Common OOC thread

Mine actually does have a different font though...Mozilla probably doesn't recognize it. I do have Firefox, but I don't use it much, I could try that, but it's not really an issue since my touch pad has a portion I have set aside for scrolling. Maybe I should use Firefox more, but viruses have never been an issue for me...except for one, and that wasn't the browser's fault (Word torrent).

Just checked: it works in Firefox

Though Rasa, I don't know if you knew, but your signature link has been broken a while now (or something of the sort, since that's not working in either browser.

yeah, mine works in firefox... but not IE... hrm, strange. anyway, the sig has been broken since the beginning of time, or at least the beginning of these forums. haha.

Yeah, the site i originally had it on went down, and even though jerry claimed that the user galleries should work, they don't. so after a bit of effort..... and i mean a very small amount, i got lazy and gave up.

ttbek wrote:

Though Rasa, I don't know if you knew, but your signature link has been broken a while now (or something of the sort, since that's not working in either browser.

RaSa wrote:

even though jerry claimed that the user galleries should work, they don't.

Not sure why, but apparently the gallery settings had been reset too - took a look at them when I saw this post of yours. But whereas before I still kept some settings off, this time I turned them all on, so technically everybody should be gallery moderators, or something. If you decide to try the personal gallery out again, let me know what you find.

Still kind of peeved they only give us 10 MB, stingy. But it's free, so my complain has no weight, haha.

10MB!?!?!? That is really stingy, considering how much cheaper storage is nowadays.

Yeah, tell me about it.

Hey all,

As more and more progress is being made on the Novemterra race revisions (and actually lots of additions - revisions themselves wouldn't take this long), I need help analyzing the game balance of some of these races. These will most likely not include your own character's races, which should be balanced alright, but for some of the others, especially the more... eccentric ones. Ones I didn't have clear-cut D&D models for.

What Wizards recommends as a final balancing act is something known as the acid test - you take a monster with X racial class levels, and compare it to a typical human (or whatever) with the same X amount of adventuring class levels, and see if they match up. If it looks like one is better than the other, you adjust the monster's levels accordingly and try again. If they both look like they'd be decent in a fight against each other, you've got a winner.

If I were to do these acid tests myself after finishing the revisions (which are, I'd say, about 2/3 done), it'd probably take till kingdom come. So if any of you would be interested in helping me out via email correspondence, I'd be much obliged. Incentive will be provided. :)

i'd be glad to help you out :)


edit: yup, the gallery now works, as show by my sig :)

heads up: I have no more time 'cause I'm stuck in Japanese school. Expect massive delays as I relearn kanji.

I can help you out, Jerry. Though, it may be slow for the next week while I get everything unpacked and organized. Glad to help though.

Cool, thanks guys. Glad about the gallery thing! Least these providers didn't gip us, hehe.

Hey, I thought of a novel idea... I'm wondering if any of you (and by any it'd be all of you) would be interested in helping me expand the acid test by including a phase where we'd play-test actual characters!!! If done, the only con I see is that the main storyline would get a pretty big delay. BUT, the pros I see would be:

• David can focus on his Japanese and not worry about having to post.
  
• David's group won't go insane with the inactivity.
  
• All the players get a chance to flex their creative muscle and play something new.
  
• Power levels ranging from grunt-sized to near-Epic.
  
  
• YOU CAN ACTUALLY KILL EACH OTHER.

First phase would be the actual acid test, where I give some of you a race compendium for a given Shell and ask you to just spot check numbers for me (take, for example, the average dwarven fighter or something, of various levels vs. a monster race at its various levels). The second phase would be this potential "arena combat." Races would be assigned randomly by me. I would of course still be DMing these mock encounters.

I think it's a fantastic idea, but what do you all think?

sounds cool. we'd probably have to use the characters 'in a party' because not every class is going to be good in a one on one scenario. groups of 2 or 3 would probably be sufficient for this style, though i'd like to see the dice function utlized for playtesting. this would help avoid any number fudging due to personal vendettas (ex.: "ben shot me too many times yesterday in counter strike... i'm gonna roll some nat 20s on his ass, lololololol"). just my two cents.

i bet that's how dragons feel in MMORPG's. "man, if ONE more party of adventurers comes in my lair, i swear i'm gonna fudge some nat 20's on their asses!"

just a thought, if you wanted to match up two races, the best thing to do would be to make them the same class at have them duke it out wouldn't it?

Yeah. Theoretically the ideal would be either same class or at least same category (magic-user vs. magic-user, etc.), but the problem that ends up becoming too big to deal with at all is, what if some classes are focused on terrain types (eg. Ranger) and you don't fight on his preferred terrain? What if the Ranger's opponent is not his favored enemy? What if a Shadowdancer has no shadows to work with? What if a wizard fires spells off on an enemy with massive natural armor? What if a guy with ridiculous spell resistance squares off against a weapon master enemy?

The list just goes on and on with no end in sight. Basically what I'm looking for with these acid tests is a side-by-side comparison of stats, primarily. That's why I think that while the "arena fighting" would be fun, it's not actually as important as simple good intuition on you guys' part. It's more valuable for one of you to say "this race smells like it's overpowered" then for you to say that after it whomps an opponent because it rolled 3 natural 20s in a row.

So I'm not exactly sure yet how to do this. I'm thinking about having it be something like a "5v5 Team Melee" or something.

Boomerwang wrote:

I'm thinking about having it be something like a "5v5 Team Melee" or something.

yeah, that's what i was saying. 5v5 would require everyone to be checking and posting frequently, though with significantly less fluff, this should be a lot easier. it might be better to do 3v3 or 4v4...

Sounds like fun...can I kill andrew? I'm sick of being his ally :D

heh, yeah, you were attempting to pull that off in the WoD campaign until dan went afk >.<

Check the Announcements thread for updates!

I know...its depressing...I want my blood :D

Does sound interesting. However, with my time difference I do not know if I'll be able to be on at the same times you guys are on consistently to slow you all down.

I will be gone from July 11th to July 26th.

Thanks for the heads up Zadok.

I'll figure out something for this acid test thing after I finish race revisions for the last two Shells, Aquatrane and Fiera-Crystalla.

For now, since I don't want to assume everybody is automatically interested, I'd like a show of hands (confirmation) for who would be interested in doing this - just post below. For now we're going to plan for:

• Standard D&D Classes VS. Impetus Racial Classes
  
• 2-Team Melee - X vs. X.
  
• Non-arena (i.e. you'll have a natural environment)
  
• Use forum dice roller (you don't have to edit your roleplaying post - just say something like "Attack - first d20, Save - second d20." The rolls will appear in a post below yours.
  
• When I assign the two teams, each member from each team will (use forum dice roller) roll 1d20. This is to help me figure out which team will be using which collection of races.
  

That should be it for now. If you look over the racial classes for Impetus, please let me know if you spot any seemingly glaring imbalances/issues. Thanks.

*raises hands*

how will character stats, skills, feats, etc. be determined for the characters in the 2-team melee?

The details of those will be up to you guys. I think for now the only info I'll supply when the time comes that you'll need is the character level, and who is on what team (Core team vs. Impetus team).

Members of both teams will pick skills, feats, etc. from Core books.

Now, this is important: If the Shell races feature template classes (which rely on a base race), say the Lavospawn (Impetus), or Exalted (Orbitus), or Makochild (Zenith), the character's base race needs to be selected from the Core races. That way we can more properly assess the power balance of the template classes - it'd be a hassle to figure out where the imbalance came from if the base race was non-Core too.

Note that here, the Miderth version of the races are NOT considered Core (even if they are super-similar). This is just for simplicity's sake.

Also note that the exception to the above rule of using Core material is that obviously, we will be using the custom-flavor Novemterra classes, not the original classes.

to make stats a non-issue maybe we should use the elite-array system? (i think that's what it's called anyway... the one where you get set numbers and just assign those numbers to the stat)