Flipz

OOC: Go ahead and autoplay one round; Skrall can't be knocked out even if someone rolls the Special that deals 5 damage to the whole party, and Luke can heal him this turn anyway. Depending on the results of the Special roll, we can go from there. Arthur nods in satisfaction; Knyghton's strategy had worked well. He sees Isabella slumped on the ground next to the tree. Shame. Hopefully they can patch her up before the next step of the plan. He uses his cultist staff once more to cast an Ice spell at the Chaos Beast of Dastan from the Back Row. "I think I'm gettin' tha hang o' this weapon!" Count Knyghton reloads and repeats his attack.

"As useful as it would be, I don't believe I can." Yet. "I think I may have a plan once we've beaten this thing, though!"

I'd say add the banner in again, perhaps with a shorter pole if you don't like how the larger one turned out. I also liked the head armor from the very first version, with the arm in brown and with a normal tooth piece (like the back of the newest saddle) instead of the large one, I think it would look really nice with the current setup.

Please note that I've calmed down a lot since I wrote this; this was written right after Kadabra cast the game-losing ending vote. To sum up: I congratulated the Scum on their win, and then went all medieval on the megablocks of the Town, roasting them alive for lack of participation. To continue: This is what irritates me in Mafia games SO MUCH as a spectator; when no one bothers to even talk aloud. Yes, I know PMs were part of the game, but if you're PMing more than posting, you're doing it wrong; IMO, a good Mafia game will be the first topic in the forum at LEAST 50% of the time, and throughout the WHOLE game, not just Day 1 and 2. The game is more FUN the faster it goes, for both players AND their audience. To be honest, the "no mafia during dinner" bit no longer applies to EB Mafia games, but it really needs to. I also found it shocking that the advice of the dead was almost NEVER analyzed or touched on. When someone flips Town after a lynch or a nightkill, you ALWAYS take a look at their suspects, no matter HOW scummy they seemed; this is ESPECIALLY true as time goes on and the players who die have a better picture of the situation. A simple analysis of the dead's suspect lists showed that tossing even a casual accusation towards Tammo is a nearly instant ticket to death--the remaining players SHOULD have noticed this easily. Yes, things are clearer from the afterlife, but there was almost no such analysis in the Day thread, and it really made the surviving Townies appear apathetic or even just too lazy to read the threads carefully.

This one's probably already been done, but... And here's a slightly harder one (this one may be a little hard to get, so don't feel bad if you're stumped!):

As I said in the Dead Writeboard, allowing the Scum to have a second killer while the Town had none was seriously unbalanced. In fact, let me call this here: SHENANIGANS. Conversions are swingy enough without having TWO for the Scum, ESPECIALLY with one being a killing role. That said, I really think that either a Town Vigilante or a Town Mason would have balanced it without TOO much fuss. (Although I DO want to know what the deal with the Shrink was; was that supposed to be an Investigator/Shrink combo, or what? It was very confusing, if I had known initially that Vol was an actual investigator, I would have had him clear Doc or Tammo on Night 1; Tammo wouldn't have been a good clear, since he was converted, but clearing Doc would have prevented a lot of confusion later on.) You missed the mark here, guys, but not by TOO much; I'd definitely play with you two again. I have more to say saved up in my forum notes; let me go grab them now.

What an...interesting choice of words. Yeah, but Arthur's kind of an aas anyways, so it all evens out. I have figured out what I've done wrong with him, but unfortunately I'm not sure I can fix him; it turns out, I made SEVERAL bad choices with him, and I don't now how to undo those. As to the debts, do remember that a lot of those deals are from OOC trades (that reminds me, I need to add his latest debt in ), so IC it wouldn't shouldn't affect him (even though it probably does ). And speaking of gold...throw some Money Spiders and Pinata Enemies at us!

OK, I have a LOT of things to say about this, but I think I'll cool off for a bit before posting my scathing roasting of everyone else. A lot of it can be found on the dead writeboard as well, so I'll see if Masked and K-Nut will allow that to be posted before copying my big long rant out of my notes.

Well, that answers my question from before about why all these new scrolls are so expensive and rare. The QMs are delibarately trolling me.

Never mind, according to Quest 19 they can.

There you go. EDIT: A thought just occurred to me. Since (as far as I recall) no Ether-using character has had access to Zoot's Cookies, can they increase maximum Ether as well, so long as the character has access to it already? Never mind.

Whoops, meant Ji Pei. Although, I DO need Arthur to gain rep with the Zeigfrieds, preferably at some point before he hits Expert Class level, even though he won't be taking the Necromancer class. Also, someone asked this about the Dragoon earlier but I don't believe it was ever answered: if a Hero takes Dragoon at Level 30, finishes a Quest as a Dragoon, switches to a different Expert Class, and later comes back to Dragoon (i.e. after Level 40), will the dragon still obey them, or will the disobedience chance still be there?

Satisfied that he can take a hit from the beast, he prepares to release another Ice spell at his foe; however, Knyghton has other ideas. "Blind it!" he calls as he shoots the Chaos Beast with his crossbow from the Back Row. "Make yerself useful!" Arthur considers it for a moment. "All right. I'll do it this time, but I'm not wasting my time again if it fails." Arthur prepares his Scroll of Blinding and attempts to Blind the Chaos Beast of Dastan from the Back Row.

Speaking of which, we really, REALLY do need more Zeigfried and Shadeaux-based Quests (not directed specifically at you, this goes out to all QMs and prospective QMs ).

OOC: Sorry! Count Knyghton again does nothing.

Arthur's complete battle report. Note that a failed Scroll is still equivalent to a missed attack; he wouldn't have hit the target, either way.

Quest 31: *Check. *Check. *Check. *Check. *(Optional) Check. How the hell am I failing so badly?!

Arthur sighs. The direct approach did not yet appear to be working for him. No matter; he had patience. He decides to heal himself before continuing. "Mind letting me go first, Skrall?"

On paper, the class is great; the problems come in practice. Part of this, as Pie pointed out, is players' fault for not, as Cave Johnson puts it, "throwing science at the wall to see what sticks." I still think that more Mage-specific scenarios need to come into play, though; Knights' Diplomacy is used pretty much all the time, and though Rangers don't seem to use it much, the opportunities for Animal Talk are there. Mages...not so much. Some puzzles that specifically require clever elemental spellcasting would be nice; true, this would be creating a specific challenge for a specific member of the party, but my design philosophy is to do that anyway--specifically, create one encounter (combat or non-combat) designed to tailor to each particular Hero's strengths, and one designed to exploit each Hero's weaknesses. In this way, each party member gets a chance to shine, and each faces a difficult and trying challenge. Really, though, I think I'm overanalyzing things; I'll try Pie's suggestion and see how it turns out.

OOC: OK, going back to the Disney's California Adventure Cars Land preview again tomorrow, so once again Zepher has control over Arthur--have fun with him! WBD gains control over Knyghton again as well.

...Challenge Accepted.

Yeah, but I can count the number of times Spellcasting has been used outside of battle on just my fingers. Compared to the total number of non-Mage-originated elemental attacks... Like I said, a Ranger with just 3 bows 2 bows, now that I think about it, can hit anything in the game. Elemental double-damage is somewhat of a misnomer because many QMs seem to take deliberate steps to put Heroes into difficult elemental situations, and of course Mages can just be Sealed outright; nonmagical classes can be Blinded, but as there are far more non-Mages than Mages in the average party, it's more likely that the one or two Mages will be Sealed than the entire rest of the party will be Blinded. Amethyst is the only gem that gets largely overlooked in balancing, but between Zepher (who's always done it) and others who have learned from his example, that advantage is quickly being limited. It just seems like if Party Leaders had to pick their own teams, choosing a Mage would be a poor choice, tactically, because they're so wimpy compared to the other classes that can do everything a Mage can do AND excel in their own specialty. I'd just like to see more cases in which Mages' Spellcasting is actually useful for something. The same holds true for tools as well, by the way--they're severely undersued as well. I'd like to see them as a part of the Quest activities, rather than as a means to bypass the Quest activities.

Actually, you can. It's called "Scroll of Confusion," and as long as there's at least one other Hero left to fight, it works pretty well. Even solo, a Free Hit has a 50/50 chance of being redirected (at least as far as I know). Nostrum is prohibitively expensive until you hit an Advanced class, though, and even then, unless you're a Rogue, even then it's a huge expense. I'm not against them being somewhat rare, but the last three Scrolls introduced were just ONE of a kind, and the ones before that (Weakening/Frailty) were made in decent numbers, but exactly ONE of them will ever make it to the market (unless Durkon gets desperate for cash or something). Personally, I think it'd be better if, instead of having all of these effect-granting weapons, Heroes had to rely on the party Mage or Cleric to cast those support effects. In traditional tabletop RPGs, you have a party of specialists, where the Knight defends the party from damage, the Rogue disables the traps, etc. etc. Mages and Clerics weren't intended as front-line fighters, but instead were shielded by the rest of the party while they wreaked havok upon the enemy with spells. Sure, once a wizard got his hands on a Fireball spell that changed, but overall magic-users were valuable because they could do things others could not. Granted, in Heroica, everyone is a bit more of a jack-of-all trades (see pre-Shaman Haldor, who attacked more often than he healed, and continues that patern as the part-Barbarian Shaman), but even so most classes have a very distinct advantage the others do not; Rogues have near-infinite Gold and can thus super-power themselves with consumables, Knights have Shield Power, Clerics of course can Heal, Barbarians are self-healing (Natural Respite) machines of death, and due to Aim Rangers are the single most consistent damage-dealing class of the Basic 6. Mages can...shoot spells? Well, other classes can imbue gems, and with just a little patience, one can get a fairly decent array of elementally-attuned weapons, within a Quest or two (also note that a Ranger with three elemental bows can hit everything in the game, and can do it with more reliability than a Mage). OK, but at least as a Job Trait, Mages can...shoot spells? How many times has Spellcasting been used outside of battle, INCLUDING Quest 17? Yeah, but Mages can...use Scrolls! Oh, but Clerics can do that, too, AND they can Heal; sure, Mages can use Healing Staves, but that's not as reliable as Clerics who can Heal Less on a Miss. Overall, Mages are...kinda useless; everything they can do, other classes can do, and usually with more skill than they can. The Advanced Classes demonstrate this perfectly; All of them except Sage are essentially "non-Mage class + token Ether spellcasting," and while Sage is more Mage-like than Cleric-like, it's also somewhat underwhelming compared to the others. Adding other classes to a Mage makes the Mage cooler, but adding Mage to other classes ends up somewhat tame compared to the other available options; they're the "nerds" of the six classes. Mages are definitely underwhelming compared to the other base classes, at least in terms of stats. Unless you do something roleplaying-wise to make yourself more interesting (i.e. Arasmyth or Althior), you sort of fade into the background. I've sort of lost where I was going with this, but I think one thing is clear: Mages are more than a little underappreciated, and we really need a chance to shine.

That seems kind of...boring. As I understand it, the 50/50 chance was added in because guaranteed status effects were murder on the QMs, not to sideline them as items. Normally, with a gem, a Mage has a 3/6 chance to hit the target, or in other words a 50/50 chance; before the nerf, the Scrolls had a 100% chance of working, so they were superior. The nerf made them equal to gems, not subordinate to gems. And also note that Arthur can't afford to take even one hit from most enemies; between the health potion and the enemies having to stay balanced for Isabella, that's improved slightly, but still, from a strategic point of view, Scrolls are a better choice for him (especially considering that when he does use a gem, he can't seem to hit the flat side of a barn. ) EDIT: That...sounded entirely too whiny. Sorry, Doc, I'm not implying you or the other QMs have been unfair. I'm just explaining why gems aren't so superior to Scrolls; I don't think you've been too hard on us at all, most of the time the challenge has been in that perfect butter zone of difficult-but-survivable.