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Porcer Class

Comments

  • Laito
    22
    Laito

  • Dart
    23
    Dart
    @Laito ;
    is there a timestamp or something i'm missing?
  • xa44
    26
    xa44
    Too manny limited actions and big porc is way too OP
  • GypsyCow
    17
    GypsyCow
    All right, time for some constructive feedback. My (self-described) specialty is consistency in both rules and visual formatting, so most of my feedback will be from the perspective of making this class fit with the Season 3 rule-set (within reason, of course; classes are no fun if they don't have a mechanic or two of their own).

    I do have a lot of thoughts and recommendations, but I want to preface all of it by saying that, thematically, I love this class. The abilities are clearly written with the ability for ANY race to control a band of Porcs (a la Karl Landers), which is a very, very fun niche for a minion/companion class.

    Now, the largest issue with this class so far is the implementation of minions. According to Season 3 rules, minions do not have health for the sole reason that this would become a nightmare to track. Minions die upon taking any damage, UNLESS they are invincible/nearly invincible (see enchantedobject, callearthlord, teacherspet) in which case their deaths would be at the discretion of the GM. This means that Porc summoning abilities would need to be retooled to either summon normal minions, or Porc Companions. Is this possible while maintaining the theme of this class? I think so. Allow me to propose some edited cards.

    A few other, card specific issues exist; I'll explain them and proposed changes on a case-by-case basis.

    _____

    Heavy Gunk Shot: This ability is really fun. My only proposed change is to change the status effects to "Burn, Poison, OR Blind" simply since it's very hard to track multiple status effects. It also encourages users to hold the ability for a round or two until they know what enemy needs what status, which is pretty fun.

    Porc on a Stick: This is a fun and goofy weapon, and pretty balanced IMO. A+.

    Yay! Meatshield!: Since this class is, fundamentally, a minion class, I think you should change the passive to be "You sacrifice Minions linked to you to reduce incoming Damage by 5 for each minion." I think this is a good idea because 1: It's a goofy way to mitigate incoming damage. 2: Blocking will be removed in Season 4 and I have a personal interest in future-proofing this class (I'll likely be using it myself). 3: I'll show you some of the math and evidence later, but this class in ANY form has a lot of minions. This helps give the user a meaningful choice as to how they're used.
    In card form: custom card
    I bumped down the Stamina here just because I think 30 is a bit much for a shield that already adds damage mitigation and specified the attack types just because I think that logically Piercing would go through the minions, but those aren't terribly important; just my own interpretation when implementing the changes.

    Porc Cannon: This ability is fun. For the tracking reasons I outlined above, the Minion Stamina should go, and although the idea of giving these Porcs special tasks is fun, it would also be kind of hard to track; additionally, Porcish Labor already has this gimmick, so I think it's kind of overkill to have that ability on both cards.
    In card form: custom card
    Strictly speaking, since the cannon is reusable, the ability itself is simply placing the cannon, so the gems describe the range in which you can place the cannon, with the effects of firing described within the card text. In my implementation, ANYBODY can fire the cannon (for maximum shenanigans) but the Porc it fires is always linked to the person who placed the Porc Cannon.

    Personality Belch: This ability is really fun. I'd change the order of the wording slightly (describing the duration in order of Average Roll, High Roll, Critical Hit), but that's just me be thorough in my nit-picking.

    Rescue Porc: This is a really cool kind of Saving Throw idea. I think the Stamina and number of treasures should be reduced slightly (30 and 3 respectively IMO) since living after a failed Death Roll is supposed to be difficult and expensive. Additionally, you might consider making Rescue Porc trigger once per Campaign, or having them enter the combat zone rather than spawning off the player so they're required to reach you and THEN remove you. Overall, really cool basic idea.
    Is this Porc controlled by you or the GM? I'm a little confused on this front, so it may be worth specifying this on the card as well.

    Porcish Labour: This card is eally fun. Minion base damage is 5, so having a group of Minions that can deal double damage and do a bunch of non-Miniony stuff for a single turn is great way to bend the minion rules without putting a massive burden on the GM. The only real change I'd recommend is making this a Limited Ability, and if not, definitely reduce how far they can move you by AT LEAST 10, if not 15 (being able to move 20 spaces with your Regular Action, plus 5 with your Move, is REALLY powerful).

    Mega Porbo: Mega Porbo, in it's current form, is both too strong and too expensive. Even at 500 Gold, having triple the user's Stamina makes Mega Porbo EXTREMELY tanky, and 60 damage with Basic Attacks, on top of your own Regular Action's damage, is an insane amount of DPS for one character. Additionally, since this ability costs 500 gold, it's either prohibitively expensive for people who want to use some of the other goofy abilities in this class, or makes characters already rich enough to be powerful become VERY powerful. My best attempt to balance this card is to make one of your Minions a Large Tile, invincible, and deal 10 Damage for the rest of Combat, but I'm not sure if that's capturing the theme of this card. I'd recommend you give this card some more though; out of everything in this class, this is the one card that I'd recommend reworking entirely.

    Truffle Sangrio: This is a cool little RP ability. Keep it as is.

    Alpha Porc and Oink: I'm putting these together because I'm recommending that you split Alpha Porc into two abilities, replacing (but not removing entirely) Oink. It's easier to show than explain, so without further ado:
    This card contains the Large Tile aspect of Alpha Porc, and gives you the Stamina from the Black Boar race card.
    The new Alpha Porc allows you to keep your minions so long as you're present at the end of Combat (so if you're weak enough to need a Rescue Porc intervention, no Minions for you), so you can build your Porc Band over the course of a Campaign. The Critical Hit/Death Roll effect has been modified so that Porcers with extra inventory space can get some more loyal and capable Porcs, and the price has been increased to account for both of these relatively powerful abilities.
    It also allows you to add the Oink Companion Ability to your inventory, removing the need for a redundant, Class-specific Oink card.

    Porc Pit: This ability is fun, but needs some numerical balancing. For reference, the most Minions that can be summoned with a Regular Action ability is 8, and those are not linked to anybody and require another card from the same class to behave as linked minions (magicalschooling, tridentofsuperiority). In general, a single Regular Action can summon at most 4 minions without synergy (summonairsprites, proudmoorestaff). The Porc Pit is even more efficient than a Regular Action, since it passively summons Porcs. Your card has no action gem, so I'll assume it's Limited. In which case, based on a roll (seeing as the card doesn't specify a number of Porcs for Low, Avg, High, I'm assuming you summon the number on the Dice), it's summoning on average 10.5 Porcs per round for free. 10 is the most minions a Limited summons without synergy (thecartel, beehive), and these can only be used once under most circumstances. Porc Pit, on average, is like using The Cartel EVERY TURN, on top of having a few other ways to create Porcs. I'd recommend that you roll a D6 to determine the number of Porcs. It's an average of 3.5 Porcs per round (17 per combat rounded up, assuming 5 rounds), which is 17.5 free damage or 17.5 free damage reduction (with Meatshield) per turn on top of your own Actions.

    I'd also highly recommend dropping the Attributes from the card; even if you shaved it down to a single attribute for all Porcs summoned from one pit, tracking which Porcs came during which combat (assuming you have Alpha Porc) is not a burden Gamemasters want to put themselves through.

    _____

    Here I'm going to give you a little Card Format pass. This isn't very important, but if you do decide to go through and clean a couple things up, you may decide to take the time to make the cards read like Rob's official cards.

    Gems:
    Gems on the official cards follow this order
    Card Type (reg, limited, consumable, passive, weapon, etc.) > Item > Spell > Projectile/Melee/Line(w/ range) > Area
    Your cards follow this order pretty well. Keep in mind that companion gems (like Size and Speech) don't go on cards that summon creatures, only on cards that literally represent such creatures (such as a specific Companion).

    Text:
    Any terms regarding specific game mechanics (basically, anything that has a specific meaning in the rules) are capitalized.
    For example: Damage, Low/Average/High Roll, Critical Hit/Fail, Minion, Companion, Regular Action, Area, Charm(ed)/Poison(ed)/other status effects, Status Effect (when referring to them generally), Move, Projectile.
    The list is non-exhaustive, but I'd imagine you get the idea. There are cases where some of these terms aren't used as game mechanics terms and aren't capitalized. For example, a card that says "Send out a nimbus to scout the surrounding area, making you immune to Blindness for the rest of Combat": area isn't capitalized because it is not referring to a measured Area (as could be noted by an Area Gem).
    If you're not sure whether a term should be used or not, search for it on the site's Card viewer to see if Rob capitalized it and how he used it, he's very consistent.
    As a general rule of thumb, if you can easily define a term's specific game meaning (Round: 1 cycle of player and enemy turns) or if it has a quantifiable measurement behind it (Area: 3x3), it should probably be capitalized.

    _____

    I hope you found some of this information helpful! I like helping people take these fun, original class concepts and whittling them to fit with the URealms ruleset without destroying the identity, so with any luck I've helped you do just that.
  • Dart
    23
    Dart
    @GypsyCow dude, thanks a lot for your feedback! I feel like you got the gist of what i was going with for most of the classes, and i agree with a lot of it. For gunk shot i think i'll have it be a mix of posion and burn? the idea is that it's really hard to get out off, unlike most ones where you only have to pass a low roll. 

    I like porc on a stick as well - it's simialir to pombo's bird on a stick, but with less birds and more screaming porcs.

    As for Yay! Meatshield, i went through many variations - the first idea i had was summoning 4 minions who surrounded you dance of the hat style, taking any damage for you. But it didn't feel strong enough for a limited, and having 4 porcs block 4 attacks seemed too strong for a regular action. So then i settled on the Pig shield from season 2 - where your pig died in a horrific fashion after taking a set amount of damage, which i enjoyed because it was creative. So because i couldn't work around the balancing of the Get down mr porcer, i had a meatshield instead. 

    Perhaps i could have a passive called Devoted Porcs, where you could have a porc minion sacrifice itself for you to take the brunt of an attack. 

    And yeah, Porc cannon is fun - i enjoy it being a long range attack to send porcs flying, and the special abitlies was more for roleplay - like if you need to send a porc over a castle wall to open a gate, this is the ability for it. Although you're revamped porc cannon card is worded much better though. 

    And personality belch i like too - i dont know the lore on porcs bc coes quest hasn't been out yet, but porcs have the most varied characters in urealms. Almost every porc has a vastly different personality that comes out a porc pit, so someone who has masterd the porc pit should be able to change your personality. 

    Rescue porc is controlled by the player, and i should probally change it to once per campaign. I feel like 40 stamina maybe, if you managed to fail a death roll chances are whatever killed you is probally strong, so the rescue porc needs to survive at least 2 hits. The utility belt could be reduced to 3 also - it might be fun to have an extra challenge figuring out how to save your character with a rescue porc. I would say it's up to the GM's discretion where rescue porc appears - it could be at the edge of combat, it could be through an air duct, who knows. 

    and the idea of porcish labour is really cool to me to- in a roleplay camaign sense, it's powerful because their basically the handyporcs of the apoclypse. Need to read a baby a bedtime story? need to perform heart surgery on a king who just ahd a heart attack? Need to break into a safe vault? Need to pole vaault or climb a tree? And yeah, mybe reduce it to carry you 10 spaces, or have it increase your move action to 15 spaces. 

    Mega Porbo was to be in my mind, the ultimate porc summon. You spend all of your energy, your life force, into creating the strongest porc who is a walking juggernaut of death. Potentially a Brutal death roll - 50/50 on whether you survive after casting it. Like, in roleplay: You're the last member of your party in combat, everyone has either run, escaped or died - you summon it. The Porc of Death. But i could replace this with a potential other ability too - it's not really neccesary for the class, i just felt it would be fun to summon a massive destructive porc to slam down on your enemies. 

    Truffle Sangrio is fun - i made it a spell so it can potentially appear in the random spell deck if you include custom classes in those, that way you can charm yourself mid combat, always fun. 

    I also like the black boar blood and Alpha porc split - the +40 stamina and large tile effects let you turn into a minion spawning tank, and really makes the passive stand out. Alpha porc is a fun thing that graudally builds up if you want a porc army, and it also gives the feel Alpha porc was supposed to be - you're so strong porcs from all over are wowed by your power.

    And Porc Pit was supposed to be a more crazy version of the     rodofthemonkeyfish
    where weak porcs spawn each turn, and wreak havoc on the battle field and enemies. I imagine a d6 for porc minions would be much better than a d20. 

    But i like the genereal theme and ideas behind my abilties/limiteds, but the gameplay elements always need harsh tweaking,
  • Laito
    22
    Laito
    @Dart Mm, thought I set a timestamp. Guess the encoding stopped it working or something.

    Like, 33:41-34:23. Just something concerning the name you chose.
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