Final Fantasy d6 (Complete System)

[ThreadOfFate]

Also how important is group composition combat wise. Do you absolutely need a traditional healer and/or tank?

Technically, no. Someone with a decent Synthesis (Consumable) or Synthesis (Food) score and a few Berries could sub in for a healer if need be, and every class can help with tanking if given a high enough RES stat and some decent armor.

That being said, the White Mage innate ability is EXCEPTIONALLY helpful.

As a sub for a healer, use the Materia rules and give someone a Cure materia to help with out-of-combat healing, or do the above Synthesis stuff. Make sure to get some Ethers also.

The difference between the highest HP class (excepting Monks, who are an outlier for this) and the lowest HP class is 8 per level (Paladin and Ranger), and Paladin is one of only two classes that go above 20 per level. Pick a ranger and turn him into a dodge tank with some decent RES. Turn a thief into one by gemini-ing his Weapon into being a Blade also. Ninjas are also good, given their stellar AVD bonus - pack on some decent DEX, maybe a +AVD accessory or armor, you've got a good one right there.

[Bobikus]

Also regarding monks, are fights typically long enough to make use out of martial arts chains beyond just boosting up their relatively low base accuracy through?

[zoofman]

Dust, as our campaign goes on we've ran into a lot, and I really mean a lot, of things we should least probably at some point toss back as feedback. I'm finding more and more that we're just really frustrated with this system and rather than make a hundred page document I'm gonna make a few bullet points ans you can ask me to elaborate on things, cause I imagine these aren't all unique things.

I'll start with more direct ones.

-Skill Points. We have absolutely no idea why you get a different amount per class at char gen. It's just really awkward to work with in a game where cross classing is so damn easy. And why doe White Mage get so many but Black Mage so few? They are extremely arbitrary.

-Destiny Points. These things are just awkward. Some classes are extremely abusive with them, Like White Mage and Stronger Together (P.S. you really gotta nerf that ability at some point), and others don't get jack out of them. What's the intent here, are they bennies you're supposed to get really commonly or super rare bonuses? Cause half the classes treat them one way and the others another way. The only Skill Check these damn things are really worth using for how rare they are is crafting ones at high tiers, but even then it's entirely dependent on how common they are. There's no real hard angle here and it's very wishy washy.

- Crafting and Items: All I really gotta say sans crafting is the skill checks get really, really hard. Like you need to spend an assload of destiny hard. Equipment on the other hand is just sorta boring. Armor has a very low amount of interesting properties and amounts you can get, and accessories are just too damn expensive. Also, Ranged Weapons really get hosed in a system that generally doesn't have map combat coded well. That property could use some love. Other than that shields vs dual wielding weapons give you a rather unfair potential property bonus - dipping ninja w/ 6 destiny, imo, is almost worth it just for the property bonuses you'd get from an extra weapon slot. My suggestion here: Make a 'bracer' item that's an armorless shield that lets you get that extra slot for properties, and either up what armor/shields get property wise or make the curve more even between weapons and armor.

-Death mechanics. I'm not really sure what to say here other than we really don't like how blatant and direct a GM has to do to mortally threaten you. You have to KO someone, then use No Mercy on them. This causes two problems A) it doesn't really feel like your current HP or how much you went down by matters. It's 100% or KO'd. B) If a GM really isn't comfortable with how direct this method is, it's just a padded sumo race and it becomes VERY difficult put this kinda pressure on a party member.

-Action Economy. The Good Guys Go First thing makes combat go fast but also is sorta a huge bonus for the PC's in a system that already favors the PC's. Could use a way to spice this up some other than houseruling init orders.

-Blind is a stupid status effect as is. Does nothing to help low evasion players or monsters later on, and makes high evasion ones unhittable entirely.
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Okay here are the grievances I'm not really gonna detail too much unlessed ask.

-The more I play one, the more I realize Geomancer is hilariously difficult to work with and build, but at the same time alarmingly effective. It's also extremely difficult to make thematic Limit Breaks for them, as Geotrance is neither a spell nor an attack. This class is just, generally, poorly written and needs to be redone.

-Black Mages are boring and get completely shafted options wise compared to the other -Mages.

-All PWR based classes in general, now, are shafted. PWR has gone from the god stat to the crap stat as you've made swords and RES now work together. The classes that still depend on PWR are now completely subpar to those that rely on the other 3 stats, as PWR does nothing additional for them.

-Summoning is a very poorly implemented mechanic. It's basically paying destiny to win a fight, or your GM casts X-Zone and just laughs at you. And Group Summons can be very difficult to ever use given how different classes use destiny in different amounts. This needs extensive revision and rethinking. What is it you wanted here?

- The Skill List itself could use a look at. Scavenging is basically telling the GM to give you more loot, Acting and Perform both being skills is sorta odd, and Swimming existing alongside Athletics is silly. Who has ever invested in Swimming? Why can't you use Athletics for Swimming?

-The whole Finesse cap for skills seems to be overlooking how classes need stats. Some are going to have a very focused slant, and be all finesse and basically have no problems with it, be force based and struggle (Unless you're a DRK, then you're a cheatyface with 11 Force and 10 Perform), or be sort of balanced in the middle. What's the goal here as well?

- Also, on fights in general, we've sort of noticed something about how combat usually goes. Since the tanky people can't really direct combat and attacks toward them easily (This is something I as a Geomancer with mineralize and a Dark Knight got some gripes with), you basically have two combat rolls. The healer/buffer and 'kill everything with big numbers.' I'm not sure much can be do to remedy this too much, but tanky characters could use a way to turn the direction of attacks their way in some manner beyond Provoke.

[Relinara]

A few brief notes from my attempt DMing this game:

Evasion seems too strong right now. Even fighting a ninja played straight is nearly a waste of effort if it's physical attacks and it gets far more insane when you abuse it. We had a SAM/NIN with a level in white for Ruse which could pump his AVD up in the high teens even before enchantments, needless to say he was basically unkillable against physical oriented enemies.

On the same token, magical defenses seem a bit lacking. No story here, I just noticed a trend of most of my players giving up on heavy armor midway through the game and seeking out SOS or auto shell items.

Both of the above are probably in part related to earlier comments about PWR being a garbage stat. Most of my players sought out ways to avoid investing in power, which allowed them to consolidate stats more than was probably intended. Mages who get damage and mana from the same stat probably hit too hard, tanks who gain damage from their defensive stats are probably too hard to kill, etc.

Paradigm Shift for warriors just didn't feel very shifty for my players. The two players who ran with it just sat almost exclusively in Commando and left it at that. Might have been me experimenting with how broken AVD is, but the extra ACC just seemed to eclipse everything else. Sentinel also felt really good. Ravager and Saboteur in particular though felt too niche.

Monks feel limited. Chain points are too difficult to build up against standard opponents, and the 'at least one different enemy' rule means they can't even shockwave if they're trying to build up to a finisher. Aura bolt helps, but it being only once per session prevents it from being a particularly significant tool.

You might want to consider giving physical based characters, warriors in particular... though samurai thieves and dragoons feel it to a lesser extent, more active abilities. I realize it's sort of a classical FF thing, being built around the good ol' "Attack" command, but it doesn't feel very good and makes the classes feel a lot less tactically interesting than their mage or hybrid counterparts.

Speaking of Warriors, Bonecrusher feels really weak. Thematically the idea of a slow, really powerful attack sounds nice. But it's only an auto crit and it either ruins your weapon or nearly kills you if it misses. Might be more placebo than anything else, but the very visible and very painful drawbacks scared most of my players away from using it.

Also regarding monks, are fights typically long enough to make use out of martial arts chains beyond just boosting up their relatively low base accuracy through?

Not really. Unless you're fighting a well crafted Notorious/Boss you're pretty much never going to get to use anything other than your boost, at least from my experience.

-Action Economy. The Good Guys Go First thing makes combat go fast but also is sorta a huge bonus for the PC's in a system that already favors the PC's.

Though I do agree that the death mechanics are pretty silly (why even fight normal enemies when they basically can't threaten you on their own in any capacity?), things being too easy on the PCs seems more like a DM issue than a game issue... a wimpy GM can make even something like black crusade easy mode. Maybe dust should upscale the recommendation for monster stats a bit.

-The more I play one, the more I realize Geomancer is hilariously difficult to work with and build, but at the same time alarmingly effective. It's also extremely difficult to make thematic Limit Breaks for them, as Geotrance is neither a spell nor an attack. This class is just, generally, poorly written and needs to be redone.

You'll probably want to elaborate here "Dis clazz bad plz fix" doesn't really tell Dust anything useful... because you can make the same complaint about a lot of classes (actually really RED/WHT and maybe BLU/TIM are the only classes that feel polished to me right now).

- The Skill List itself could use a look at. Scavenging is basically telling the GM to give you more loot, Acting and Perform both being skills is sorta odd, and Swimming existing alongside Athletics is silly. Who has ever invested in Swimming? Why can't you use Athletics for Swimming?

Why? To differentiate things. It seems obvious. If anything d6 probably condenses things too much. Though I think you missed the mark with one of your comparisons. If anything Acting overlaps with negotiation more than anything else, since the description basically focuses on deception as one of its main boons.

Besides, surprise swimming checks are one of the most fun parts of being a DM in any game ever.

-The whole Finesse cap for skills seems to be overlooking how classes need stats. Some are going to have a very focused slant, and be all finesse and basically have no problems with it, be force based and struggle

That's not overlooking anything, that's kind of the point, isn't it? Some classes are obviously intended to have more skill options than others... Though I would agree it's perhaps too stratified right now, particularly for the classes that want to avoid MND at all costs.

I'm not sure much can be do to remedy this too much, but tanky characters could use a way to turn the direction of attacks their way in some manner beyond Provoke.

Have to disagree. Having enemies with the ability to think is one of the things PnPs do best, we don't need MMO style aggro mechanics. It's up to the players to give the monsters a reason to hit them.

Not to sound rude, but a lot of the complaints seem to be more indicative of a limited understanding of concepts or a discomfort with open ended system than anything else.

Though I'm pretty sure everyone here can agree to your comments about BLM being ****ty and boring and PWR being a trash stat... and summoning being underdeveloped.

[Bobikus]

As far as provokes and aggro mechanics, I think everyone should keep 4e D&D in mind for things like that. Its marking system for defenders handled "tanking" far far better than any pnp system I've seen.

[zoofman]

Though I do agree that the death mechanics are pretty silly (why even fight normal enemies when they basically can't threaten you on their own in any capacity?), things being too easy on the PCs seems more like a DM issue than a game issue... a wimpy GM can make even something like black crusade easy mode. Maybe dust should upscale the recommendation for monster stats a bit.

I don't really see what wimpy DM's have to do with this point entirely. If all your actions always come before the enemy's, of course they are at a disadvantage set up wise.

You'll probably want to elaborate here "Dis clazz bad plz fix" doesn't really tell Dust anything useful... because you can make the same complaint about a lot of classes (actually really RED/WHT and maybe BLU/TIM are the only classes that feel polished to me right now).

I don't see a need to repeat things Dust already knows, if she needs more info she'll ask for it.

Why? To differentiate things. It seems obvious. If anything d6 probably condenses things too much. Though I think you missed the mark with one of your comparisons. If anything Acting overlaps with negotiation more than anything else, since the description basically focuses on deception as one of its main boons.

Besides, surprise swimming checks are one of the most fun parts of being a DM in any game ever.

Acting is a subset of Performing. Same for Swimming and Athletics. They are not in the least bit attractive as singular Skills as they are way too focused.

That's not overlooking anything, that's kind of the point, isn't it? Some classes are obviously intended to have more skill options than others... Though I would agree it's perhaps too stratified right now, particularly for the classes that want to avoid MND at all costs.

Classes don't mean very much when 3 destiny lets you swap them. It's a very odd limitation at char gen that can cripple you in the long term.

Have to disagree. Having enemies with the ability to think is one of the things PnPs do best, we don't need MMO style aggro mechanics. It's up to the players to give the monsters a reason to hit them.

I never even said Agro mechanics, but having a way of a beefy PC to protect their allies is a core component of almost any system. It's largely ignored here, making fulfilling that role very difficult as oppose to damage dealing or healing and buffing. Even something simple like Cover Actions outside of Paladin's Innate

Not to sound rude, but a lot of the complaints seem to be more indicative of a limited understanding of concepts or a discomfort with open ended system than anything else.

First off this is criticism, not complaining.

Second off I don't see how you can say these opinions are based off an 'open ended system' when most of them can be boiled down to 'this is too half baked it needs more options.'

[squiggit]

^I feel like a lot of those hit the nail on the head.

I feel like your concern about tanks would be addressed by a cleaner movement system though too. There isn't any real system, for instance, that handles the idea of someone trying to block access to another character. That is to say if tanky dude is standing in between bad guy and caster dude... the bad guy just takes a movement action to move into short range and attacks the caster.

Might help if distance and movement was more defined than essentially 'melee range' and 'not melee range'.

Also agree with Geomancer being awkward. Their abilities being entirely defined by where they are makes it difficult to optimize... and then they don't really do anything outside of Geotrancing. It seems like a lot of effort was put into making Geotrance interesting and nuanced, but that there's nothing really beneath it. Not sure if that's what zoof was getting at, but that's my impression.

Also agree with the post above that saying that Warriors feel a little shallow.



Anyways... I was messing around with Dark Knight earlier today and I really feel like that class is lacking in synergy. Specifically there's nothing that really bridges its magical and physical components, or very much in general to support the magical side of the class. It's not as big a problem for paladins because white magic and physical attacks run in counterpoint to each other, the goals are different so they aren't directly competing. Black and physical on the other hand work toward the same goal, so without synergy you'll just avoid whichever is less effective. To compare, the Red mage for instance has his Flourish ability, which augments his physical attacks after casting spells... and Spellblade, which allows him to put spells on his weapons. Even paladins have access boosted self healing at low HP or a spirit weapon that attacks for them whenever they heal. Some specifics:

Black Sky feels too slow, I realize it is quite a powerful effect, but the fact that it takes three turns essentially to activate makes the spell feel difficult to implement (Especially since from my experience it's fairly rare for AoE situations to last that long).

Vengeful Strikes feels too niche for the benefit, especially considering that the Dark Knight has no way to force an activation himself (that is, he has to rely on getting a lucky roll or using an item property). Worse, even with the cumbersome activation it's still a standard action so it's still competing with with physical attacks to use.

The bigger problem I see is that those two, beyond generic damage increases from Darkside and Last Resort(and with the latter spells only gain part of the effect), are really the only things in the Dark Knight's kit that effects the spellcasting side of the class.

I was actually really surprised the first time I read through it that they had no sort of special benefit to throwing status debuffs on enemies.

The end result here though is that while playing a Dark Knight I usually just felt more like a Warrior that cast Hex at the start of the battle than any sort of 'champion of shadow'.

Also feel like Killing Machine and Soul Eater are thematically a bit too similar as limit skills, but that's a lot more minor of an issue.

[zoofman]

Also agree with Geomancer being awkward. Their abilities being entirely defined by where they are makes it difficult to optimize... and then they don't really do anything outside of Geotrancing. It seems like a lot of effort was put into making Geotrance interesting and nuanced, but that there's nothing really beneath it. Not sure if that's what zoof was getting at, but that's my impression.

This is part of it. Their Ability Options are very...I won't say useless cause they make some pretty powerful implications on what can threaten you outside of combat, but they are extremely fluffy and run a high risk of never coming up. A lot of other classes get a lot of combat options here, where as Geomancer basically gets Geoawareness (which is a complete ability tax and silly), and Home Terrain.

This wouldn't be a big deal but it makes Geomancer sorta boring to play. You basically might have a defensive one worth using in combat, but then after that you're just sorta shooting off your offensive Geotrance. Also some of them are just silly, silly broken, like Desert Offensive, while others are rather weak, like Forest Offensive.

I won't say they aren't effective because of this. A Geotrance with the right weapon and if you can get an elemental field down makes them very deadly, and they are very tanky. They just are very boring to play in combat outside of that due to how fluffy their other ability options are. That said if you don't got access to something like Storm Stones or are stuck in one biome for a very long time (let's say you're stuck in a city most a campaign), your options are going to be sorta limited.

I don't got an easy suggestion here, they are tricky to deal with. What I think would be be a better direction, however, is making their biomes give them actual spell options and making them actual mages, rather than Geotrance being such a unique thing.

[squiggit]

While I generally like the idea behind finesse relating to skillfulness... I think there should be another way of calculating the cap of a skill.

At higher levels it frankly gets kind of silly for low finesse characters: You're either obligated to take an ability level from Dark Knight in order to gain forceful intentions or you end up in this awkward position where you have 2/3/4 points in just about every skill.

From a fluff standpoint it feels pretty awkward too: My PWR/RES warrior is apparently very unathletic when compared to my Black Mage... and my Red mage's high finesse makes him very focused on certain skills while the warrior is forced to be a jack of all trades (seriously, by double digits he essentially has to make up new Synthesis skills just to be able to spend his points). Both of which seem to run contrary to what you'd imagine.

The only suggestion I can think of here is that it might be better to reverse things: Make the skill cap a flat value based on level (Say, Level + 3), but total number of skill points you gain on a level up is based on your finesse( finesse/2 rounded down, as a random example).

This would make high finesse builds like Red mages have a much broader skillset without necessarily making them deeper... which is more in line with the fluff IMO.

[nephrite]

Having been playing a Geomancer in a campaign right now, a few things jump out at me as problematic for them:

1) The actual terrain you're on can be incredibly useless. Lava terrain? Guess what you're going to fight. That's right! Fire-immune monsters! Woohoo!

I think an easy solution to this is to make ALL offensive Geotrances either be elemental or be non-elemental. It would make them a bit more unique in their usefulness and not make them overpowered since they cannot get extra steps of damage with non-elemental attacks.

2) Too many required skills to be useful.

Geoawareness should be given some additional benefit and Geotrances should just be baseline Standard Actions. There's no excuse for them being Slow, they aren't that much better than most other things and just because they're free doesn't make them good.

A Geomancer should just flat-out get one Home Terrain for free, as well. This might not be necessary in the future assuming each terrain is balanced.


3) Most defensive Geotrances are just bad.

Again, just because they're free doesn't make them good. Sun Bath, for example, is pretty bad healing. Yes, it's multitarget, but that doesn't make it a very good ability. It needs to scale a lot better, as do most of the Geomancer abilities. Really, this problem is much more of a scaling thing then a "these are terrible" thing, but I think that it'd be easy to increase the scaling something like 1.5x level or something. Or just make it so all Geomancer skills scale off the "Highest Attribute."


That's really all I can think of at the moment, but I'm sure more may come to me. One other thing I could think of that might make Geomancer skills more useful is having all of them have some chance of status attached to them. It's weird that some of them do and some of them don't.

[War Planets]

While I generally like the idea behind finesse relating to skillfulness... I think there should be another way of calculating the cap of a skill.

I agree that the Skill-Cap needs a small rework. But allowing every Class to build their Skills equally without any base on build style or Class seems just as much as an issue.
My idea is to have a chunk of the Skills be based on the Finesse score, another chunk based on the Force score, and a few of them be based on either Force or Finesse depending on which is higher. The issue with this is that there is currently only Skill that would be Force only: Swimming; and not very many that could use both: Athletics, Escape, Nature, Perform, and Scavenge; the rest would still be based on Finesse.
My other thought is to have each Skill-cap be based on the value of one of the four Attributes halved (being halved is because Force and Finesse are the sum of two Attributes quartered, which is the equivalent to one halved).

What I think would be be a better direction, however, is making their biomes give them actual spell options and making them actual mages, rather than Geotrance being such a unique thing.

The thing is that Geomancers are not Mages. If they just gained spells like Mages then they would just be very specialized Black Mages. Geotrance is what makes a Geomancer unique from any of the other Classes. Although I do agree that they should have a little bit more balance, but with each maintaining its terrain based uniqueness. But I also agree with you that all of the Offensives should have the choice between dealing elemental or non-elemental damage.

My thought on the casting speed of Geotrance abilities is that it would take a slow action if the Geomancer moved (this would represent him attuning himself to the elemental field that he moved into) and it would take a standard action to cast if you did nothing else on your turn (this would represent him taking his turn to attune himself to his current elemental field). This "attuning" at each location he steps into represents how chi flows differently on every square foot of the planet.

[ThreadOfFate]

Having been playing a Geomancer in a campaign right now, a few things jump out at me as problematic for them:

1) The actual terrain you're on can be incredibly useless. Lava terrain? Guess what you're going to fight. That's right! Fire-immune monsters! Woohoo!

Then use the Lava defensive Geotrance, which literally removes Fire immunity and resistance from all enemies for the duration of combat.

I think an easy solution to this is to make ALL offensive Geotrances either be elemental or be non-elemental. It would make them a bit more unique in their usefulness and not make them overpowered since they cannot get extra steps of damage with non-elemental attacks.

There's nothing stopping you from, say, attacking with a weapon that you have instead of using a Geotrance. If they could all do non-elemental damage as well as an element, I feel like that would take away a large part of the class' situational usefulness - a useful that can really come in handy sometimes.

2) Too many required skills to be useful.

Geoawareness should be given some additional benefit and Geotrances should just be baseline Standard Actions. There's no excuse for them being Slow, they aren't that much better than most other things and just because they're free doesn't make them good.

A Geomancer should just flat-out get one Home Terrain for free, as well. This might not be necessary in the future assuming each terrain is balanced.

They're slow because they're basically spells, only they cost no MP. They're magical attacks and they're medium range. All of them have their advantages and disadvantages, and will come in handy (or not) depending on your current environment. That's part of the trade-off of having such a unique attack - you won't always have the advantage, but in return, you're adaptable and you always have multiple combat options.

3) Most defensive Geotrances are just bad.

Again, just because they're free doesn't make them good. Sun Bath, for example, is pretty bad healing. Yes, it's multitarget, but that doesn't make it a very good ability. It needs to scale a lot better, as do most of the Geomancer abilities. Really, this problem is much more of a scaling thing then a "these are terrible" thing, but I think that it'd be easy to increase the scaling something like 1.5x level or something. Or just make it so all Geomancer skills scale off the "Highest Attribute."

Offensive trances scale at Half-Level times highest stat, which means that all of them are probably going to do as much, if not more, than a weapon that the party's carrying which is fit for their level. That's a great boon there, meaning they can buy a lower tier weapon with different properties and not have to worry about reduced damage. Maybe something like Fire Strike.

Defensive ones that level * 3 as a scale are pretty awesomer. That's quite a bit at almost any level, giving people at least half-again, if not outright doubling their scores. At level 8, where most of the party would have tier 4 armor, that almost doubles the relevant value for Medium armor. What better scale are you looking for?

Geomancers aren't supposed to be dedicated healers, so why would their only healing skill being not as good as the Cure spells/items be a bad thing? They're outside their element, it's a nice little bonus that can keep some party members alive at the right time in combat. They're not there to heal party members all the time, that's just one of the things they can do, in certain situations.

Changing the scaling for healing would make them positively broken. Level * Finesse or Force is already pretty good, especially at high levels, when Force or Finesse is anywhere from 6 to 10 (and maybe higher!). It's no MND * 5 to all party members like Curaga, but that's a solid 50 to 80 HP to everyone, which is pretty nice for an ability that you can do with no MP cost and potentially every round.

So we've got someone who can potentially lead the party in damage and double armor values and heal for a decent amount, and perhaps all in the same combat, for no MP cost.

Geomancers are supposed to be different, and they can be situational, but being so potentially versatile has the drawbacks of not always being the best choice - but that's where other party members come in.

[nephrite]

The word you use there is "potentially." They can "potentially" increase everyone's armor. They can potentially also not do anything whatsoever.

I'm not sure why you bring up the ARM/M.ARM Increasing geotrances specifically, considering there's rarely going to be a scenario where they can be useful. Those are Mountain and Swamp areas, which you certainly can't rely on being near.

Wild Bear isn't very good, unless you're in a very specific fight (in a forest) where you need to remove a status ailment. How often is that going to happen? You're right on the defensive Lava trance, but Snow isn't quite as lucky. Again, it's rare, but it's there. Cascade is great, but as we've been over, it's very situational.

I'm not really sure why you think Level * Finesse or Force are good. I have 65 HP at level 2, and I can heal anywhere from 8 to 17 HP on everyone. That's not good at all, especially given the incredible variance in the actual heal itself. I'm not saying that it needs to heal 15-30 Health on everyone, but maybe a little less variance on it, so just (Level x 2) x (Finesse).

You seem to think it's acceptable that Geomancers are "jacks of all trades, masters of none," and I don't think they're jacks of many trades at all.

You seem to further think that because a Geomancer is potential powerful, that should make them potentially weak. What I'm trying to get across is that the risk vs. reward in regards to where you're fighting isn't nearly as "reward" leaning as you seem to think it is.

[Lokyar]

- Crafting and Items: All I really gotta say sans crafting is the skill checks get really, really hard. Like you need to spend an assload of destiny hard. Equipment on the other hand is just sorta boring. Armor has a very low amount of interesting properties and amounts you can get, and accessories are just too damn expensive. Also, Ranged Weapons really get hosed in a system that generally doesn't have map combat coded well. That property could use some love. Other than that shields vs dual wielding weapons give you a rather unfair potential property bonus - dipping ninja w/ 6 destiny, imo, is almost worth it just for the property bonuses you'd get from an extra weapon slot. My suggestion here: Make a 'bracer' item that's an armorless shield that lets you get that extra slot for properties, and either up what armor/shields get property wise or make the curve more even between weapons and armor.

I'm doing that for my campaign. Bangles, takes no proficiency and same cost and properties as a shield with no armor, magic armor, or avoidance bonus. We'll see how it goes.

[Bobikus]

Skill points should just be based off of level. If you're REALLY intent on working in finesse, have it slightly influence total points but absolutely have the cap be based on level. Having a couple less skill points to add diversity to your list isn't nearly as harmful in the long run as having your skills always be terrible later on if you happen to be playing a Force-heavy class setup. Ignoring Finesse at all for skill points and solely going off level would be best anyway.


There's also a general consensus here that PWR is a weak stat, and removing the finesse stat superiority when it comes to skills could only lessen that discrepancy.

Same for skill points being different based on class. Outside of a few skills like Red Mage's Lore and the Entertainer class, classes and your stat points for the most part are primarily providing combat based functions, and there should be some separation between building for combat and non-combat. The differences between some of the classes in skill points feels entirely arbitrary anyway.

[ThreadOfFate]

A geomancer isn't potentially powerful, a Geomancer is powerful. At the very least, they're one of the most damaging characters in the party with their offensive geotrances, meaning that they've got both powerful physical and magical attacks at their disposal. My continuous use of potential is that they're potentially even better than they already are.

I bring up the ARM/M.ARM ones because a Geotrancer in a level 5 game I ran took the Mountain one as a home terrain, meaning that at the start of every fight, everyone got 15 additional ARM, which proved to be incredibly useful.

Their ability to shape their environment with Intuitive Magic is endlessly useful, limited only by the player and/or GM. The only thing that makes them weak is that they can be unreliable or disadvantaged in specific combat scenarios, which can be fixed by taking a Home Location or two. Even without that Ability, they can dish out attacks with the best of 'em. The Defensive geotrances are just little bonus abilities that may or may not be useful in the current scenario - so find one that almost universally is by taking a Home Terrain.

As it is, they're great front-line fighters, with a good HP bonus and almost no stat dependency due to offensive geotrances using Highest Ability. Past that, anything extra is just gravy.

Edit: I'm also assuming this is a typo, but the Forest Offensive Geotrance actually hits for Highest Attribute x Level. That's a typo, right? Cause otherwise it's kind of silly.

Double Edit: RE The above thing about crafting and shields and dual-wielding. Couldn't you just take that one Ability which gives you extra weapon proficiencies and pick dual wielding as one of them?

[Aniseed]

I don't have the book open at the moment, but I'm pretty sure you're expressly forbidden from taking shields/two weapon fighting with that one ability.

Also: The problem with Geomancers (in my mind at least) is that their passives can be spammed infinitely outside of battle. Mage-heavy party? Take Home Terrain: Water and never have to worry about MP again. Home Terrain: Plains is basically 'Body and Soul with an offensive ability attached'.

The scaling on the offensive abilities (particularly the non-elemental ones - I understand that you'd want to give them more kick because it's harder to boost them, but twice the damage is TOO MUCH KICK, in my humble opinion) can also make damage pretty wonky.

I know when I played a Geomancer, I had to promise that I wouldn't use non-elemental geotrances and I still was met with 'geomancers are OP' with literally everything I did.

Anyway: I like geotrances and I hope they aren't removed. I think level * best stat is probably sufficient for all offensive geotrances. I'm not sure there's a good way to fix defensive geotrances without making them even worse to deal with outside of combat. Geoawareness is a feat tax, which should probably be fixed. I like the idea of characters being able to take multiple Home Terrains thematically, but I don't think it's very good for balance.

[squiggit]

Speaking of Geomancers, another bit of proofreading:
Dreamstate's description lists "Climbing" as one of the skills it gives a bonus to.

I don't have the book open at the moment, but I'm pretty sure you're expressly forbidden from taking shields/two weapon fighting with that one ability.

It bars shields, but doesn't say anything about dual wielding.

[Aniseed]

It bars shields, but doesn't say anything about dual wielding.

So it doesn't. Huh. My bad. I know at one point you couldn't grab dual-wield with Weapon Training.

[ThreadOfFate]

I just forbid my Geomancers from actually using Geotrances outside of combat. The Intuitive Magic application is fine, within limits of course. Moving some boulders in a Mountain cave to clear a path is fine. Causing a massive rock slide or cave-in is not.

I'm not sure Level * Stat is good for offensive, because that essentially doubles his damage output compared to everyone else. If your equipment tier is supposed to be about half your level (which is somewhere in the book), that means that a Geomancer would be doing Stat * 4 at level 4, while any weapon attacks would be doing about Stat * 2, assuming the party's equipment is where it is estimated to be. The Half-Level thing means that he does about as much damage as everyone else does with a normal weapon, plus it's at range, plus it's against M. ARM, plus he can also just have an actual weapon in case he needs a backup. Heck, pair that weapon with an [Element]-Strike, get a bonus to a Home Terrain of your choice when attacking (depending on the terrain, natch).

Geomancers are anything but underpowered, and many of the Defensive Geotrances are useful. Sure, not all of them are awesome, but most of them are downright useful because Geomancers are a wild-card class that can assist in many roles while not taking away said role from a class that specializes in it. If you want some steadiness in the class, find a terrain that's universally useful and make it your Home Terrain. I suggest Mountain, Swamp (Shadow damage!), or Forest. If you have a lot of casters, Snow might be a good idea, too - means your guys can't be interrupted by Knockback.

Also, I've noticed that more than one Geotrance has that (Highest Attribute x Level) for damage. I'm starting to really wonder if it is intentional, because if so, that's pretty whack.

EDIT: We've got a lot of concurrent discussions. Has anyone been making, like, a masterpost of Issues That Have Been Raised, or something similar? A lot of this is relevant to the system and is feedback, but sorting through all of it might be a bit difficult.

[Aniseed]

Half level, excuse me.

Basically, keeping it like it is, save lowering the damage on non-elemental geotrances.

GUESS WHO SHOULDN'T POST WHEN THEY'RE TIRED

IT'S ME

[Valnnar]

Yeah we haven't heard from Dust in a while. I'm wondering if she is working on something big, or just sick and tired of our complaining.

In the game that I play with the Job/Sub-Job system, the Geomancer makes a wonderful Sub-Job. Because Geotrance accounts for so much of the Geomancers power, and it's all packed into an Innate. I know that has no relevant to those who play the game as per the normal rules, but I have found a few combinations inside the Geomancer class that seem promising.

Geomancer Build (The Fire Lord)

Core: Home Terrain- [Lava] gives you a way to always remove any resistances or immunities to Fire. Thus, we will now stack our Fire damage in every way possible to maximize this benefit.

-Weapon: Blade for RES stacking, [Element Enhance] Fire, [Element Field] Fire (if high enough)

-Core Ability: Skyforged in the first Fire Field you can, and the weapon's enchant is now permanent, or "until Skyforged is used again".

-Other Abilities: Elemental Body gives an easy way to get extra AVD, just use your Geotrance first to remove immunities, and then use Elemental Body, and so long as you just attack you will remain invisible until struck. (You could even cosmetically change the effect of the ability Elemental Body to be like a "Flame Cloak" which makes you appear to the enemy like a mirage wrapped in heat vapors and slightly obscured.) Earth's Embrace will ensure that you don't take any Fire damage from the raging flame field you are attempting to regularly create. Mineralize is a nice choice to help mitigate some of the damage you will take on the front lines, and since with this build you stack RES to the max, you will become considerably tanky.

-Cross Class Options-

-Black Mage: Storm Stones, and Specialization [Fire] are your big stops here. Giving you a good and reliable way to keep those Fire Fields coming, and increasing your basic attack damage even higher. Also if your GM is nice they may let you add a Burn effect on your Maelstrom effect from Geotrance (max damage spell-ish).

-Dragoon: Ride the Storm, and Velocity. Velocity+Element Field weapon just makes it a little easier to get those Elemental Fields up when you need them most. Really up to your GM and how they handle a Fire Field, but Ride the Storm could have some cool synergy there.

-Blue Mage: You could forgo Elemental Body, and instead take Chimera's Blood [+Fire] [-Earth] and Force of Nature [Auto-Flight]. Which would allow you to potentially negate all Earth damage from Flight (Still being discussed i think), and Gain HP from the damage that would otherwise be caused by your Fire Field. Bloodline [Dragon] could be a nice addition to your tankiness as well.

I'm sure there is more, but I only wanted to list a few to show the potential power of Geomancer being mixed with other classes. They have a lot to offer. And are by NO means underpowered.

Also, credit to the build above goes to Awahl. He's on this site as well as in my play group. He has a bigger grasp on the Fire Lord build than I do. One of the characters he is about to bring in to the story is a Dragoon/Geomancer. So he's a Red-Dragoon from the Temple of Fire. (All of the Dragoon colors are separated into different martial and religious sects in my world. They all fight, pray, and live based on the different emotional preferences of their patron Dragon deities.)

[zoofman]

Mind you I never said geomancers are underpowered, nor do I think their defensives are. If anything they are probably a bit overpowered, but it doesn't change the fact they are A) sort of really boring due to limited options, B) the limited options they do got are very fluffy and might not be relevant in the long run.

My Geomancer is a Forest Home Terrain for fluff reasons. I'm not a fan of the offensive but the defensive, Wild Bear, is pretty rad. And while the restorative ones don't heal -that- much it's FREE and for EVERYONE. It's a great out of combat utility when they come up. Though by far their best ones are the ARM and M. ARM bonuses.

I like the Town defensive fluff wise but it's not entirely useful. I get way more use out of intuitive magic geotrance.

I made the suggestion I did on the maging them up thing BECAUSE they are boring to play and their geotrances are not well balanced against one another. I don't really got a good suggestion there otherwise.

Here is what Theta, my Geomancer, looks like stat wise.
Level 9, we got a white mage and so it totally fudged the maxed attribute thing due to Stronger Together, so we tossed that out.

PWR 3 / RES 22 / DEX 17 / MND 3
HP: 360
ACC: 8
AVD: 9
Force / Finesse: 5/5
ARM/M.ARM: 47/47

Skills:
Stealth: 5+2
Awareness: 6+2
Lore (Monsters): 6
Nature: 6+2
Synthesis (Weapons)*: 7
Synthesis (Armor)*: 7
Systems: 6
* a homerule bonus, illegal by raw

Innate Ability: Geotrance
Geoawareness
Elemental Body
Third Eye
Storm Stones * got it as a freebie at char gen instead of racial bits
Force of Nature (Burrow one, the Float one is imbalanced as **** btw)
Home Terrain: Forest *Also was a freebie houserule thing
Dreamstate
Earth's Embrace

LIMIT ABILITY:
Mineralize

Weapon: Tier 4 Crossbow w/ Wind Strike or a Tier 3 Bow with Lightning Strike
Armor: Tier 4 Earth Enchancer (also house ruled, armor gets really boring properties)
Bracer: +2 ACC (From the equiptment thing I mentioned above)
Accessory: +2 RES

Honestly, he's sorta stupid powerful broken by being hard as hell to KO but also VERY boring in combat cause it feels like all I do usually is shoot magical crossbow bolts or arrows. I'll be taking Beast Master at 10, and my GM is letting me keep Geotrance if I swap out of class again, so after that I got no clue what I'm doing.

[squiggit]

A sort of unrelated Geomancer question for DMs:

On the subject of their 'intuitive magic'...what do you think of letting them try more complex feats of intuitive magic with skill checks? One of my players suggested it after being frustrated with how much I was limiting them in terms of what he could do. Also, do you allow them to use "Home Terrain" related effects for their intuitive magic? That is to say, do something snow related in a city because they have "Ice" home terrain?

Armor

That's one relatively minor complaint I've had so far: As a DM it's really hard to make interesting armor, shields, accessories and items without exploiting home rules and Special properties, at least until very high tier. Even for weapons it's kind of frustrating to put anything together.

Not sure if anyone agrees there, but I think it'd be nice if equipment either started opening up earlier in terms of property slots or there was a sideways gradient of some kind (something that denoted more property slots without necessarily also giving the item more damage/defense and access to more powerful properties).

[ThreadOfFate]

A sort of unrelated Geomancer question for DMs:

On the subject of their 'intuitive magic'...what do you think of letting them try more complex feats of intuitive magic with skill checks? One of my players suggested it after being frustrated with how much I was limiting them in terms of what he could do. Also, do you allow them to use "Home Terrain" related effects for their intuitive magic? That is to say, do something snow related in a city because they have "Ice" home terrain?

I generally let them use clever intuitive magic to get small bonuses on skill checks or do things to solve certain problems (like my aforementioned one of pushing the boulders aside). Given how insane things can get if you let them do almost anything with the magic, I try to limit it to smaller acts or things to get rid of minor obstacles.

I let them use the Home Terrain effects, but at reduced effectiveness. It's hard to get a whole grove in the middle of a town, but getting a single tree or maybe some cleverly-placed vines to allow for climbing a smooth wall would be fine.

[Rephath]

You built an amazing system that's easy to understand, rules light, and gets elegance from simplicity.

But then you took it a step further and made it entertaining to read with a beautiful layout. Well done sir. I'll post further critique as I finish reading it, but I doubt there's much I'll find to complain about.

[zoofman]

Double Edit: RE The above thing about crafting and shields and dual-wielding. Couldn't you just take that one Ability which gives you extra weapon proficiencies and pick dual wielding as one of them?

That is missing the point. Dual wield and shields arbitrarily give you more properties than other characters. Bracers or Bangles would alleviate that. Charging an ability to be on equal playing field in a system where the two combat roles basically boil down to 'support/heal' or 'deal damage' is sorta unjust.

there is little to no reason for that to occur in a system this combat based.

[ThreadOfFate]

That is missing the point. Dual wield and shields arbitrarily give you more properties than other characters. Bracers or Bangles would alleviate that. Charging an ability to be on equal playing field in a system where the two combat roles basically boil down to 'support/heal' or 'deal damage' is sorta unjust.

there is little to no reason for that to occur in a system this combat based.

No, I got the point. I was just curious about if you could pick Dual Wield with that ability. I was more looking for a rules clarification, not refuting your point or anything.

[squiggit]

That is missing the point. Dual wield and shields arbitrarily give you more properties than other characters. Bracers or Bangles would alleviate that. Charging an ability to be on equal playing field in a system where the two combat roles basically boil down to 'support/heal' or 'deal damage' is sorta unjust.

there is little to no reason for that to occur in a system this combat based.

Like I said before, I agree that the extra properties are a huge boon (and that I feel property options are too limited at lower brackets right now in general)... but calling it unfair feels a bit disingenuous because the mechanics are designed to be purely advantageous from the start. Whether or not that advantage is too extreme is another issue entirely, and one I tend to agree with ( though I'm not sure shields would be worth how exclusive they are if all they offered was half an armor tier)

[Aniseed]

Also, to everyone discussing Chimera's Blood, remember it specifically says you can never gain an immunity to any element you took a weakness to, by any means.

Whether that means you just can't get auto-flight or it means you can but you don't get the earth immunity is up to your DM, I guess.