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mlooney

NP Saturday, Mar 28, 2020

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1 hour ago, mlooney said:

Look!  Something like plot progression.  Also looks like the bad guy isn't affected by "Susan's" slow spell. 

Not only that, it seems that he noticed it's being cast.

Now, how well is Susan capable of fighting without the slow spell?
... assuming she will catch him.

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1 hour ago, ChronosCat said:

Yay for clock-filled background in panel one! (And I really mean it this time; that's really cool.)

Yeah I thought that was a cool back ground for a time stop spell.  Might steal it, in concept any way, for table top gaming reasons.

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Ok, still don't know who this character is and probably won't until they're caught or they choose to reveal themself later, but judging from them not being affected by the slow time spell, they're either immune to such effects, which is usually reserved for special encounters and bosses, or they're also a max level magic user which might give them resistances?

The question of if they're the hero of magic is more uncertain now though as the look they give in the third panel doesn't really look heroic-like, there could still be the possibility that they are one of the other heroes, but like Rhoda, they don't know it yet and so they're just living their life as they would until something happens that awakens their heroic nature.

9 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Not only that, it seems that he noticed it's being cast.

Now, how well is Susan capable of fighting without the slow spell?
... assuming she will catch him.

She seemed pretty capable using fire spells earlier, though if this character is also a max level magic user, they might still be a challenge.

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8 minutes ago, Scotty said:
10 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Now, how well is Susan capable of fighting without the slow spell?
... assuming she will catch him.

She seemed pretty capable using fire spells earlier, though if this character is also a max level magic user, they might still be a challenge.

Isn't she maxed out at every thing?

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Just now, mlooney said:

Isn't she maxed out at every thing?

Yeah, but she did so through potions and the only gear we've seen her buy so far has been clothes.

Maybe this will be the time she shows off the new gun to show that she wasn't just buying clothes.

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I think I hit the quote button instead of the edit button...

Also I dunno if the site is acting up or if tampermonkey is doing something funny to the forum interface restoration script.

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1 minute ago, Scotty said:

Yeah, but she did so through potions and the only gear we've seen her buy so far has been clothes.

Maybe this will be the time she shows off the new gun to show that she wasn't just buying clothes.

Does Fable have guns?  If so, why didn't the bad guys in the evil temple use them?  Or is this a question not to ask and to just roll with it?

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If your best spells don't work on the bad guys, this is either a cut-scene or the baddies really are too much for you to handle

As for the panel one background, we really need a way to get time moving in more than one speed in one direction

Of course, if the schedule said I started my shift at Upper West Eleven Thirty Blue PM Vanilla there is a slight chance I might show up at Strawberry and be fired before South Mustard

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16 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Of course, if the schedule said I started my shift at Upper West Eleven Thirty Blue PM Vanilla there is a slight chance I might show up at Strawberry and be fired before South Mustard

Are you having a disassociated issue?  Because I'm not sure what you are saying here.  How could you be fired at South Mustard when that is before Vanilla?

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21 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

If your best spells don't work on the bad guys, this is either a cut-scene or the baddies really are too much for you to handle

Of course, there are many games where a boss fight (or even many enemies) is too much for just 1 character, and thus you'd need to put together a party to take on, the case of Parable, Susan is supposed to be gathering other heroes so it can be safely assumed that the big bad would be too much for just Susan no matter how badass she is.

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1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

If your best spells don't work on the bad guys, this is either a cut-scene or the baddies really are too much for you to handle

As for the panel one background, we really need a way to get time moving in more than one speed in one direction

Of course, if the schedule said I started my shift at Upper West Eleven Thirty Blue PM Vanilla there is a slight chance I might show up at Strawberry and be fired before South Mustard

... with the wrench, in the parlor.

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1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

South Mustard is before Vanilla on the Upper East quadrant

My schedule specified Upper West

Ah, my mistake.

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10 hours ago, Scotty said:

Of course, there are many games where a boss fight (or even many enemies) is too much for just 1 character, and thus you'd need to put together a party to take on, the case of Parable, Susan is supposed to be gathering other heroes so it can be safely assumed that the big bad would be too much for just Susan no matter how badass she is.

Does Fable have a level cap (specifically a low or reasonable one) or enemies that grow in strength as you do? I've played games before where all you need to do to fight a boss with less party members than intended is a ton of grinding for experience.

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36 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

Does Fable have a level cap (specifically a low or reasonable one) or enemies that grow in strength as you do? I've played games before where all you need to do to fight a boss with less party members than intended is a ton of grinding for experience.

That I don't know as I haven't played any of the Fable games.  But yeah there are games like Final Fantasy 8 and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion where enemies scale with your level, but with those two examples, you can also do things to make your character(s) very powerful while keeping their levels low. Like FF8 has a junction system that lets you slot spells into stats to boost them, and there's summons, called Guardian Forces that you can assign to characters that as you level them, they learn abilities. One such Guardian Force, Quezacotl, you can get fairly early in game and has an ability called "Card" that turns enemies into cards that either be used in the Triple Triad minigame or they can be converted into materials by other GF abilities that can then be used to upgrade weapons or further refined into spells.

The thing about "Card" though is you can use it multiple times in battle so you can turn all enemies (except bosses) into cards and doing so doesn't earn character experience so your characters won't level, but you do get Ability Points which go towards leveling GFs and unlocking their abilities so you can effectively grind out all your GF abilities while keeping your levels low and also turn the cards you get into powerful spells that can be junctioned into your stats, so you could potentially have 9999 hp and do max attack and spell damage at level 20, and one shot most enemies.

 

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28 minutes ago, Scotty said:

But yeah there are games like Final Fantasy 8 and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion where enemies scale with your level,

Just a personal gripe, I don't like games where this happens.  I really don't like it in "Sandbox" games.  I'm talking mainly about TTRPG here, just for what it's worth.  Not saying you are having badwrongfun, but just a personal foible.

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3 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Just a personal gripe, I don't like games where this happens.  I really don't like it in "Sandbox" games.  I'm talking mainly about TTRPG here, just for what it's worth.  Not saying you are having badwrongfun, but just a personal foible.

I know, and it was more fiddly in Oblivion because it was very easy to fall behind, at least in FF8 if you happened to level to 50 or so, sure the battles may be tougher, but you can still go and stack your junctions to max stats and you'd also be able to slot abilities that either reduced, nullified or absorbed damage.

With Oblivion, since you leveled as your primary skills leveled, if you only used those primary skills then chances are you'd only be able to increase stats by the minimum amount per level, which sadly meant that enemies would outclass you pretty quick (and as I had found out my first playthrough, left me with no way of doing any significant damage to the final boss). In order to make an effective character, it was ideal to have the stats you were most likely to use often as your secondary skills, and least likely to use skills as your primary, and then you grind out your secondary skills for a bit. Since skills were tied to attributes, like heavy armor and 2-handed weapons to Constitution and Strength, magic schools to Intellect and Wisdom, etc, you'd want to put up to 5 levels towards those skills so that when you do level up you can put the max amount of points into the attributes of your choosing (I can't remember if it's 2 attributes or 3 per level). The grinding though was very tedious and armor and shield skills amounted to just letting enemies beat on you for a while.

Skyrim at least got rid of the attribute scaling system, but the skill leveling is still tedious as Grace shows here.

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2 hours ago, Scotty said:

Skyrim at least got rid of the attribute scaling system, but the skill leveling is still tedious as Grace shows here.

While D&D experience point system has it's flaws,  you really don't get into skill grinding.  It's assumed that you get better with skills as you increase in over all levels.  This differs from Traveller, in that you almost never increase your skills in play, as it doesn't have a leveling system at all.  You can raise your skill level by spending months in training.  It's widely assumed that that is what most people do while in Jump space, given that there isn't much else to do.

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23 hours ago, mlooney said:
On 3/28/2020 at 5:07 PM, Scotty said:

Then why don't the bad guys have guns?  

I like Slayers answer to that: Why don't we use guns and explosives? Because spells are just so more powerful and convenient it's not worth it. Who would be carrying dynamite when she can cast fireball while naked?

(Of course, the explanation doesn't really scale to advanced guns and guided rockets.)

7 hours ago, Scotty said:
8 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Does Fable have a level cap (specifically a low or reasonable one) or enemies that grow in strength as you do? I've played games before where all you need to do to fight a boss with less party members than intended is a ton of grinding for experience.

That I don't know as I haven't played any of the Fable games.  But yeah there are games like Final Fantasy 8 and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion where enemies scale with your level, but with those two examples, you can also do things to make your character(s) very powerful while keeping their levels low. Like FF8 has a junction system that lets you slot spells into stats to boost them, and there's summons, called Guardian Forces that you can assign to characters that as you level them, they learn abilities. One such Guardian Force, Quezacotl, you can get fairly early in game and has an ability called "Card" that turns enemies into cards that either be used in the Triple Triad minigame or they can be converted into materials by other GF abilities that can then be used to upgrade weapons or further refined into spells.

The thing about "Card" though is you can use it multiple times in battle so you can turn all enemies (except bosses) into cards and doing so doesn't earn character experience so your characters won't level, but you do get Ability Points which go towards leveling GFs and unlocking their abilities so you can effectively grind out all your GF abilities while keeping your levels low and also turn the cards you get into powerful spells that can be junctioned into your stats, so you could potentially have 9999 hp and do max attack and spell damage at level 20, and one shot most enemies.

7 hours ago, Scotty said:
7 hours ago, mlooney said:

Just a personal gripe, I don't like games where this happens.  I really don't like it in "Sandbox" games.  I'm talking mainly about TTRPG here, just for what it's worth.  Not saying you are having badwrongfun, but just a personal foible.

I know, and it was more fiddly in Oblivion because it was very easy to fall behind, at least in FF8 if you happened to level to 50 or so, sure the battles may be tougher, but you can still go and stack your junctions to max stats and you'd also be able to slot abilities that either reduced, nullified or absorbed damage.

With Oblivion, since you leveled as your primary skills leveled, if you only used those primary skills then chances are you'd only be able to increase stats by the minimum amount per level, which sadly meant that enemies would outclass you pretty quick (and as I had found out my first playthrough, left me with no way of doing any significant damage to the final boss). In order to make an effective character, it was ideal to have the stats you were most likely to use often as your secondary skills, and least likely to use skills as your primary, and then you grind out your secondary skills for a bit. Since skills were tied to attributes, like heavy armor and 2-handed weapons to Constitution and Strength, magic schools to Intellect and Wisdom, etc, you'd want to put up to 5 levels towards those skills so that when you do level up you can put the max amount of points into the attributes of your choosing (I can't remember if it's 2 attributes or 3 per level). The grinding though was very tedious and armor and shield skills amounted to just letting enemies beat on you for a while.

Personally I would say that the biggest problems with these scaling system is that you need to go out of way - play differently than natural - just to level up correctly and not fall behind.

Leveling should make sense - and the game mechanics should be consistent with how the story says it works.

If the enemies don't scale, sure you can overgrid and one-shot everything, but if you overgrid you get what you wanted - that is, less fun gameplay. If they do scale, it means someone must've though about what exactly they scale with, and that means the game is much harder to balance ... and let's face it, balancing usually means removing more interesting abilities because those tend to be harder to balance.

Of course, you can get similar result if you make impossible to grid. If there is limited number of opportunities to get better, it means that it either needs to be very carefully balanced - or that people will be forced to read walkthrough to find out how are they expected to level to make the game work.

 

 

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6 hours ago, mlooney said:

While D&D experience point system has it's flaws,  you really don't get into skill grinding.  It's assumed that you get better with skills as you increase in over all levels.  This differs from Traveller, in that you almost never increase your skills in play, as it doesn't have a leveling system at all.  You can raise your skill level by spending months in training.  It's widely assumed that that is what most people do while in Jump space, given that there isn't much else to do.

Yes, but original Traveller has that (almost?) unique feature where you can die while rolling up your character.

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