swils

Thormanil pokes his head into the Training Hall once again and looks around for the Copper Fox. "Uh, hullo? Fox? I got a letter from the Shadeaux suggesting I stop by. They said you'd have somethin' for me."

"Can't recall the last time I turned tail, not my style. I dunno if I could see m'self as a knight, givin' up so much raw power just to hide behind a shield. But I've given up brawlin' to heal before, too, so it might be worth a shot." He hears Arthur's name announced for a job "Before ya go, Arthur.. somethin' to keep in mind: if you can't trust yourself, how can you expect others to? Takin' up a shield might do ya some good. Takes discipline to hold a line, could help ya keep yer magic in check." Shortly afterwards, Thormy follows him out the door but heads to the Training Hall. Time to see what the Shadeaux had in store for him.

"Trustworthy? Eh, depends on the 'who' more than the ether. I've met many a mage here who I'd trust with m'life, and faced many who'd be happy to take mine."

Joe, that was a great first quest (I feel like I'm echoing here... just a little bit, heh). I have to be honest, I saw Shadeaux rep and sort of whored Thormy out for it. I definitely wasn't as engaged in the quest as I could have been and I hope you'll forgive me for that. I really appreciated the early suggestion that I hold onto the Medal if I wanted to hit 30. The encounters were definitely a bit on the easy side and, even if we hadn't been cracked out on consumables, I think we could have gotten by. I'd have to go back and check the rolls that got cast aside due to lucky, to be sure though. The cart was never really in too much danger, but both Mac and the cart felt like dead weight (as, fitting the story, they should have been). It was just safer to keep them both out of the action and hope we didn't get too many AoE special damages. An interesting mechanic would have been to make it so that any Wolfgang members who were left untargeted would automatically put their free hit on the cart. They are, after all, looters. The quest kept up a quick pace and I liked it. There were definitely lulls, as Endgame touched on previously, but nothing unbearable. I think my only complaint would just be the two unexplained plot lines: the Wight, and the horses. I know you said that the horses meandered off after we turned around and also that I completely forgot about them during the visit to the town, but I'd have liked to see a little more about the equine troupe. Sir Ed certainly had a personality to him, it was a shame to see it just end there. Also, where'd the Wight come from (obviously, the locket)? Why did it activate when Sorrow picked it up? I must know these things!

He gives the blade a quick once over, shrugs, and hands it to Arthur. "It's a strange feelin', trying to siphon life outta something that ain't quite alive itself, but wants to be. You can feel its lust for a second life as it instead drains you. Nasty feeling. Haunting. Don't really wanna experience that again. Plus, I missed being able to lay the hurt on."

He picks up Ammit, the red core giving off a faint glow with Arthur's approach. "Would ya look't that. Seems the blade woke up! Picked it up off an old man who was part of a Wolfgang crew that jumped us. Didn't think there was anything special 'bout it til now."

In his usual fashion, Thormanil enters the Hall long after his companions have arrived. Walking by a group of heroes, he almost didn't notice the little cleric among them. Not wanting to bowl the man over, he instead tousles the old gnome's hair, giving Grimwald a grin as he passed. Approaching his usual roost, Thormanil was surprised to find an envelope sealed with the Shadeaux crest stamped in wax. He sits down to open it and reads the enclosed letter, murmuring a bit to himself as he goes: "...appreciate your loyalty... ... ... little present... ... Copper Fox ..." Still talking to himself, he pulls out Ammit and begins to polish it up, hoping to get a decent price for it at the market. "Wonder what sort of present the Shadeaux have for me. Already paid me.. wonder if Sorrow or Grim or any of 'em got a letter. And why've I gotta go see the Fox? I better not be runnin' another errand for 'em so soon.." He continues cleaning his weapons and trying to imagine what might await him at the Training Room.

Or we could clutter up inventories some more and have it dole out a gem shard. Say 1/4 or 1/3 of a gem.

Thormanil does nothing from the back row.

Thormanil uses a Mead on Grimwald from the back row.

"I'd argue that yer gonna waste yer Nostrums that way. If he ain't chantin', we've got a decent chance to lose all buffs. If he is chantin', we've got two rounds to buff up Grim (Salts, Mead, Nostrum) and have him heal the 35 damage outta the wight with relative ease. Even if he somehow manages to land a Doom curse on us, we've got 3 whole rounds afterwards to clear it and use the Neutralizer."

Readying his Thundering Totem, Thormanil attacks the Wight from the front row.

I've been planning to switch to Dragoon for quite a while now. The realization that I only needed 2 Shadeaux rep accelerated that goal. This change, for the most part, will affect my play only for the duration of this quest. I'm quite well aware of the reasons put forth as to why it happened. I'm not so ignorant as to post a mini-rant without reading the rest of the thread. Additionally, that is exactly the world I am living in and I recognize that. That is what I'm getting at. Rogues can generate gold from thin air. They have the potential to spread that gold across the party, advancing everyone's stats, but no one has ever really asked that of them (The very idea has been shot down handily in the past). Even in a team setting such as this, everyone just expects and allows rogues to be extremely self-serving. Everyone could be benefiting from their harvests, but that's not what people wanted. They just wanted to see less gold going to the rogues who they let keep all the gold anyway. As long as the rogue is still attacking an enemy, they are acting to help the party win the battle. If a healer refuses to heal a character who is helping to win the fight, that healer is no longer acting to help the party. They are acting incredibly selfishly. Denying the rogue loot, well, you can make a case for that. People might even agree with you. But to deny healing to a party member, that's costing your party a valuable source of damage and inhibiting your team's ability to complete the fight, even if they aren't targeting the suggested enemy. I don't know how many people you could rally behind that flag. Maybe a lot. Hard to say. But I certainly wouldn't. @Zeph, I know the change isn't going anywhere. I obviously disagree with the chosen adjustment and believe it was too heavy handed a change. We'll never know, now, if a lesser adjustment would have sufficed. But the change is the change and I at least respect the decision.

I believe that any elemental weapon is able to damage an undead. Additionally, Grimwald can heal the Wight to damage it. The biggest danger is having the cart be afflicted with Doom or damaged in an AoE, but yeah, Doom. We could always just smoke-bomb out and see where that gets us.

Natural Respite again, I should be full health

"Hey, uh, Sorrow? That thing's gettin' brighter. Maybe you should, y'know, take a few steps... any way but next to us?"

It's hardly being a prick. Everyone else (sweeping generalization, sorry) saw to it that your income took a hit because you were making more gold than they were (another generalization). I'm sure that if a Mystic Knight faced an enemy that offered extra chances at Enchant, they'd act similarly. Or a character with any sort of boost from landing the killing blow that attempts to 'steal' the last hit on any given foe. As long as you're not sabotaging your party's successful completion of the battle (eg standing around when theres no goldbearing enemies left) , no one can find real fault with your actions. You're just making the best use of the tools available to you. Remind me where I said that rogues were now useless? I'm just glad to have a new path opened to me now that didn't just have a rather selfish change applied. That's what it was, really (in my opinion), a selfish change. The fact that a rogue brought it up has no bearing on my opinion, either. The community at large rallied behind the idea of a reduction in effectiveness, with reasoning as weak as "Rogues have been making more gold than the rest of us for a long time" News flash, it's been this way since Day One. It was obvious that rogues would be the class with the most gold. At lower levels, of course, no one seemed to notice because we were all fairly on par. Most people did similar damage and most people could eat a hit almost as well as a Knight. But now, as levels climb, the differences in classes and their strengths become much more evident. Knight-types can tank better than just about anyone because their class options have been accentuated. And now that QMs have to increase the levels of their baddies in order to pose a threat, Rogues' gold gaining has (had) reached staggering new levels (as a result of the previous nerf to their incomes). But rather than being happy for them, rather than asking if perhaps the rogue could split some excess off in order to help cover, even in some little part, everyone else's consumables costs, it was just much easier to call for another nerf. I detest the sheer solo-ness of that. In the past, rogues have defended their earnings as their own, it's true, but folks just let it be, even though there was obviously some unspoken jealousy. Everyone has costs associated with bringing their best to a party, everyone. Rogues happen to have the unique opportunity to help their fellow Heroicans in that regard. If the knight has an extra SP, the mage an extra elixer, the barbarian/ranger an extra WP, etc.. Everyone in the party benefits. Even if it doesn't benefit you on this quest, it will benefit someone down the line. We all win. But most of the time (there are definitely plenty of exceptions to this), a rogue's gold was seen as theirs to spend and everyone just went along with it. We could have called for a community-wide change in attitude, where rogues are expected to share some gold just as much as a cleric is expected to heal an injured party member (*ahem*, see next quote), but no, it was easier to cry foul and take that away. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if rogues start hoarding their earnings even more than before. I really, really hope you're joking. I can't tell, but I really do.

So, that's that. Glad I'm switching to Dragoon soon. *shrug*

"Lookin' at what we can get from sellin' em, the weapons total out to 'bout 80 gold. Lycan's out the most from that fight, considerin' the stuff he used prior. Sorrow 'n I came out ahead, but Mizuki's got us both beat. I think the hat'd be a nice topper to the white mop Grim's got, so I've got no problems there."

Quote-fest: If we really have to change it, equal-to-PC-level is the best first step. Leave it at that. No adjustments for realism, no anything else. Just make it so that a level X rogue will steal X gold from his target on a steal. An X level Raider will steal X gold from each target on a Ravage, etc. I know that the QM-discretion, gold-from-gold-dropping-enemies, etc, all will definitely change/reduce rogue income, but that's such a huge change. Baby steps. See if a smaller adjustment works first. If not, then consider the big ones. If QMs should be dropping more gold and consumables, then they should do that. It shouldn't be out of special consideration for any given class.

"Grim, if y'attack the knight, he'll probably smack your face in with his counterstrike." Mac does nothing from the back row. Thormanil attacks Armored Knight, twice, from the front row.

I just don't think we're addressing that problem directly. We're applying another band-aid. It was already changed from damage-dealt converted to gold, to enemy level. Now there's a ton of factors that affect enemy level. Certainly, rogue-based characters that have had plenty of gold to spend on upgrading their weapons have caused an increase in enemy health values and defenses. Plus there's probably some threat added in the form of levels and specials so that they pose a threat to the 'squishy' rogues. But there's also the fact that as players level up, enemy levels must scale at an accelerated rate to continue to pose a threat across the board. There's also the tank classes. Without naming names, *cough*Docken*cough* some characters are just so strong that, if enemies weren't in some way scaled to them, the fights would be almost completely trivialized. What if we take an approach that doesn't have the potential to completely gimp a rogue's side-income if a quest has no or very few humanoids (or monsters that would make sense to have gold on their persons, if we go that route). Rogues steal an amount equal to each enemy target's level, up to but not exceeding their own level or even steal an amount from each targeted equal to their own level. Rogues' income would scale directly with their character progression but they wouldn't be able to make some obscene profit from a cluster of enemies that are high level out of necessity. I'd agree, it still doesn't make sense to steal gold from a rat or a beggar, but there's plenty of stuff that doesn't make sense, as has been mentioned, so why start here?

I could have sworn it was party sign ups. My mistake, heh.

Not to say that the Fields are explicitly for gaining gold, but why can't that be a main attraction for rogues? In a properly planned party, everyone can leave with a bundle of levels AND gold. And since the Fields only accepts full-party appilcations, I see no reason why such a strategy should be discouraged. E: And that's not to speak towards regular quests. With some exceptions, most quest parties are at the discretion of the QM (I have yet to see any hero get bullied off of a sign-up list in the Hall in order to influence a quest party). Again, not all rogues will share their gold/consumables with their parties. But put the responsibility on their shoulders! They almost always have the gold available to enter a quest with a few weapon upgrades AND enough consumables for the party to get out of any sticky situation. They, therefore, should have such consumables. If they don't, knock THEM, not the class. The 'bad weeds' will find themselves lacking friends, given time, and will either get with the program or find themselves out of a job. Scorpiox, I'm not sure if I'm the one who you're talking about or not. I hope I'm not. As long as I've had a foreseeable surplus (which, admittedly, is still significantly larger than that of any of my partymates'), I've shared. If it is me, please, use names.

I, too, am on Team Hands-Off. Obviously I'm biased, but I plan to switch classes soon. Of course I can always hop back for some moneymaking, but then, where will I go? Gathering a Fields team to go on a money/exp run? Not likely, anymore. Even if I planned with my group to split earnings equally, it wouldn't matter if there's no gold to be had.