Feature Spotlight - Character Creation, Attributes and Resting
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Hello everyone!
The newly updated Feature Spotlight is now live!
Today it's all about character creation, from your race, to your own background.
It's more than just a character, it's your story!
How will you shape your character? Let us know in the comments!
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Really not happy to have the point build now officially reduced by 20 points across the board.
This is especially harsh on archetypes that have stat gated ability effects, like minor heal, or poison, whos effect is dependent on hitting the arbitrary minimum stat numbers to get a better effect. Want 4 charges of heal/dash? want a poison that actually hurts before the other uses a herbal remedy out of their inventory? gotta have that 24 int stat !100 points is really restrictive and gives more power of effect to metal armor which has far more choice and options that provide stat boosts while cloth and leather users are left to suffer.
Unless the point is to cripple humans without major investment into equipment and give beasts/demons a huge advantage with their affinity discounts and cap increases -=In Addition=- to any equipment they have... I really dont understand why the change was made. And feel the change is too harsh.
We all were playing with the 100 point build with the understanding that we were being baseline with humans getting a boost of 20 points and demons/beasts getting a boost from their affinity bonusses. This really feels like having the rug pulled from under us AND 120 vs 100 is not the same as 100 vs 80, ESPECIALLY when considering the power of affinity bonusses !
The result is likely to be that human players feel overly restricted where they were supposed to have the most flexibility while beast and demon players have much more ability to get good stat/skill blocks since they have multiple classes to choose from to get that nice combination and reach those high stats needed.
If this change is going to be in any way balanceable then a lot more equipment stat options are going to be needed made available to the human players where currently there is a very unbalanced variety of equipment options with the most flexibility and effect given to metal armors and arms while cloth/leather/wood arms and armor have far fewer options and less flexibility forcing them into spending more of their stat points to shore up the lack of equipment support. The current lack of equipment support is exemplified in how a medium or heavy metal armor user can obtain a +6 bonus to their power stat of choice (str, con, int, cha), while leather light armor users are restricted to str and dex, and cloth armor users are restricted to only perception ! This is despite the fact that anyone using cloth armor is doing so because their mage like abilities require it and they all scale off of INT and yet they have no equipment that would aid them in this (other than necklaces which everyone has). This requires mages, and archers to some extent, to invest heavily into their power stats to get moderate effects while melee archetypes are free to rely on their equipment to obtain good stats and only need to focus their stat points into their power stats if they want to have extremely high effect in that area, talking 28 strength or con !
Please reconsider the point buy reductions, or provide suitable equipment support to the humans while also reducing the demon/beast points to balance their affinities.
TL:DR - Point buy changes not good, why the change without testing? equipment disparity needs to be addressed, abilities and races re balanced.
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So a Human/human character uses 60 points for 2 atributes to 18
And a non-human would use 36 points using afinity to get 2*18That right?
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IF the +/- that each race gets only effects the cap and not the final stat, then here is a set of example stat blocks. The non human races get one stat at an affinity discount in addition to their special abilities. Note that humans had a min stat of 8 which I use, but that we have no info on non human min stats so I assumed the +/- affected those as well. Some stat blocks are awkward due to the affinity costs having lots of odd numbers while normal costs are mostly even numbers, thus harder to make a build that dosent waste a point somewhere.
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@LadyPetra You only get an affinity on one stat.
In general, the system works that humans will always have more stats than non-humans, affinity is worth less than 20 points in all possible combinations. What non-humans have is the possibility to create very skewed builds.
For example, a Nheedra would be able to start with 20 Strenght, 21 constitution, 7 Dexterity, 6 Perception, 6 Intelligence, 6 Charisma.
Now, after looking at it for a bit, I have to say that I don't particularly like this system, but for reasons different than @OlivePit .
Or actually, for the opposite reason.
I think this puts non-human races at a too severe disadvantage and also goes against the game concept.I'll explain:
The current system says that either you over specialize or you are a worse human. Overspecializing in this game is a very bad idea, since all classes uses pretty much all the stats. Every dumb stat you have, is a flank you have exposed.
The aforementoned Nheedra build would make a warrior which hits very hard and is very hard to kill, but has terrible attack speed (Dexterity), terrible evasion (dexterity), terrible accuracy (perception), no crit chances (perception), low mana regeneration (intelligence), low willpower (intelligence), low luck (charisma).In practical terms, that Nheedra which has specialized in being a warrior and being good at only one thing, would be crushed by a human warrior with more balanced stats.
This also runs counter to the dynamic nature of Fractured. All the game system is built around the concept that you can reshape your build at every turn, but when you force non-humans in specializing so much, then what can they do actually respec? That Nheedra will never be a passable Archer, or Assassin or Mage or whatever.This system for non-human races was implemented long ago, and it made sense because at the time, reaching 20 natural points in a stat, provided huge bonuses, so specializing had its reward.
The last alpha removed those, and rewarded making more balanced builds (and there was much rejoyce).In short, I fear that implementing the non-human attributes system like this, will generate a lot of frustrating gameplay experiences. The non-human races should tend toward slightly skewed builds, not all-in ones like in this system.
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I back Spolettas perspective as well.
80 points is far too restrictive for making decent or sensible builds for non humans. The math is just really messy.
We have no idea how powerful the inherent abilities for each non-human race will be which makes theory crafting much harder. Even so we know that they will be far more specialized than humans due to these special abilities which will encourage them to min/max into those specialties even more as to do otherwise would be to spurn the inherent stat cap and special bonus advantages that each have.
Giving them even 11 more points would go a long way to making them feel less like glass cannons and more like rounded characters, even with their specializations.
As shown in my sample stat blocks the affinity bonus would not be very useable and get very lopsided builds -but- it would be very good for making comparable builds to humans (the 18,18,9,9,9,9) where they would be -slightly- weaker humans but with all the special powers and features of non-human, putting the balance of power in their favor.
Again, Very hard to balance the point build with the non-human powers as they have not been tested for balance at all.
I agree with Spoletta in that humans should be incentivized to have balanced stat blocks and specialize with equipment.
However this equipment will inevitably be used by the other races which will again tip the balance heavily in their favor.
I would suggest a compromise of giving demons 90 points which would allow them to get use out of their affinity stat and still have a modest spread like 20,18,10,10,8,8. And giving humans 110 allowing them to have flat builds of 15,15,15,15,10 or slightly skewed builds of 18,18,15,10,10,10 which would keep their flexibility in switching builds with skills and equipment their primary focus instead of worrying about stat optimization and niches.
The problem of equipment variety still needs to be addressed, but as Spoletta pointed out, hope remains in the resources of other worlds filling in the gaps... Tho that would still be a hell of a handicaps for beginning light armor users.
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Why bother with points in the first place? Certain stats cater to certain types of weapons and gear anyways, and people choosing those stats are likely to choose certain mix of gear pieces, so why not have stats attached to and granted by these gear pieces? You can still mix and match gear to adjust and tweak your own build, and further customisation can be granted by god/dess blessings and enchants.
Having set locked in stats just locks you to certain builds anyways, seems kinda restrictive.
