Before the new games for AiV, I wanted to make sure to open the current skill and spell balance for discussion. The Brigade's game vs. the AI went rather smoothly, but there were a few difficulties with balance for the 2nd matchup between the Blue Team and the Wanderers.

Therefore, I made some changes to spells and skills that I believe were necessary to achieve balance. The point of this thread is to get input from the 9 of you that have played on whether you think these adjustments work, or whether one or more skills are underpowered or overpowered still.

Based on your feedback, I will consider further changes. Since there can be disagreement between people anyway, I reserve the right to make the final judgment call and you're pretty much stuck with it since hey, I'm the DM here, and the DM has to make final decisions even if they are tough.

When leveling up, you will be able to re-assign any of these skills/spells, *IF THEY CHANGED*, because you shouldn't have to be stuck with a spell/skill you no longer like. If your spell/skill didn't change, you won't be able to re-assign it.

Here are the changes I made:

A few things in particular had been problematic. Though no one mentioned it, I felt that the Warrior skill "Seize" was overpowered. As it stood, it was virtually an 80% chance to make an enemy skip their turn (given 10% chance to dodge, block, etc.). I feel that's overdoing it, so Seize was tweaked to give you a 50% chance to make them skip their turn instead. Factoring in block/dodge/etc, that's still pretty darn good: it's about 40% chance after that stuff is included. I definitely want to avoid the hell that would come from someone stocking up on Seize and shutting another character down indefinitely.

Rage was a tad underpowered, I felt. So I replaced the 1d6 bonus with a guaranteed "5" bonus to attack. Given that most dice rolls of 6 come up below 5, this makes it a little more powerful.

Rush remained the same. Rush is, I believe, a well balanced skill that will help avoid deadlocks.

I increased Magic Missile's damage by 1, BUT, I put it's range down to 3. Having a range of 4 was just a tad crazy, I felt.

Duplicate potion was replaced with "Create Minor Potion", so now the character you target does not need to have a health potion in advance. Fexen made this suggestion and it made a lot of sense to me. More advanced spells up the ladder simply increase the HP of the healing rather than worrying about duplication or non-duplication.

Repel was probably the hardest. It was a big time broken product on a number of levels. For one thing, 3 spaces is A LOT. And I do mean A LOT. Additionally, since it had no range, you could just wait until someone was at a range of 3 or so and keep pegging them back indefinitely. To make it worse, the requirement that the character move only "north or south" was confusing. (What if their back is against the wall, i can't use it? What if they are 2 spaces away from the wall, can I only knock them back 2, etc.? Rules nightmare.)

Minor Restoration was also crazy, as WhiteElk noticed, you could just keep restocking Arc Lightning over and over again, dance around the board away from combat, and probably after awhile, kill everyone. Minor restoration was tweaked therefore to increase an additional use of a spell only by 1. To compensate for taking it down so much, it no longer requires you to skip your attack. This is, I think, still a very versatile spell in that it allows you to replenish whatever spell you need the most depending on the situation.

The thief skills were largely alright by me, and remain OK as far as I'm concerned. The only change I've made here is adding a range limit to Pilfer Potions (range of 1), while increasing it's chance of success to 50%.

Here are the current skills/spells with full details:
Level 1 Spells and Skills full list

For Blue Team/Wanderers who are about to hit level 3, please offer feedback in advance for the new skills and spells that open up for you at level 3. If you don't say it now, it will have to wait until the end of the deciding match, match 3 for you!!!!

Level 3 spells and skills list

About Coat in Poison:

Would it be too overpowered to make the Poison effect a Damage over Time effect? I always thought of the Poison status effect as something that lasted X amount of turns while inflicting minor to major damage that was dependent on the amount of skill points invested in the feat/skill.

Good point. That is what it should have been all along. I will look into changing that. Thanks!

I took that skill with the hopes that I could Poison my enemies and then run away letting them get debilitated by the Poison. I am not sure how to make this balanced, maybe take away the initial attack bonus and add X% chance to inflict Poison for X amount of turns. Poison damage could be calculated using the amount of points invested in the skill as a damage modifier to the base damage of Poison, whatever that may be. Just some thoughts from me about this :P

Have you considered some general skills that all classes can take? Something like;

1. Cross training - You can now spend points in a single level 1 skill from a class different from your own, or equip one weapon or piece of armor not normally allowed by your class. This only gives access to the skill/weapon, points must still be spent to purchases uses of skills or weapon slots. (Can be taken multiple times but each additional selection of this skill only gives access to one additional skill and/or weapon)

2. Nimble foot work - Provides 5% dodge per point (max 20%)

3. Steel Mind - Provides 5% avoidance to magical effects (max 20%)

etc. etc.

Great stuff, I love it! I don't want to give the impression that I'm against implementing something like that - I'm not - but, I would like to wait until the current stuff is settled. Again, not to say I'm not interested, but the plate is a little bit full with getting everything else set up.

This can certainly be added to the "queue" of "things to get to." Good suggestions. My solution would probably be a LITTLE simpler than yours, if only because I need to kinda keep my head straight (dealing with all these factors can get tedious.) But, damage over time is definitely something that poison should do, so I will change the poison skills to do that.

In your view with the game design, what do you see as the role of each class? It'll be easier to discuss balance suggestions if we know what the overall vision of each class is, then we can work out how skills/abilities fit in with that vision.

I'm not particularly worried about my vision of the classes. This is more about the balance issue overall. Naturally, each character even within the classes can have a unique role (a Warrior can go for long ranged or short ranged combat, a Mage can be offensive or defensive, a thief can be about stealth or pure damage, etc.) and then there's the subclasses to refine them even further. Plus, even within a particular team, it's up to you to figure out your role.

So it's all about the balance.

For example, with the Mage spell Repel, which we all came to the conclusion was overpowered and could shut down games. So it's just about reducing the overpowered skills, enhancing the underpowered ones and making sure there's a bit of balance to the matches so that there are still meaningful choices but no character is way better than another.

Poison has been changed:

5. Coat with Poison: The thief coats his weapon in poison.

25% chance to poison an enemy with your physical attack this turn. Beginning next turn, a poisoned enemy loses X HP per turn for Y turns, where X is your character's level and Y is the amount of total uses you have for Coat with Poison.

The best part about this skill now is that while it's not way too powerful at first, it's something that will remain relevant throughout the game as your character gains levels, and rewards you for investing points in it. So at level 2 with 4 uses, it can do 8 damage. At level 3 with 4 uses, 12. At level 4, 16 and so on.

The level 3 "Soak in Poison" is essentially the same thing, but with a 33% chance, making it more likely to work.

Perhaps add that the number of rounds it lasts is equal to the total number of uses in both Coat with Poison and Soak in Poison. That way Coat with Poison still has a use after you get Soak with Poison, otherwise it makes more sense to skip Coat with Poison and just wait for Soak.

Excellent idea.


(Hey Blue team, Wanderers, waiting on your feedback, too!)

Soak in Poison changed: chance reduced to 25%, same as Coat with Poison. Now, Soak in Poison rewards you with additional turns of damage based on the number of uses you have for Coat with Poison. (Essentially, this can double the length of the poison damage.)

For longevity the mage attack spells are going to be hurting.

Magic missile damage = 1D6 + Ranged Attack Bonus
Arc lighting damage = 1/2 level round down + Ranged Attack Bonus

This will keep them relevant later without over powering them sooner, and give mages a reason to spend stat points on attack bonus rather then dumping them into HP.

Maybe it's just because it's so late, but I'm not sure what you mean by ranged attack bonus?

One thing I do want to clarify, when it comes to longevity I'm most concerned about Rogues and here's why. 1) Mages get a massive amount of specials compared to other classes, so with their new specials, they don't have cause for concern, 2) Warriors get more plain attack/HP/ability to carry armor than others. Thus the primary concern is leaving Rogue with options. As that sorta middle of the road character, he needs 'em.

That's not to say giving those spells some longevity would be a bad thing, so I'm definitely considering it.

The damage bonus, I see that it can get specifically classified later, such as the shaman gets a +1 to ranged, while a -1 to blunt.

The mage basic attack bonus appears to start with a +1 and it costs 7 stat points to increase it. Then specific classes can get a further bonus just on ranged attacks.

Right, though I don't believe Mage is one of them off the top of my head. I could do it simply based on level. Like Magic Missile = 5 + 1 for each level you possess.

Or... make it X where X is whatever you have following your die roll?