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Varying state arts!
StrikesBrain
Member Posts: 222
I had a funky idea about arts, that should be possible with this new engine. What if arts were not just an "on/off" switch. What if they could be heaped on to various levels of abuse.
Hammering an art on a dreamer would possibly add an X value to some unseen variable, which would be the art, and it would bleed off after time. The higher the value, the worse the art would manifest itself on the dreamer. So, if a lower orbit FS gets lucky with blind in a dreamer, that person would be inconvenience. If a high orbit FS managed to hammer the dreamer with with blind, he or she would be totally helpless. As the art wears off it wouldn't go all away at once under this system, the symptoms would gradually vanish. While this is a potential nerf on FS abilities, I got a balance listed below that'll make a GK's life miserable, so keep reading 
Here's my ideas on how it'd manifest.
Darkness - While the art is only manifested weakly, the victim gets tunnel vision, A viel of darkness quickly closes in from the sides of the victim's vision, absolutely killing peripheral vision. As more of this art is heaped on the dreamer, the darkness closes in and becomes total darkness. The most minimal affect should be enough to be a severe inconvenience, cutting off at LEAST 50% of their vision field.
Paralysis - At lower levels, this art slows down every aspect of the dreamer, it should be significant enough to severely cut their effectiveness. The paralysis would even affect the speed of other non-movement related stuff, like item recharge speed. Heaped on enough, it'll stop a dreamer cold in his or her tracks.
Deafness - It's pretty obvious how that would be handled, a simple cut on all volume. Also, the game could start removing random patches of spoken text, causing the victim to have difficulty comprehendin what's being said.
Stagger - Agian, this one is pretty straightforward, the harder the victim is hit, the harder they stagger. Perhaps this could be balanced agianst paralysis by starting off hitting decently hard off the bat.
Scare - I don't know about cutting this. If anything I'd empower it a little by forcing the victim to run directly away from the evoker, and disallowing the use of aggresive acts. Lets face it, if the evoker chose fight over flight, they wouldn't be running. This would be pretty harsh, so perhaps if the victim gets a specified distance away from the evoker, they can stop running but they still have many directly violent actions locked. Though one'd have to cut the duration on this art to offset such penalties perhaps....
To offset this feature, one could make GK arts a buffer. Lets say when someone gets free action, or Dexterity as its new Reclamation name, evoked on them. Now this would buff up a seperate value for Dexterity, if they get paralysis evoked on them, lets say the value of dexterity is subtracted from the value of Paralysis, before they get the affect of the art. The paralysis remains, but it allows the recipient of the art to ignore it, to a degree.
What does it do, it makes it so no GK art is absolute protection agianst a powerful enough fatesender.
A soulmaster may have pumped up will just enough to get dexterity. He Levels the art as far as he can, but he cannot evoke it too many times at once due to his low willpower. He buffs up a little and comes accross a powerful fatesender, in a battle. The fatesender uses paralysis agianst him, it doesn't work at first, so the fatesender begins evoking it on him over and over, suddely the soulmaster finds himself slowing down and comming to an eventual hault.
There direly needs to be one more thing though, the game needs a graphical cue that you are being affected by an art, something a bit more blatent then line of text. In combat it can become hard to catch somethings like that. What is needed is some sort of image that flashes in the view window that screams to the victim without a shred of reasonable doubt that someone is assaulting them with [insert unpleasent art] and they must act NOW while they still can and try to cream the creep.
Also, divest, under this system you could set it so various levels of the art merely strip away varying amounts of protection, it should be a pretty hefty amount once the art is levelled up to higher levels. Enough to strip all but the most beefily arted people.
Because only someone as deranged as me would have a rubber chicken Named Alfredo Sanchez
Comments
~Khyperu~
Soon to be dreamer
And now I'm wondering what it'd be like if the invisibility arts caused the evoker to gain a predator-like invisibility. Much like what you can see (or not see) in those halo games, or even see from someone in a stealth suit in planetside.
Agiant it would nerf that ability but the varying state arts system I listed above could balance that. A higher layering of the art can force more and more stealthiness while on the move. While the GK who managed to get his hands on an invis alt may leave tell-tale ripples whenever he moves. Though, I will note, its hard to hit anything without a distinct outline.
Because only someone as deranged as me would have a rubber chicken Named Alfredo Sanchez
Eh... I dunno about that one
Well, I do know about it. Though, you didn't really bring up any counterpoints for me to argue so I'll just state the method to my madness here.
You got fatesenders who are miffed that 3 art evokes makes then useless. This gives an option around that, the defender needs to meet the attacker's problem. If you think its a little too harsh you could also have it so having the protection active makes it so you can at worst, only get partially affected by the art.
On the same hand, I'm sure there's a lot of people who feel that getting hammered by a stray affect chak of certain varieties when they just happen to not have free action up means almost certain death.
So, I tried to work this out as a counterbalance to all that stuff.
Because only someone as deranged as me would have a rubber chicken Named Alfredo Sanchez