Waterbrick Down

Actually it doesn't answer the question. Cassandra is immune to light and weak to darkness thus Guts weapon which is light, darkness, and ice elemental should do neural damage. It is the same case as a holy enemy. Sandy is saying that the immunities provided by an enemy type as well as an effect are the same and are taken Into account, but not marking, encouraged, flight, or favoring.

QM Note: I should be able to run this later today, unless one of the other QM's get to it before me.

Having a limit on how long the effects last doesn't solve the issue of either QM's rebalancing and denying PC's the benefit of their buffs or PC's steam-rolling battles that were designed for un-buffed heroes. The buffs themselves are so powerful (particularly Encouraged, Reinforced, and Inspired) due to their multiplicative nature that finding a balance between challenging battles for unbuffed heroes and somewhat easy battles for buffed heroes is becoming nigh impossible. Effectively everyone has to take consumables in a battle or no one does in order for a balanced battle. Again price rises only affect non-rogue classes.

Part of these reviews requires a bit of research. Look the hero's quests up in the library and do a little reading. You'll be amazed at some of the progression some of the characters have made over the years. Hoke for example has gone through quite a bit from his first time fighting Crozen in Quest 5 to the armies of darkness in Quest 19 to the malicious Wren in 53 and finally everything involving the current Baltarok Trilogy.

Sorry I'm confused, can you clarify what you are saying the issue is then?

My issue isn't so much QM's rebalancing because a hero has a consumable that grants a buff in their inventory, but rebalancing because a hero uses a buff just before a battle. Just because the consumables would be more limited doesn't stop QM's from rebalancing when their heroes do decide to use them.

Frivolously or not, QM's would still rebalance for them. The issue isn't availability it's the actual amount of advantage they give in a battle which is being compounded as heroes grow more and more powerful.

Just follow my logic here: so consumables or the correct combination of them render battles, as originally designed, unbalanced? Then we should fix the consumables not the battles, no? The issue here is again the multiplicative nature of some of the effects, they essentially create too much of an advantage that they render battles negligent without adjustment. The effects and/or combination of effects should give someone an advantage in a battle, not a pretty much guaranteed win. I'd propose an additive system where in depending on your tier i.e. level 1-10, 11-20, etc. certain consumables have an additive effect, i.e. encouraged grants you +5 power between levels 1-10, +10 power between levels 11-20, and so on. Same with reinforced and inspired. This allows for an advantage but not a game breaking one and one that scales between levels and avoids power creep like we're currently seeing, hence the necessity for more and more battle adjustments after heroes buff themselves.

Again why? Why should someone's temporary stats require effectively nerfing there capabilities?

Which is a reasonable guess, though one better made perhaps from an IC as opposed to an OC reason.

Reinforced, Inspired? And why make the changes? What's the benefit of the consumable if you're going to rebalance?

Then set the difficulty of the encounter to require heroes to buff themselves and stick to it. If I'm hosting a barbarian and they decide to take a mead before a battle, I don't go and double the health of my enemies so they don't die as easily. That's essentially making the player waste a consumable. As a player I've been starting to hold off on popping consumables before a battle because I'm paranoid that the QM is just going to increase the difficulty of the battle which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid by taking the buff in the first place. If battles need to be so drastically changed because of consumable usage before the battle, then maybe instead of a balancing issue, the real issue is with the multiplicative nature of the effects.

Battled really shouldn't be adjusted because heroes decided to buff themselves. That's the entire idea of a buff, to give you an advantage, not keep the battle at the same difficulty but with everyone at higher stats because the QM doesn't want his enemies to be steamrolled. Make a battle at a set difficulty, if it requires the heroes to buff themselves up to be able to survive then let them learn that once they see the enemies. I'd really be interested in seeing consumables only used during battles, it's an intriguing idea as far as balance is concerned.

I'm with the majority here in that it cheapens the rogue's ability as well as the hefty implications of a total party retreat. Sometimes hard decisions need to be made in a quest.

I wouldn't say it's confusing. It's actually a beautifully simple mechanic and was used extensively in the Heroica Writeboard, but like Palathadric commented it doesn't quite fit Heroica due to the amount of time it takes. Perhaps an alternative is to offer your hero's multiple options or let them each make a suggestion and tell them what would the effect be for such a plan. I.e. give them: Option A where it will take a lot of time but they'll reach their objective safely, Option B where they can save time but will probably take 10 Damage acquired by being more risky, or Option C where they can save a whole lot of time but they might lose some consumables or health or even ether doing so. In a normal RPG complete freedom is manageable and time negligible, in a forum based one, giving flexible options is generally a better alternative and a time saver.

2 Free Hits that go down the order like usual.

While somewhat interesting for more challenging tasks, I think there's no need for it (aside from adding extra complexity) for simple things. These are heroes we are talking about, they should be able to climb 10 feet without any risk, jump over a chasm, search a body thoroughly, etc. I know there is a small chance that they could fail at these things in real life, but we're talking minuscule percentages here more suited to a 1/100 chance as opposed to a 1/6 chance. Time is always a factor as well. If a hero wants to climb 100 feet quickly, then yes we're talking about some risk, but if they don't really care about time and are instead trying to be careful, well then they're just as capable of accomplishing that with as much risk as their 10 foot climb would have taken. We can assume that in a lot of situations if the heroes are just willing to sacrifice the time then there is really no need to roll for a risk of failure, because they are eventually going to get.it. Best to skip past the accomplishing of the deed and move on to the effects of taking the amount of time that they did. In summary, it's an interesting mechanic for stuff that's super challenging or risky or stuff trying to be accomplished very quickly, but other than that it diminishes the idea of how "heroic" and capable our heroes actually are and when it comes to offering players a choice between the realistic and mundane versus the amazing and fantastical I'd rather err toward the latter.

Some interesting points, but I'm not sure how well they fit into the mechanics of the game like Pie mentioned. -I'm with Scuba on the limited inventory idea, make it quest specific not a game wide rule. Plus, Bags of Holding. -The way Heroica is setup each class needs to have combat mechanics. Without actually skill rolls, stats, checks, combat is really the only set of rules that make Heroica a proper "game" for the most part. Plus one would need to find a way to integrate such classes into current parties without them feeling useless during parts of the quest and vice versa for combat classes. -While crafting systems are indeed interesting, a forum based RPG isn't really conducive for such actions. While video games, or real-time RPG's allow for time to work on and create such items, the way the game is structured, it would take too much time, plus fitting it into a quest as a permanent game mechanic could really bog things down.

Most of the time hastened enemies are dealt with just like cases where # of monsters > # of PC's. Just stick the most tanky player in the beginning of the battle order and let them absorb the free hit. Only on extremely rare cases do you see this many hastened enemies that are also encouraged and thus able to even take out the tank.

That's actually not a bad idea. I've been wondering about how to design single enemies that can challenge a party, i.e. one's that amount to just the tank attacking the big bad and everyone else sitting back. If a system was implemented where the free hits from hastened could be cancelled out, then it would help free the design constraints of an enemy with lots of tentacles or split into half a dozen body parts, etc.

Sounds like we're doing our job. Honestly, I'm with Zepher in that as QM's we generally over-react to things because we don't want to feel like anyone is being specifically singled out, especially newer players, because honestly we like new people, it's how the game grows and we don't want them being discouraged because they haven't grown accustomed to playing with some of our more intense players. Out of all this, we want folks to have fun and have a great story to tell win or lose. Heroica RPG is not simulationist in that we as QM's generally want our players to beat us, realistically we want to make your victory challenging and therefor more savory, but deep down we're generally a biased group. One note on strategy I've perceived at least in the current battle is that the orcs have had a steady increase in the difficulty of the enemies, the kingdoms started out with cannon fodder and are now bringing out the big guns. Difficulty wise the two situations are equal, one is just perceived more challenging due to the timing of things.

Nothing specifically we're talking about in character interactions/perceptions and how they affect in character decisions.

Inactive players are those who have not posted at all and given no excuse for their absence by abdicating responsibility to another player. Purpearl posted in the round, whether or not she listened to you or to Guts is a moot point as far as your plan over-ruling her action.

QM Note: Zepher, Dreyrugr was Lucky which cancel's out the General B's Lucky which means he would have hit. UsernameMDM, Hastened opponents always get a free hit no matter how many times they are targeted. Not my favorite rule, but it is the rule.

I've always considered it as 1 immunity cancels out 1 weakness for neutral. So if someone attacks an Etharial/Fiery with a water imbued weapon it's neutral damage, but if some attacks the same enemy with a lightning/water imbued weapon it's 0 damage because there are 2 immunities (water and lightning) and only 1 weakness (water).