Final Fantasy d6 (Complete System)

[Sparx MacGyver]

Surrealistik, I like the work you've done so far. I'd enjoy your take on the Engineer class.

[ThreadOfFate]

Surrealistik:

I like some of your rules fixes, especially the Retraining and Check Ends ones.

The physical damage one, though, I feel might be overcompensation. I'm going to take some time composing my reply for that, though, and probably throw in some fancy graphs.

Gonna look at your Dark Knight ones later, too. I has excites. Dark Knight is one of my favorite classes. :D

[Surrealistik]

The physical damage fix is pretty rough. That said, it may be overcompensation when you factor in auto-Haste, but not by that much.

As an example, 2 attacks vs 1 ultimate Scathe, with Tier 8 weapons vs 107 L15 monster armour (evenly distributed between MDEF and DEF). Each has a relevant ability score of 24. The 2d6 damage is averaged as 7.

2x Physical (including critical hit/miss, though they really cancel out):

((7+8)*24+7-107)*.9444*2+((7+8)*24+7-107)*.0278*2*2 = 520

1x Ultimate (Scathe):

(24*24+7)-107 = 476

I also want AVD to mean something rather than being essentially eliminated as a consideration by mid-high levels. In otherwords scaling such that a 5 to 6+ is required by +2-1 accuracy classes to hit normally. That gives us a hit chance of 83.33% or 72.22%

The impact:

520 damage (as above) * .8333 = 433.316 damage (+2 base accuracy)
520 * .7222 = 375.544 (+1 base accuracy)

In all I'd say that's about fair between the range, secondary effects and AoE of spells. Slowing the progression to Level / 3 might be warranted (gives post accuracy damage of 353.32 or 306.2128 as above).

Though I haven't yet run the numbers, pre-autohaste is probably even more advantageous for magic.

[Temotei]

Looking through the skills, it looks like with your revision, it'd be something like this:

{table=head]Skill|Attribute
Athletics|Force
Acting|Force/Finesse
Awareness|Finesse
Escape|Force
Healing|Force/Finesse
Inquiry|Force/Finesse
Language|Finesse
Lore|Finesse
Mercantile|Force/Finesse
Nature|Force/Finesse
Negotiation|Force/Finesse
Perform|Force/Finesse
Scavenge|Force/Finesse
Stealth|Finesse
Swimming|Force
Synthesis|Force/Finesse
Systems|Finesse
Thievery|Finesse
Vehicles|Force/Finesse[/table]

That brings the tally to 3 Force, 6 Finesse, and 10 Force/Finesse.

Sound about right?

Under Black Fang in your new Dark Knight job abilities, it says the recharge is killing an enemy...but the ability itself kills an enemy if it succeeds, providing an infinite loop of recharging until the opponent beats you on an opposed check. Is this intended?

[Surrealistik]

Under Black Fang in your new Dark Knight job abilities, it says the recharge is killing an enemy...but the ability itself kills an enemy if it succeeds, providing an infinite loop of recharging until the opponent beats you on an opposed check. Is this intended?

Yes.

Black Fang is one of those powers that will have a level prerequisite.

Also I like the table. I'm not sure if I'd make Escape Force exclusive, but by and large it looks good to me.

[ThreadOfFate]

((7+8)*24+7-107)*.9444*2+((7+8)*24+7-107)*.0278*2*2 = 520

What are those percentage chances for?

Aside from that, here's what I've thought, in a series of mildly disconnected statements:

The main advantage of attacking with a physical weapon over spells is the side effects that a weapon has - all the myriad properties that give you extra options and abilities in combat (like the X-Touch, X-Killer, X-Eater properties, for example). Not many spells do both damage and a status effect.

Piercing says screw you ARM values, while spells can never ignore M.ARM (except specific spells, I think).

Spells can also be reflected, whereas physical attacks cannot.

Casting more than one spell per round is difficult, barring the Quick-Cast property. Even with Haste, you can't double-cast - you can just start and finish casting the spell on your turn.

You can screw over casters easily enough (though of course there are ways to prevent things like Knockback and Seal), and these spells require MP to cast. Granted, MP can be easily recovered, but that's still one action that someone else can't take. MP reserves are usually pretty damn big, too.

If the problem is that spells do too much damage, I don't think the solution is to elevate physical fighters to that level. Otherwise, you have the same problem that Wizards had with D&D 3.5. The Tome Of Battle helped fix the gap between casters and non-casters somewhat, but it was still a fairly major problem after due to the adaptability of casters.

Why not just nerf spell damage? There aren't -that- many spells that you couldn't go through them and sort out the damage. Or add an accuracy factor to spells - if the attack roll hits, it does full damage. Otherwise, half.

[Temotei]

I'm not sure if I'd make Escape Force exclusive, but by and large it looks good to me.

Yeah, I made it Force because you did in your other post, to be honest.

[Surrealistik]

Yeah, I made it Force because you did in your other post, to be honest.

Haha, my bad, def should have been dual classified; that's what I get for late night posting.

What are those percentage chances for?

Factoring in auto-miss and critical hit chances though really they cancel out as noted.

As for your observation, while there's a lot of truth to what you're saying, I'd argue that the disadvantages of spells are certainly counterbalanced by AoEs (AoEs do _massively_ more aggregate damage) and effects, massive MP pools that are rarely a consideration (practically) at higher levels, as well as the range and lack of an attack roll (yes, attack rolls are presently meaningless; but I am balancing assuming they are not). Further, though it is true spells can be obviated by Seal and Knockback there's also Blind, Disarm, and Stop vs physical attacks.

I don't think ToB applies all that much due to casters not having nearly the flexibility in FFd6 that they do in 3.5.

Like I said, Level / 3 scaling I might be able to accept as parity, but certainly nothing lower unless spell damage is lowered.

[ThreadOfFate]

Stuff!

The ToB was an example. No, it's not completely relevant, but I was using it to say, don't try and raise everyone to the damage level of spell-casters. Instead, lower the spell casters.

Pretty much every negative aspect to spells has a way to eliminate it - Haste for the Slow action issue (or Quick Cast), things to prevent knockback or negative status effects, Reflect can merely have someone cast another Reflect or have an Auto-Reflect ring, and so on - but I feel like spells ultimately should do more damage (just a little bit more!) than your average attack. On multiple targets, they should do much less than before, obviously. At least half. Maybe more.

The solution to this is, I feel, to instead lower the damage done by spells. I don't feel like you can do a blanket "-2 tier levels" or something because that makes some spells completely worthless.

Instead, go through them case-by-case and do a damage lowering based on each spell. Or my attack roll suggestion, possibly coupled with that.

Alternatively, rather than having AoE spells do a different set of damage to each, merely divide the damage done by the number of targets.

These are just off-the-cuff suggestions. I haven't put near as much time into this as you have, I'm just throwing things out to see what sticks. I did, though, do some reading and rebalancing of all the spells (except Blue Magic spells):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

[Surrealistik]

I don't think ToB is especially comparable/applicable because the failure of ToB was its inability to account for vastly superior caster flexibility, not in equalizing damage. In truth, while casters (generally) have more flexibility than pure meleers in FFd6, it isn't nearly to the same order of magnitude as with 3.5.

That said, even in the sense of ToB as a precaution against using a broken/overpowered standard as a baseline to which things should be elevated, I'm not so sure I'd even go so far as to say casters currently have excessive damage output. The solitary exception might be their AoEs which have insane aggregate damage; the 'spread' versions should definitely see a damage nerf (dividing their single target power by 3 or 4 for example when used in that capacity, or even dividing it by the total # of targets).

That said, you're right in that a lot of spells need cleaning up and could use some one on one revision; I'll definitely look into that a bit later.

This all said, physical attackers could get away with Level / 4 scaling assuming the spell AoE premium is dealt with.

[squiggit]

"Don't raise everyone up" is only a problem when that bar we're using on the upper end is problematic in the first place... and it really isn't on its own. A 'by the book' black mage casting flare or scathe every turn really isn't that scary on his own and only really stands out because the thief/warrior/whatever in his party is so bad at hurting things. It's the black/red/time hybrid who's using charismagic and crystal cannon to stack MND and casts flare star three times on his first turn or the electrocute/chimera blue mage who's healing himself to full every round that becomes problematic.

And even ignoring spells the damage output for physical damage seems kinda low. I mean it seems pretty silly to me that unless you're running auto-haste and triple critical break damage limit is going to be a dead property for you, etc.

I suppose the only real downside there is it makes MPless mages a bit better too.

Also I like the table. I'm not sure if I'd make Escape Force exclusive, but by and large it looks good to me.

This is my fundamental problem with the idea of basing skill caps based on certain skills. There's very few (really only swimming) skills that can be justified as force only, and only a handful that really fit as either or.

That's why I think it'd just be better to make the cap something like 2/3 + level/2 with skill points being 1 + finesse/2(or 3).

edit:

Piercing says screw you ARM values, while spells can never ignore M.ARM (except specific spells, I think).

The Imperil weapon property is essentially piercing for magic.

but it was still a fairly major problem after due to the adaptability of casters.

That's the key here. The adaptability made ToB an issue... ffd6 casters really don't have that degree of flexibility and it's a flexibility that decreases the deeper into the campaign they get.

Besides, whether or not they're adaptable is sort of tangential. Whether or not you nerf one's damage or buff the other's doesn't really change it.

[Surrealistik]

I should note that I'm explicitly ignoring the obvious super broken combos because they won't survive the next errata. Charismagic is painfully broken; kick out!

This is my fundamental problem with the idea of basing skill caps based on certain skills. There's very few (really only swimming) skills that can be justified as force only, and only a handful that really fit as either or.

That's why I think it'd just be better to make the cap something like 2/3 + level/2 with skill points being 1 + finesse/2(or 3).

TBH I don't mind Finesse having a fairly slight edge when it comes to exclusive skills. My proposal so far is

1 + your Level / 2 + relevant ability score / 2.

With 2 + your Finesse / 2 skill points gained each level.

Even if you're totally Force focused, you can still get excellent scores in a broad diversity of skills, including extremely valuable and important ones like Synthesis.

About the worst thing is a completely Force focused character's lower Awareness/Stealth caps, but even so their scores here can still be respectable.

[Sparx MacGyver]

Well, got to run a game today. We had no problem with character creation or the actual game itself. What we have a problem at is the leveling. With the gaining HP part, specifically. When gaining a new level, do you add the HP bonus and then add res again? For instance, if I have Res 9 as a Gambler, that would give me 23 HP. At level 2 if I put one ability in RES would it become 37 which is just adding job bonus, 38 which is adding the 1 to res and job bonus, or 48 which is both 1 to RES, the bonus form job, and adding in the full 9 again. Which would be the appropriate method? GM senses tell me to go with 38..

[Vauron]

The correct way is:
Max HP = (Class HP+RES+any relevant abilities)*(Level).

The relevant quote is: "To calculate a character's Maximum Hit Points, add their RES score with the HP Bonus granted by their Job, and multiply the total by their level."*


*page 10**
**Also MP works the exact same way.

[squiggit]

HP calculation is simply ( RES + Job bonus ) * level in the current system.

That means your health doubles from 1 to 2.

Think about it, RES would be a pretty junky stat if it only gave you 1 HP per point regardless of level.

It also calculates retroactively based on whatever class you are as well. So if you change from Gambler to Paladin you'd instantly gain the difference in their job bonuses times your level in max HP (personally I'm not a fan of that, but whatever).

[Sparx MacGyver]

Thanks, the wording had me confused, as it said add your jobs bonus hp and then recalculate.

[Surrealistik]

Lots of updates made to the errata in progress:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...JZZxrOpJA/edit

[Sparx MacGyver]

Surrealistik,

You posted under Deep Breathing - "You cannot use this ability until the end of your next turn,...." What does that mean? You can use it once, but then have to wait a round before you can use it again? Like, I use it this round, then have to wait until after my next turn (ergo waiting a round) then on my next turn after that use it again?

Edit: Also, damage is no longer Stat*Tier? So, if I'm level 6 with a tier 4 weapon, and a 12 in PWR and rolling a total of 8 on the 2d6, it should come out to 12*(2+4)+8=80. It's quite the improvement in damage, at least for physical weapons.

Edit II: I'm still working at a version Magicite for this game. I'm thinking something similar to Materia, but should also be it's own thing. I know in FFVI it was 100 MP earned in battle to fully learn a spell, and Magicite taught the spells at different rates, from X1 to X10, so maybe something along those lines. The other thing I have is that VI and VII didn't have Magic users unless you equipped Magicite/Materia, unless you were either a Magitek Knight or Mako infused Soldier, from VI and VII respectively. For my next campaign set in the system, I'm thinking of not allowing magic using jobs unless you start off as on of those. What would you guys suggest? Balance is my primary issue, as I want it to be fair and still retain that fun factor this game system has.

[squiggit]

I don't like the idea of skill check difficulty being level based. It makes ranking up skills maintenance as much as actual improvement.

Also Athletics as a force only skill seems a bit off. Running/climbing might be force based. But the skill is broad and includes gymnastic and acrobatic feats that seem definitely as finesse oriented.

Per your red Mage fixes: I like the spirit of the fastcast fix, but I don't think a Health penalty is the right way to go. What about a tier penalty? Something that forces the Mage to fastcast only weaker spells. This is especially notable at endgame: a 'by the book' red mage fast casting flare and curaga while his white/black counterparts have access to scathe/nuke/full life/ etc. isn't really problematic. It's really only at lower levels (where for some reason the red Mage spellbook is strictly better than pure mage counterparts) or at endgame when the red mage is multiclassing over to time or black to fastcast ancients. Additionally the penalty is sort of self negating if the red mage is spending that fast cast to heal.

I think something like "Fastcast may only be used with spells a tier lower than the highest tier the red mage has access to" would be better. With a caveat that lets them fast cast superiors at 14 or 15.

The charismagic change looks a bit off too, especially the weapon component. It's too easy to simply Gemini or multiclass for a concealed/ranged or equip an arcane, the Dex/2 would just seem like a nonfeature at that point.

[Surrealistik]

Surrealistik,

You posted under Deep Breathing - "You cannot use this ability until the end of your next turn,...." What does that mean? You can use it once, but then have to wait a round before you can use it again? Like, I use it this round, then have to wait until after my next turn (ergo waiting a round) then on my next turn after that use it again?

Edit: Also, damage is no longer Stat*Tier? So, if I'm level 6 with a tier 4 weapon, and a 12 in PWR and rolling a total of 8 on the 2d6, it should come out to 12*(2+4)+8=80. It's quite the improvement in damage, at least for physical weapons.

I'm going to reword it to be 1 / Combat, recharging at the end of your next turn.

Damage is a combination of Level / 3 + Tier. This is indeed a pretty significant and deserved increase to melee damage.

@ Fastcast: Actually an even better penalty might be to deduct 25% of Max HP per spell tier beyond Novice (i.e. you can fastcast Novice spells in that way without penalty). This would allow for novas albeit at a substantial cost. This could either be applied after the spell resolves, or before, but with the prohibition that the affected spell can't heal the Red Mage.

@ Charismagic: Yeah, I could unnerf the Dex portion without breaking anything; the MND / 2 substitution is required though.


As for Athletics being Force only, Force has got to have some top tier exclusivity as skills go; Finesse gets Awareness and Stealth after all.

I could remove scaling difficulties, or just make them set of reference values for DMs that want a scaling difficulty/target number appropriate to a character's level.

[Surrealistik]

Added some updates to the vehicle rules.

[squiggit]

The problem I have here is that both those changes turn the red mage purely into a support caster instead of the battle mage they are right now:

With those fastcast changes you're generally going to only be using it for spells like hex/ruse/eject and maybe burning HP for shell/protect/wall/resonance/dimensional gate/etc.

I can't see anyone seriously burning 75% of their health for a merely standard action flare or malediction, much less sacrificing their entire life bar for a scathe (though maybe as a desperation full life I guess).

The charismagic change compounds that: At nearly every level bracket a mind based red mage with your charismagic would do more damage simply auto attacking with an arcane when combined with your auto attack change. The only real exceptions here being spells that do grossly out of the norm damage like Ultima and a few other edge cases. And that's before you factor in haste letting you attack twice for every spell you could throw out (in which case even Ultima would do less damage than two attacks). Obviously this doesn't include stuff that naturally scales off MND.

[Surrealistik]

After factoring in the damage reduction of group spells and the increment to physical damage, it's still a bit harsh, yes; it should be examined and compared in the context of other important changes.

Changing Fastcast to 25% HP per tier beyond the 2nd should work:

Red Mage, Fastcast: The Red Mage can cast a spell as a Standard action by paying 25% of his max HP per tier of that spell beyond Intermediate once per round. HP lost in this way cannot be restored by that spell.

The only upgrade I could see making to Charismagic without breaking it is having it use a somewhat higher % of MND than 50%, which gets a little awkward in terms of calcs.

[squiggit]

Someone earlier in the thread suggested Dex based spell scaling. Not sure I completely like the idea but it does help address the problem of them being a one stat class while still keeping an emphasis on finesse. Also would discourage other mages a bit from dipping red for it.

AoE balance needs to be careful. I don't much like the idea of just dividing damage because then it's not a true AoE and it makes the feature less desirable in situations where you're not worried about the single target damage being too strong (i.e. 3-5 moderately strong enemies. If the AoE just divides the damage between them you might as well just do single target).

[Surrealistik]

The way optional AoEs are structured is that the damage is divided by the number of targets up to a certain point. The option to spread out damage to start is advantageous alone. When you have 4+ targets, the net damage is greater as there is no further degradation.

Yes, divvying up the damage becomes more situational and isn't such a no-brainer virtually all of the time, but that's the idea; aggregate damage is currently far too high.

Now granted, spells that default as AoEs are also an issue, and should have their ridiculous aggregate outputs likewise tackled. Changed existent wording to this:

Multi Target Spells: Damaging spells that allow you to attack a group have their damage divided by the total number of targets (Maximum divisor of 3). This includes spells that can either single target or be used as a group; in this event, the single target damage is divided; you can choose the exact number of targets for these spells.


As for Dex scaling spells, how so? In terms of damage? Wouldn't that skew things even _more_ in favour of Finesse?

[Sparx MacGyver]

What does the Special Vehicle Job Ability do? It says you get one free vehicle equal to your highest tier item +1.

[Surrealistik]

What does the Special Vehicle Job Ability do? It says you get one free vehicle equal to your highest tier item +1.

Yes, as per the above chart.

So if you had a Tier 3 weapon, you'd get a Tier 4 vehicle by taking that Job Ability.

[Sparx MacGyver]

Yes, as per the above chart.

So if you had a Tier 3 weapon, you'd get a Tier 4 vehicle by taking that Job Ability.

So it essentially replaces the current shared ability that grants a special vehicle.

[Surrealistik]

So it essentially replaces the current shared ability that grants a special vehicle.

Exactly. 10char

[squiggit]

I misunderstood then. I thought the ideas was that the AoE version of the spell would just be single target damage divided by number of targets.

As for Dex scaling spells, how so? In terms of damage? Wouldn't that skew things even _more_ in favour of Finesse?

The red mage as a class is basically already only concerned with finesse, so I'm not sure how that idea makes it worse. The big problem with red mage is that they're essentially a one stat class right now (obviously with some RES thrown in). Auto attack damage, spell damage, mana all from the same source (even survivability if they dip time for mana shield).

The idea with this change is that it would force them to divvy up their stats a bit more and essentially give them the same problem as a standard mage where they're forced to split their attribute allocations between damage and mana. While having the added benefit of making it less attractive for every other mage in the game to just multiclass to red for charismagic (presuming also that power was made less awful in the same balance sweep).

Like I said, it's not perfect. I was just reminded of the idea so I thought I'd bring it up again.