erf_beto
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Artwork Wizard
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Post by erf_beto on May 30, 2012 9:41:24 GMT -5
It seems we are touching on a lot of different skills!
* Steal or Mug - for Thieves - take gold/treasure from monsters without them noticing (DEX based) * Poach or Scrounge or Scavenge - for Rangers, Sages and Hunters - take precious bits and know where to look for them (WIT based). (Maybe these should be carried inside a bag, in an inventory slot, to be sold later) (maybe it's restricted to an enemy type, like Animal or Beast - though I don't like this added complexity) * Appraise or Haggle - for Rogues, Merchants and Sages - get more money out of sold goods (WIT based)
I wouldn't add that many to the game, when they all hope to achieve the same thing (more gold). But I do like the split between DEX and WIT, so I'd keep Steal and merge Poach and Appraise into one.
A thief with a silver tongue would take both, so he'd steal stuff and haggle for better prices when selling them. An elf wizard could look for eye of newts and dragon scales for his spells, and rangers could sell the hide of a beast or make armor with them (since spells and equipment cost gold, it's like you're investing in these items with the gold you took from the monsters).
As for the scavenger hero looting every corpse like a necrophiliac, I'd say he only gets to poach the critters he kills himself (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance in the GBA worked like this - it was a pain to set up, but I guess it worked...). Or maybe you'd make it an Action which does nothing but put the Hero into "Poach Mode": until next round, he'll take extra gold from any monster killed.
Just brainstorming ideas here. What you think?
As for the current Monster stats, I'm not sure, but I think high WIT has to do with how monster awareness worked in previous versions, so I wouldn't be surprised if it drops a bit in v4.0.
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Post by kalajel on May 31, 2012 8:14:20 GMT -5
Well I think Steal is pretty much more or less settled depending on how much monster WIT drops (but then again if it drops too much, it can always revert back to be resisted by DEF instead, I guess). As for the whole Poach/Scrounge/Scavenge thing, we're already coming up with good ideas to avoid it being abused by looting every single corpse encountered. Having the body/animal parts taking up item slots is a good limiting factor seeing equipment space on characters are limited and the player will have to determine wich parts are worth more and which to keep on him and which to drop once he fills up his inventory... Also, only being able to do it on monsters you drop yourself is not a bad idea either as it could be explained as your character knows hos to dispatch a monster without damaging it's valuable parts and if somebody else downs the monster instead, they ruin the valuable drops... Being limited to non-humanoid creatures might also be a good idea. I know some pirates were known to swallow loot, but do we really want to risk having those right wing nut conservative getting wind of our game that encourages player eviscerating their enemies to find valuables? My suggestion is as follows: Make Poach WIT based in order to spot the valuables on a monster. It is a free action done after dispatching a non-humanoid monster and each success gives 1 gold resale value to the collected body parts which ends up taking up an inventory slot. If that still sounds too powerful an ability, I guess we could still add some of dan's ideas in that while you're carrying collected body parts, monsters of the same type will catch the smell of their dead companions on you and be enraged gaining a +1 Attack bonus against your character (and/or maybe even changing their laws in order to target your character?), which could be negated by simply taking an action to drop the carried body parts? As for Bargain/Haggle, I know it could be tempting to merge them with something else in order to avoid having too many gold-gathering/saving skills and ending up being redundant, but I think it should be kept as it's separate skill. It should obviously be WIT-based. Perhaps a quick draft would be to have each success increase the value of the sold item by 10% (rounding the total result down), so depending on what you sell, you might need 2 or more successes simply to get a single extra gold of value?
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erf_beto
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Artwork Wizard
Posts: 369
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Post by erf_beto on May 31, 2012 11:28:27 GMT -5
We are probably getting too specific for these abilities to make it to the final version of the rule book. But I like the discussion nonetheless. Maybe an additional module may come out of it. I hate inventory management in video games, so I wouldn't have each body part occupy one slot, but would rather have all collected body parts into one single slot, like the backpack does. And really, we should stop talking about snatching body parts. RPGs and such already have all the bad publicity it would ever need! LOL As for the ammount of gold per poach, we could also base it on the creatures's level (or XP) and number of WIT successes. Regarding bargain/haggle, I've always thought about including "social" skills in DP. I know it deviates from the traditional game, but the "Village" and other house rules we've seen prove that there's always someone who enjoys adding different things in the game. I know I do! ^_^
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Post by kalajel on Jun 1, 2012 6:40:23 GMT -5
I hate inventory management in video games, so I wouldn't have each body part occupy one slot, but would rather have all collected body parts into one single slot, like the backpack does. And really, we should stop talking about snatching body parts. RPGs and such already have all the bad publicity it would ever need! LOL As for the ammount of gold per poach, we could also base it on the creatures's level (or XP) and number of WIT successes. Yeah, I'll admit that outside of a backpack, characters in DP have very limited inventory space... Guess I wasn't thinking about this clearly... Also agreed about your second point, so let's call them "components" or something similar then. Perhaps instead of simply gaining 1 gold per success, the character could gain a number of gold per succes equal to the creature's level? But this might make the amount of gold gained by Poach increase exponentially as the character faces more powerful creature as he goes along his adventuring career all the while boosting his WIT with the XP gained...
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Post by dan on Jun 6, 2012 17:14:50 GMT -5
What if as opposed to this being a specific ability, it was more like an action that anyone might perform? As mentioned before, the various types of gold gathering abilities might be used by different types of characters; what if it weren't so much a specific ability as something one could try if they were so inclined and had sufficient stats? A thief would likely be better at stealing given the higher dex, while someone who has higher WIT is more likely to poach or haggle...this however is a more fundamental change...not sure it's worth the extra work.
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erf_beto
Artist
Artwork Wizard
Posts: 369
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Post by erf_beto on Jun 6, 2012 18:38:28 GMT -5
Yes, that could work too. It might be too much extra work, only because we would have to make it very *very* balanced, as it probably becomes easier to exploit... And I think I like it better as a special ability because DP is simple at its core, and you sprinkle complexity when you select your abilities and find treasure. For example, if you think about it, unlike with spell casting, every character should be able to jump or charge into battle, but only those with the ability need to know the rules for that. But if we want to make it available to all, we could move some of it into plain Treasure: some monsters need specific knowledge to poach, but everyone knows "Dragon Scales" are valuable, so if you kill a dragon, you can try to salvage its hide (make the WIT check). Of course, a trained poacher would get a big bonus. Which monsters are "easy poach" will be defined in its stats. We could also make a type of treasure that needs to be haggled, for example, Gemstones, Jewelry or Art Objects. In the quest I'm designing I'll be adding bookshelves to some tiles: if you spend your turn "browsing" the volumes, you gain some XP based on your WIT (and dungeon level). There could be other items like these, from a dead adventurer corpse with gold in a hidden pocket, a tall statue you need to climb to take out those ruby eyes, a patch of rare medicinal fungi, etc. The benefit is having these things controlled by the Quest and not left to player whims. Just ideas
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