Tekkan Updates…
Well, as forewarned there are some changes in the air. The biggest change is a decrease of the SC-bonus the Tekkan gets, they will be better than everybody else anyway when it comes to increasing and having a great amount of SC.
I’ve been thinking about what NEEDS to change in Nianze for the moment and I’ve decided that I won’t cut down on properties just yet. That change will be moved further away if it will occur at all. This is my game, and I don’t think I need that change really. What the system needs though is a little more balance and an easier way to utilize skills and techniques.
Things are developing in the right direction which I saw in the battle between the squad and the mercenaries. I like it and the balance is alright. What annoy me though is the unarmed battles, they aren’t really where I want them to be yet. They have great potential but it’s really all or nothing all too much there. The idea is that you indeed should be a lot less powerful unarmed as armed but also it shall have its benefits in some ways.
Anyway, as for the changes;
Combat Arts
The conversion will be left, but with one minor change. When you convert power you need to be in a passive stance which gives you NO defensive action at all. You will not be allowed to roll any defensive dices. You’ll have to solely rely on other things. But to improve this you can also spend as many actions you like converting during one phase. This way you can faster require more SC by converting which was a small flaw before on lower levels.
Combat Arts will now officially only give the Tekkan 3 SC per level. In other words you’ll get 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 SC from Combat Arts as a Tekkan while others will get 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 SC. Combat Arts will still be added to Stamina Recovery but only as everybody else; 1 per level. The difference here though will be that the Tekkan will multiply by 7 instead. Combat Arts will still rely solely on APT so it will be a hard skill to rise but in addition Tekkan’s won’t have it easy to raise their skills above level 3 either, which actually is the case for most specialities. You need someone to show you the next level from level 3 and up in most specialities.
The Combat Arts Stances though will be the same no matter which Speciality you have. I will write a post about what I have on stances after this post.
Dual Wield
This must change. As it is right now it improves some of the techniques that already is possible for everyone to use if they have Dual Wield. So I will do the same here as I did with Warriors. I will put in some unique Stances meant to focus around Dual Wielding but also the supposed fighting styles of the Tekkans. This though is still in a experimental state and I’ve mostly just run it in my mind but not against anything concrete but well…
The principle will be the same. Warriors have three Mobility Stances, unlike everybody else that only has ONE mobility stance IF they have Athletics. Dual Wield right now has two stances for everybody else. One which you gain on LvL 1 and enables you to fight dual wielding, and one on LvL 5 which enables you to act separately with your two limbs. Thus making both arms as independent in many ways, mostly in DB and not locking them to the same techniques and such.
Dual Wield right now is meant for Shields, Unarmed and for Dual Wielding Weapons. Some weapons such as Knifes and Daggers almost rely on Dual Wield, while others such as Axes, Swords and Maces is only improved in some ways by the Dual Wielding techniques. In the standard stance of Dual Wield you’re only able to Attack and Parry on LvL 1. You cannot mix these two and while you attack and parry you’ll do so simultaneously with both weapons making them to one attack. It mostly improves damage in the beginning even though it decreases the chance for success.
Since Tekkans in my word seldom fights with Shields – with seldom I mean it’s not their weapon of choice even though many uses it – Shields will not get an improvement for Tekkans. Warriors are the speciality meant for shields. This means that their improved stances will enhance Dual Wielding Blades (or maces) – called Medium, Unarmed Combat – called Close, and the last one improving Throw Weapons, called Ranged. Note that the stances are all called the same as the Stances for Warriors. I will call stances like this for Focused Stances which is something that is a substance to a general stance. Stances like this will most likely begin as exclusive to the Specialities with stances as abilities. But I plan to make it possible to learn some of these focused stances in-game and ultimately possible to buy.
Meditate
Meditate works okay right now but I think I’ll add some changes to make it more interesting and a little more flexible. Kiai, Shiai and Tenai so far is B techniques meant to improve regular Punches and Kicks in some ways. They are limited to only one use per attack, even if you use Dual Wield, except for if you use the LvL 5 stance where each arm becomes a weapon of its own and thus making it possible to use them twice, but not on the same limb. But then again, if you have LvL 5 you are pretty powerful. So well…
The changes though, luckily, is mostly a general appliance so it won’t matter if you use Dual Wield or not. I will now change so the effect of Kiai will change depending on when you use it. Depending on when you use Kiai it will either improve damage or decrease damage. An example;
You get attacked by a sword.
– You chose to defend, thus blocking
The Sword rolls DMG, T2+DB (3) this time it rolls a 2, so 5.
You chose to improve your defence with Tenai and then Kiai.
– Tenai decreases damage with LvL and improves the success ratio with LvL as well, this time 2
– The SG for the attack now is ONLY REFvsREF (no additions, the sword has hit, you only need to defend), you succeed
– Since you use Kiai after Tenai (Block(A)+Tenai(B)+Kiai(B)) it improves your Tenai with LvL (2)
You take 1 DMG in your Left Arm which you blocked with, unless you have Bracers which now decrease their DUB with 1.
Another example;
You se an opening and thrust a punch towards your opponent.
– You chose to punch, and use Kiai and improve your success ratio with Shiai
The opponent chooses to Avoid, without Technique thus must roll if he can’t get a high enough success ratio.
– Opponet has 12 in AGI and Dodge LvL 1 (+2) thus making it 14
– You have PCN 13 and Meditate 2, Kiai adds no bonus on hitting but Shiai adds +2 making it 15, you succeed
Punches are 1 DMG, and Kiai adds 2, so 3 DMG, the opponent rolls PHY-DMG to not loose a breath (and thus not loosing his initiative next phase and then going last instead).
Say that you use instead Tenai and Shiai, Shiai will then increase the success ratio of Tenai instead so you’ll easier be able to block. Since all the techniques are type B you cannot mix more than two in one attack or block. But see how the order of the attacks now matter. Before Shiai and Kiai only mattered when attacking, now they can both be used as offensive and defensive. Tenai will then in essence be the only of the three without any modifications while the other two are more flexible.
I’ll continue to describe more the small changes and stances in the next post.
Best Regards,
Herid Fel
Well, some interesting changes in overall for tekkans but also for others.
And if I understand correctly tekkans get 7% for all stamina capacity regardless if they come from properties or combat arts right? so warrior with 6 has 30% and a tekkan with 6 has 42%?
Although in my opinion the problem with SC havent really been tekkans having more, rather the flow and use of SC during battle for all specialties(even tekkans though the problem isnt as obvious since it takes abit longer for them to get exhausted).
You get exhausted very quickly and yes you say thats the point but I still think it happens way too quick, basically if you do 2-3 special attacks(target, a rush, an acrobatic thing or something like that) you are almost drained to 0 SC if you are a normal person, and now im not calculating the cost for moving,sneaking,leaping,using dodge and alot of other things that costs 1 and 2 here and there.
But I dont know, maybe we havent been utilizing the resting system to its best, but when I used “medium” rest with Katherine I was basically defenseless for a whole phase plus I gained 4 SC back, I guess thats totally ok, except that it gets drained almost instantly again, so you basically have to rest 2-3 times in a row unless you wanna be around lvl 4,5 in SC levels which isnt good since you get minuses in force(?) and phy. Anyways enought about that for the moment.
Dual wield looks like it might become more interesting, altough I do wonder when you say “Warriors are the speciality meant for shields.”, is this something new you will add to warriors or you just saying most warriors uses shields, since from what I can see warrior have no apparent bonuses with a shield.
The three stances that tekkans get looks interesting aswell especially the ranged one and how that will work.
The meditate changes looks good aswell, being able to use Kiai in a defensive purpose although it looks extremely strong basically if you have lvl 3 in meditate which isnt totally impossible to have, you would be able to block 6 damage from using two techniques from the same skill? thats bascially the same protection a full plate armor gives(or somewhere around there?) Looks cool though and it will probably be a nice addition for tekkans.
Correctus.
Yes I know this, and as I’ve said countless number of times. That aspect of the stamina system works as intended. The reason I decrease things now is to make it more possible for others to get more SC in other ways.
There isn’t any problems with the SC system and exhaustion, which I’ve gotten proof of plenty of times recently.
You mention the problem there yourself. You aren’t utilizing the system to it’s best. And yes it’s FOR you decrease along with PHY when you decrease Stamina. I still claim it works to my intentions. You just need to use stances and be more tactical when you use things.
They have Rush, and they have the possibility of Dual Wield as a Favoured which nobody else has. This is why I said they are the ones meant for this. Their style is more meant for it. Shields aren’t and will not be locked to any one speciality through speciality skills.
Well, without Bracer’s you’ll still take at least 1 in DMG in your arms. And even with Bracer’s they’ll still take DMG and thus needs repairs. But when you come to more powerful attacks the DMG will be transformed into FOR bonus instead and be a FORvsFOR to see if the block is successful or not.
Combat arts:
I’ll just not comment the SC changes much as this as been throughly discussed before and you know where I stand on the matter.
The speedy conversion idea at least brings it back out from being completley pointless, however I don’t think that this actually makes it much better unless you can do it in addition to resting or if you otherwise change it somehow.
Exhausting all your actions to gain some SC might in some cases be a plausible tactic but it will still eat up other resources which many tekkans might like to use. Especially at low level resting will be more efficient, you might be able to garner slightly more SC in one phase by converting but you’ll have to burn a lot of actions thus severly limiting your further options in that turn, not to mention the additional energies sunk into this. To a tekkan who doesn’t otherwise use MC or AC and has high level combat arts and lots of actions this might debateably be a good deal, but it still doesn’t sound like an easy trade off to me.
Additonally, single conversions will be less than pointless in all situations I can think of, maybe if it didn’t eat actions it could be useful. At maximum efficiency single conversions would be 1 AC, CC or MC + 1 action for one point of SC. You’d have to spend a ridiculous ammount of actions for this exchange to be more time efficient than resting, and resting has the added benefit of not eating other resources aswell.
Dual wield:
This stuff sounds interesting, and I would very much like to know specifics on these stances.
Meditate:
The changes to meditate seems interesting, it’s always good to have more choices and using tenai with shinai certainly sounds like and attractive idea. Although the tenai + kiai is slightly less so, blocking more damage does sound useful in isolated cases where you’re about to take a big hit. But even then I think in most cases it will still be more prudent to increase your chance of success since the other alternative would be more of an “all or nothing” deal, which in such situations are kind of dangerous.
The point here is that you doesn’t need to be in a resting stance, thus can defend yourself and keep yourself agile.
I must be misunderstanding something here;
These two statements seem contradictory, unless you mean that you don’t have to end your turn (read, turn in the initative order) in the vulnerable stance?
This is true but it’s false.
What is missing, which I actually didn’t think of and have somewhat missed to express and describe is that when you convert you indeed need to be in the passive stance, but you can change stance after the change. Thus you leave yourself open for a brief moment of time.
The contradiction though is that I didn’t think that through really since that would remove the need for the passive stance while you convert your energy. Thus making the assumption that you are stuck there correct. For now that will have to be, since it will be a window for a pending person to hit a Tekkan. But this is not my intention but I have to somehow leave the Tekkan vulnerable but also give it something in addition to the resting stances.
Re-reading my Conservative stance I’ve decided that conversions can only be done in Conservative Stance. Ignore the statement here.