Status Effects | Shards of Orn

Here is a big one. We have alot of these, and I believe we need to redefine what each does, what counters them, and consolodate the list down. I shall list the ones.

Bad effects:
Daze - 3 second stun
Soothe - Will not attack soother 1 minute
Charm - Views charmer as friend 1 minute
Snare - Binds legs to ground 1 minute
Freeze - Freezes solid and cannot move 1 minute
Fumble - drop weapon for 3 seconds
Ruin- breaks weapon or shield. Perm til fixed
Maim - Breaks arms or legs. Perm til fixed
Slow - must drag feet for 1 minute
Frenzy - attack nearest with basic attacks 1 minute
Fear - Run away 1 minute
Repel - move away number of steps
Command - Will do as told for 1 minute
Sleep - Falls asleep for 1 minute
Mute - cannot talk 1 minute
Decay - cannot be healed perm til fixed
Weakness - cannot use weapon attacks perm til fix
Slay - Yeah your dead

It is an awefully big list. Perhaps put it on a diet? What are your thoughts?

I would hate to lose any of them.
I think it is a issue of making sure the new players know what all the effects are
I think sometimes they get ignored because someone dosen't know the effect.

Soothe and charm can be lumped into one effect since they are basically the same effect. The others are good as far as I see them.

NOOOOOO thy are not.

Fear, Freeze, Maim, Repel, Ruin, Sleep, Slow, and Snare are all solid effects. I'd like to leave them as is.

Let's drop Soothe and lower the level of Charm. In combat, Charm will act as Soothe for simplicity. Outside of combat, it will act as it does normally. Simple enough, and no need for what I agree is a largely repetitive effect.

I like Daze and Fumble, although both mechanics could do with some clarification and simplification.

I like Mute. It's current level makes it rare in play, but that doesn't mean it isn't solid. Weakness was meant to be analogous to this for fighters, but it's never been used and is pretty bland.

Decay works to a degree, but would work much better if it lasted until Cured. Since that basically means it's a death sentence, though, that might make it too powerful.

When played correctly, Frenzy works just fine. We need a way to make its effect more clear.

Command is powerful and brings many complications for PvP. The game has gone this long without seeing much of it, so it could possibly be dropped.

Last but not least, Slay. Strange though it may sound, I'd like to drop it. It is the one measure of power, the thing people look forward to and covet the most, for one important reason: It's overpowered. It causes headaches for plot when a PC has one, and is one of the most significant balance considerations. Doing away with it may be painful, but it's something I've discussed with the top brass, and it makes sense.

Thoughts?

Here we go!
I agree with you on Fear, Freeze, Maim, Ruin, Sleep, Slow, and Snare.

I agree wholeheartedly on dropping Soothe and lowering Charm. A lot of PC's coming in are confused with what the two effects actually accomplish, so simplifying it is a good call.

Daze and Fumble are both good mechanics. I do however feel that the amount of time Daze lasts should be lowered. Several people bulk it up and become untouchable, which in turn creates a bit of a broken effect. I like Fumble, but agree it needs clarification to all PC's.

Mute makes me happy because it's the closest thing to Bitch Dust in my opinion ;p. Weakness is one of the effects I've NEVER seen or heard called in play, so it should go on the chopping block to be 86'd.

I don't like Decay. No PC's have any effect similar to it unless they are flagged. I believe Warlock and Vamp have it. Making it last until Cured is COMPLETELY broken in my honest opinion, because it's a rare occasion that anyone could counter it. If they don't have a fighting chance against it, I think it goes into the broken zip code. Take Pierce for example. It CAN be nasty, and it CAN drop people quickly, but anyone with a Deflect or Deflect all has a huge chance of completely avoiding it all together.

I agree on making a clarification for Frenzy. PC's loose track of long they should be in the effect quickly.

I think Command should go with 100% backing on that one. It's ineffective. PC's are confused by it easily.

And I do agree with dropping the Slay effect. It's turned into a PvP mightmare. All the fun of the effect is lost when it's so commonly used. And there again, it's another effect that either most PC's have no chance of countering until 10th level, OR it's an effect only useful to PvP players. It in turn become a Slay fest on Friday and Saturday nights.

I do have one other point to bring up. Please bear with me yall because it's of course about Ranger Actions. So here we go. My question is about the Ranger Actions that ONLY affect beasts (monsters). It's completely useless in my opinion. I like it, I do. It's a good idea. BUT, we rarely see an actual monster of the Beast subtype in combat. Binx has said the same. We've both had to ask for a hold several times to figure out if those actions would work, and most of the time, they won't. Going with the idea, what about taking Foe Specialization and making those actions available to ONE monster type of the Ranger's choice? As a Ranger and Druid, beasts would only typically be attacked if there was a very real threat to a Ranger PC. They are usually a protected type due to being devoted to nature and so on and so forth.

I am done now. Those are my opinions and I stand by them. Feel free to "no" tagline that last part. :D

I'm not sure if shorter duration is the way to go with Daze. I'd rather make it some sort of obvious performance requirement. For example, the Slow mechanic works well because folks have to drag their feet. It's obvious, marshallable, and they can still go as fast as they can manage while meeting that requirement. Silly as it sounds, maybe Daze should require you to spin in a circle or something. You briefly expose your back to your opponent, and you can do it quickly, but if you do, you're liable to get dizzy. This one might violate safety a bit, you get the idea.

I like Decay and Weakness thematically. We just need to find a way to do them. Perhaps a simple solution for Decay is that it prevents you from being healed past 1. That way it isn't an outright death sentence, but someone who's Decayed will have a very hard time staying up.

There is another positive consequence to dropping Slay that you touched on, Heather. It will make PvPers have to think a little harder. Slay was almost a cop-out; hit a guy from behind with a Slay and he can't identify you later. This way, you can still hit him with high damage, but you can never be sure if it'll drop him in time. It'll force PvPers to be more cautious and crafty.

And yes, I agree that monster-type-specific actions are basically worthless. I do plan on dropping them. However, that belongs in the Character Design group. ;)

Have to say i like the way this discussion is going. You have touched on pretty much everything I was going to, so no need for me to restate anything.

Now on to what should counter what. Obviously things with the same tag counters, but there are also the things that fix the effects. here are my ideas.

Fumble - Fumble
Ruin - ruin, repair
maim - maim, regen
Daze - daze, rouse
snare - snare, release
freeze - freeze, release
charm - charm, rouse
Slow - slow, release
fear - fear, rouse
frenzy - frenzy, rouse
sleep - sleep, rouse
mute - mute, cure
decay - decay, cure
weakness - weakness, cure
command - command, rouse

As you see I have everything the same with the exception of Daze. Daze by its very nature is a stun caused by head trauma ie mind effecting. Rouse is our antimind effecting and should be the natrual counter for any mind effect IMHO. Perhaps since rouse is so usful in countering alot of things, maybe should up its lvl and only give it to certain classes that it would make sence for. What you all think?

I like Sooth/Charm, by merging them I think it puts the sooth effect out of reach for a while. It won't effect me but like my wife reminds me constantly, it's not about me. I can go with it.

I would agree with taking out slay. The only time I think that slay would be missed would be for scorch battles and the like or other big monsters, but that could be fixed with big damage hits with no issue. I like the actions picked so far, but if cure is going to be taken away from daze countering it should also be available earlier, while you make the rousego up in level. The question will be eventually when we figure out which effects we will keep will be the levels at which they come into play, but that is probably more for the char design guys.

Right now Daze is a 3rd lvl ability, and cure a 7th. I think the lvl is fine, its rouse that should be changed since it counters a command which is a 8th lvl ability.

I agree some of the counters are off.