Good evening everyone,
So an idea came to me earlier today, an idea that I believe may solve my balance issues I've been noticing over the past few test plays.
This idea is simple in concept, it's just implementing it that would be laborious.
What I'm talking about is generally changing stats but also smoothing things out to work in a nicer way.
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So at the moment the default Df is 4, this though the +2-1 rule can be raised to 6.
As I have made painfully obvious, I don't like this, I don't like it one bit.
What I am proposing is that baseline Df is dropped to 3, so it can still be added to, but in doing so will only reach 5 as a max.
Next up, I want to remove Cb from weapons, and make that a baseline stat, also of 3.
You can see where I'm going with this right?
You want a high Df, then you must sacrifice Cb, you want a high Cb, then you can't add to your Df.
Of course you can be Jack of All and add +1 to both, but what about your Ca or your Wd? Yes Ca is also getting dropped to 3, but Wds are staying at 6 for now.
But that's not all!
With a Ca of only 3 you're unlikely to get many spells off.
What if Casting was an opposed duel much like Combat?
The way I see it, for a caster, casting a fire spell is no different to firing a pistol, but for some reason Malifaux requires that you play it differently.
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So what do you think?
Am I going a bridge too far?
Should I just reduce baseline Df by 1 and leave it at that?
Is there an idea that I haven't even thought of?
Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
The thing is, implementing any of this would require a major overhaul and finding the sweet spot would require a lot of work
ReplyDeleteI very much like the idea of removing cb from weapons and making it a player stat. If a new adventurer was to find Lilith's greatsword or similar then they wouldn't immediately get Lilith's competence with it but they'd still do a fair damage spread.
ReplyDeleteAs for reducing all of the starts stats to 3, it depends on a lot of things:
1. What are the most basic level monster that the adventurers are going to be fighting and how many of them at a time.
An example would be a Terror Tot who has df 6, cb 5 and has the option to one-shot an adventurer if they hit severe with flay. This is a 3ss minion.
If one of your adventurers loaded 1 point into cb and 1 into df then they'd be cb 4 and df 4. Both of these stats are lower than the terror tot
2. Depending upon how common stat raising items are, your adventurers may find themselves struggling to kill 1 or 2 terror tots for a fair few encounters. Couple this with your dislike of the xp system then I fear that players may struggle to defeat anything with a much greater power level.
3. How long do you imagine a campaign of the game would last and at what "level" would the adventurers be at the end. Also, how would they progress (with regards stat/item development) to get there.
All in all, I'm still really sold on the game. Hope I've given you some thoughts to consider
Thanks Jon.
DeleteLike I said in my comments, finding a sweet spot will be very difficult.
I think for now I'll leave these changes out, if only because they would require another overhaul of the cards, and that's not very fun.
As a lot of people have seen, I've been all over the place with this recently, even threatening giving the whole thing up, and unfortunately taking it out on those who've been helping me the most, which I've almost been taking for granted.
I think however the reason for this is because I've spent so long now focusing on the stats, cards and basic rules.
- I know they are important, but I've forgotten what it means to be having fun with this.
After all, this isn't a professional game, I'm not going to go on and sell it, so who cares if the players are a little OP with their Df?
What I need to do is get some creative stories written for my manual of monsters, but also get going with my expansions.
- on Thursday night when I made my first Raid card, that was really fun, and I had forgotten about what that was like.
Anyway, rambling now.
I'll blog all of this later.