept, Guts just feels too abstract. I'm having a really hard time with the icons and trying to get them to match up with the skill's name, and I think I might have an easier time with Combat Training. Frenzy's proc rate down from 100% to 60%. Should hopefully curb some of the chain killing sprees. Also, I really, really need to change the sound-effect for it. Renaming Tenacious Twirl back to Whirlwind. It was a silly idea. Need to fix the weird delay problem on the first hit. Probably going to use the swirling wind effect from Arctic Vortex to illustrate spinning. Belchlord's Roar will scale off of instead of , and will deal (0.15) instead of . I'm not overly concerned about the roar's damage, since its primarily meant to disable a group of enemies. Bravely Bold Strike's scaling reduced from 1.5 to 0.9. Exhaustion maximum stacks has been lowered to 2. Wanted to get some icons in place before uploading it. I'll probably throw together some of the game's icons into it and go from there. I might swap Belchlord's Roar with Payback, and increase Belchlord's damage. Payback just isn't exciting at all as a end-skill.
