val Holryn wrote:
Hat wrote:
1. Balance of Archetype vs. cross-archetype development - There should be strong cases to pick each archetype for the core of what it does. Right now it's so easy to take full spell casting as a non-casting archetype for example that there's less of a reason especially to take the Divine archetype.
I've got a long post on this topic I'm writing now...stand by.
Cool. Looking forward to it.
val Holryn wrote:
Hat wrote:
2. Investment required for "full" casting. Bar's too low across the board for picking up after archetype selection.
I somewhat agree. I think Initiate of the Gods and Shaman Initiate (and Spontaneously Awakened too) should grant access to Rudimentary Spells/Prayers. I think the paths are fine. Templar would be plenty cool with just access to divine talents. At the same time part of the problem I think is the arcane & divine ... Which I'd fix by meeting the need for a "basic attack" version of a spell that can be cast w/o triggering strain for members of the A/D archetypes.
[/quote]
I want to be VERY careful with making casters even more potent with a single skill. What's the trade off?
val Holryn wrote:
Hat wrote:
3. Advanced spells should scale in power / CTN cost compared to other spells of the same Tier. Great idea to be able to combine spells in new ways, could use some tweaking in execution.
I generally agree. There should also be Teir benchmarks as well for what kinds of spells can do/unleash by tier (single target vs multi target vs area effect. Melee vs. cones/arcs vs. ranged. Also worth looking at control effects (push, forced movement, penalties, domination etc)
[/quote]
I'm ok with that thought. If the spells increase in power or flexibility there should be consideration to how that impacts over all balance of caster vs. non-caster.
val Holryn wrote:
Hat wrote:
4. Weapon or action speed vs. effect needs to be tweaked. Nice that there's a standard staging up, but doing an average of +1 point of damage for a speed cost of 1 is a poor trade off.
This I disagree with. Not because I don't agree with the basic premise that it's a poor trade, but because I don't see any solutions that are better than the problem.
I've played around with some math using a fixed bonus added to the base die as part of the scaling. So rather than d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, it might be something like, d4, d6, d8+1, d10+2, d12+2. Perhaps adding a fixed bonus isn't as "elegant", but it could provide an interesting trade off. Alternatively, you do make it a more standard progression of d4, d6+1, d8+2, d10+3, d12+4. This pulls the average damage up as the die type increases, but there's a trade off in tactical flexibility as it takes a lot longer before you go again as you move up the speed chart.
With a sweep of his hat,
Paul