I Forgot
Yes, it’s true! I actually forgot to post on my blog. For some reason I just thought about other things instead. But worry not! I think I will remember now =P.
Well, some other thing I forgot which I might as well use one day for, is to ask you what you thought about the battle. Now I know it was hardly a fair battle for some but I just want your opinion on the way you fought the enemy (the dragon). For some the whole session consisted of this but well… not much to do about that.
So what do you think about this type of enemy. It’s a semi-boss fight where the boss do different kinds of attacks each turn. Just to limit his power I gave him actions so he couldn’t do whatever he wanted to but I could make an enemy with three different attacks and no actions too.
Well, opinions?
Best regards,
Herid Fel
Well I liked it , even though I didnt do much myself it still felt like a pretty different way to battle an enemy and I think it worked well.. it was pretty fast paced and didnt feel slow and boring.
the thing with three actions was also a new and interesting way , but might be abit static if the opponent only has like three kinds of attacks.
About the boss fight difficulty well , the problem was that it was a flying boss and basically none of us have any ranged attacks , I still think it was reasonable difficult but I wouldnt say he was easy , more like challenging.
youre getting better at doing enemies anyway , still challenging but not so you get the feeling of a 50% chance of dying at every attack =).
I think this type of fight certainly has merits, and for some type of encounters it would be the most suitable. But I wonder if it can feel static like PB said.
Even if you have different modes like you said the dragon had, after the first round with the monster in a particular mode, you will know everything he can do in that mode, but maybe this was just what happened this fight and could have gone a different way. This fits some type of monsters who are predictable, but some types of monsters might have some surprises stored up in their arsenal.
This is prevented I think if a monster has some attacks he probably won’t use every phase. Like three basic attacks and maybe two different ones. Again it depends on what you want out of the fight.
Anyway, I think the fight was good, for me atleast lacking ranged attacks was not the problem, had I had more actions I think I could have been more offensive however.
An impression I got in the fight though, something one would want to characterize as an old problem I think, is that one should have more influence over ones initiative. Perhaps in this type of fights, for example you may want to act after a special attack so getting a high roll can mean wasting an action, or just not getting much out of it.
I guess it’s already countered somewhat in forexample fast strikers, since they can somewhat affect how high their initiative will be, and partly what makes “avvakta” good might be affected by this as well. Anyway, maybe your stand on the issue is that it is enough, but assmuming that it isn’t:
Heroes III comes to mind, I think everyone has played the game, but anyway. In battles you can choose for your creatures to wait, and you forgo your action with that creature until everyone with a normal initiative has acted, offcourse they can do the same, and only afterwards are you allowed to act again.
However, here initiative works the opposite, the first to act is the one with the lowest initiative so the one with the highest initiative gets to act last, offcourse you can’t wait again, so you have to act now or waste your action.
I don’t know how it would work in Nianze and I suppose you would choose your own solution to it and there is probably lots of ways to get a similiar effect, just a thought anyway. Also, even if it is a problem, it might be best to leave it be, instead of making a change which would make the battles not flow as good, which I’m afraid this change might do.
Personally I don’t know what I think about it. I vaguely recollect Ankan discussing high initiative having drawbacks, so it wouldn’t surprise me if these suggestions have been put forward already or that you have decided that it doesn’t need to be fixed, both options effectively making most of my post redundant.
That’s true. I have thought about this but to have a chance against a hard enemy which is, like in this case, flying you need to be prepared for how it fights and what it does. But some special attacks and stuff like that would indeed make the battle more interesting.
I see a lot of other stuff that can be improved or just changed depending on the situation. So this kind of boss fight have a lot of possibilites I think.
I now remember that you weren’t on the Rule Forum in which we discussed the new stances. Or were you? I can’t remember but I think you weren’t since it was in the middle of A Dark Life when I also first talked about the new types of battle (with three initiative both for enemies as well as for players…).
Well, well…
I thought that the dragon was interesting, obviously it was a bit dissapointing for me to be pretty much unable to act though. But I wasn’t all that bored actually.
One thing that I found bothersome was that the dragon had three initiatives and it could get to act twice before the players got to do anything. I think it would be better if it could only get one action before everyone else gets an opportunity to do something.
I do not agree there.
When having a split initiative on a mob or a big boss like this the reason is partly to have three different state of actions, but also to make your foe more dangerous without mightieer attacks.
This makes initiative more valuable in these fights because if you are last in the order of initiative the Dragon (in this case) would have acted three times.
This as stated, leads to giving a high initiative more value even for non-fast strikers. Initiative should be important to everyone, and this is one way of making it so against harder foes.
Good battle. A lot of flow in it and it forced the players to attack in unorthodox ways.
And as you stated, against this kind of enemy the the initiative feels a lot more important.
Too bad my move didn’t succeed, it would have been awesome. And I screwed up the second try, came up with how it should have been done too late. Well well, more of this kind of enemies, please.
Will do, don’t die, please. =D