Andor's Trail

Zukero wrote:Taunt isn't applied as an actor condition, but more like a potion. It gives an immediate loss of AP, as if trying to flee or change equipment, to the taunted mob. Next round, the mob gets full AP back. It's more a temporary disruption than a permanent injury to its ego

I didn't realize it was only for the current round. I don't know if that seems worth it to me either, at least one addtional round perhaps.

And good follow up question jackson, Is this also how Fracture, Concussion, and Internal Bleeding work, or do those actually induce the actor conditions (the descriptions are equally vague)?
I'd like to know that as well and agree the language should be more clear.

Those three do apply the eponymous actor condition, with magnitude 1, for 5 rounds.
In the English description of fracture and internal bleeding, it clearly states that it applies the condition to the target. For concussion though, it is vague indeed.

The description of Concussion does also say it's applied to the target. However, none of the descriptions say that the conditions are applied at magnitude 1, which absent any information is what I would guess, or that they are applied for 5 rounds, which is not what I would guess. The fact that they last for 5 rounds makes those skills suddenly a LOT more interesting!

Compare Internal Bleeding and Taunt:
Internal Bleeding: 50% chance, lowers AC by 50%, Damage by 3, and raises attack cost by 1. This is for 5 rounds, and it can stack.
Taunt: 75% chance, lowers action points by 2. This is for the remainder of the current round only, if any (which makes high attack cost monsters immune to it).

I would argue that the prerequisite skill requirements for Internal Bleeding are more severe, in that you have to invest heavily in criticals (which is not always useful), but even then these skills seem seriously unbalanced. I think all monsters have a total AP that is an exact multiple of their attack cost, so Internal Bleeding raising the attack cost by 1 will cost them 1 attack per round. That is true even if they only have 1 attack, and it's for 5 rounds, and it's in addition to the loss of AC and damage. Taunt costs the monster 1 attack per round only for the remainder of the current round, which means nothing for a high attack cost monster.

As for Fracture and Concussion, they have even more prerequisites than Internal Bleeding, and are not nearly as good.
Fracture: 50% chance, lowers BC by 50% and DR by 2.
Concussion: 15% chance, but only if AC-BC is more than 50%, lowers AC by 30%.

You can't even get Fracture without having Internal Bleeding first, and Concussion is minimally useful but requires a total of 10 levels in other skills to get it. Again, to me these do not seem balanced.

I think better skill descriptions are needed, but I also think these skills need rebalancing.

As far as I understand Concussion can have multiple stacks where Internal Bleeding and Fracture do not (I think, my char with internal bleeding tends to kill the none chrit immune enemies to fast to really tell). Also, There are no monsters that re immune to Concussion as far as I can tell. So I feel the skills are fairly balanced when you consider most of the cases when the skills come into use.

All do stack. Internal bleeding, concussion and fracture.

IB and Fracture are triggered on 50% of crits only, while Conc works against poorly defending enemies 15% of landed hits.

Fracture is just a tasty bonus over IB, as both only benefit crit build. Concussion could use a boost, I agree. Taunt is great, but only against resistant enemies, with a fast build, like one based on QSD, so it could get a boost too.

I missed the fact that IB and Fracture only work on critical hits. That does drop their power rather a lot, I agree. Of the 10 skill levels required for Concussion 2 of them are Combat Speed, which almost everyone gets anyway, so I guess in practice it's more like 8 skill levels.

Anyway, regardless of their relative merits, I think the descriptions need to include the magnitude and duration of the effects

Hehe. Games do not need to always be fully self-descripting. Actually, not giving the players all the rules is a key part of the definition of what a video game is
Giving some descriptive hint could help though... The forums handle the rest for number junkies such as you and me (especially you )

Actually, I'm beginning to think that all skill description could be rewritten to describe the intent of the skill rather than its numbered effects... Opinions ?

Zukero wrote:(especially you )

Me? . OK, guilty as charged

Zukero wrote:Actually, I'm beginning to think that all skill description could be rewritten to describe the intent of the skill rather than its numbered effects... Opinions ?

I think if you remove all the numbers it will be very difficult for people to make decisions. If More Criticals just says "Increases any existing critical skill given by equipment for each skill level" and Weapon Accuracy just says "Increases attack chance for each skill level" it will frustrate not just the number junkies, but a significant portion of the "normal" players. There needs to be some indication of the magnitude of the benefit, and if not a number then what?

Every player is able to save a game before they level up, spend a skill point and check out the the consequences - as long as the stats shows the changes. I say that is "salt in the soup".
For the high level skills this is afair not the fact, so here we need either a clear description or enhanced Char stats description. Those skills costs tons of EXP and playtime (especially if the next level demands more than a half million EXP) that imho we should avoid wrong dessicions through missleading descriptions.

I think the descriptions have to be a compromise: Show values and some details, but not too lengthy. It is a game and no contract with endless small printed text...
And if info is still missing, just go to this forum, and no questions will be left.