Seven Samurai Progress

[FoxBat]

Also I think there is a shadow step that is not considered a spell. I think it is a stance. (Shadow Walk)

Right but, many of the shadow-step spells have heals tacked onto them, and/or let you step back to an ally, which is more reliable for getting you out of danger.

[Zed-F]

It's good to brainstorm a lot of ideas but I agree with Fox that we were really not that far from beating the mission last time, so we should be a bit cautious about how much we open up the floor. And while I am glad to see lots of folks contributing there are a few key points we should IMHO keep in mind:

1) KISS is important. If we want to encourage drop-ins from AB or from the rest of the guild we should not ignore this. If we're using more than 6-7 simply stated rules, we've got too many and should consolidate or drop some of them for ease of play. Similarly, requirements to have specific weapons should NOT be set in stone; saying everyone ought to have a katana is good as a recommendation but not as a hard and fast rule. The same applies for other weapons.

2) Focusing on swords is important. While samurai in general used all sorts of weapons, IIRC these particular samurai used swords as their primary weapons; other weapons saw regular but only situational use. Even Heihachi only used his axe for chopping wood, to the best of my knowledge. Of course the villagers did use spears, mostly cut from bamboo. I don't object to using other weapons AS WELL AS swords, but every Samurai must be competent at sword-work, however we define that competency (e.g. min 9, 10, or 11 swordsmanship? Must bring 2+ sword skills?)

3) Avoiding the use of elites is important. According to the movie lore, these samurai are second-rate, at best; they should NOT have elite skills. This is important thematically; it ties into the whole examination of what it means to be a samurai, and to follow the code of bushido. The heroes of the story take all sorts of actions that would be considered dishonorable by 'real' samurai. The movie asks, is it because they are second-rate, or because the period definition of what it meant to be a 'real' samurai was a wrong-headed one?

4) I still think avoiding overt magic is important. I don't mind chants and echoes as much, because they can be conceptualized as motivation and morale-effects. Many of the assassin skills can be similarly conceptualized in mundane ways. I'm less keen on other classes that delve more deeply into magic. This includes Dervishes, which just have the wrong feel in many ways (desert origin, religious, use a peasant weapon, use prayer-based magic, etc.) Though some non-spell skills from those classes may be ok in principle, if we decde we want to sacrifice those in order to make a primarily class-based restriction to exclude overt magic rather than a skill-type-based one I think it might be a valid approach. That said, it may be useful to continue to restrict some assassin skill types, just as we may restrict some ranger/paragon skill types such as pets, rituals, etc.


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So how about the following proposal for rules, based on the above principles and the preceding discussion?

1) At most 7 Samurai characters, anyone else must be a peasant
2a) Samurai must have 10+ base swordsmanship, other weapons optional
2b) Peasants must have exactly 9 spear mastery, and must use a spear
3) no caster classes, including dervish (only A, P, R, W are ok)
4) no rituals, pets, hex spells, shadow steps, echoes, elites, or PvE skills
5) no shields or offhands
6) (no consumeables or shrine bonii)

Other suggestions:
- Try to have a Katana on hand for your sword
- Try to think of what build(s) you want to run beforehand

A note on (1) and (2): this emphasizes that samurai will always be more skilled with their weapons than peasants, and leaves enough att points available for second weapons without crippling builds. The peasants should have a decent amount of spear mastery though as the samurai have been training them.

A note on (4): this leaves open the good assassin self-heals, defenses, and sword enhancers such as Way of the Master, but cuts out the more overt hex magic and shadow steps. This gimps assassins a little less, hopefully without making them too strong. Also, allowing chants and echoes gives us access to hexbreaker aria, so fewer concerns about hexes getting us down without delving into caster secondaries. Hopefully allowing chants, but disallowing echoes and elites, will prevent chant chaining from being overpowered... but if not we can revisit it later.

Thoughts?

[Hawkmoon]

Now on weapons...the sword minus shield restriction is the single most "samurai" point of flavor...but the Katana remains the primary and defining weapon.

I probably didn't express myself well enough - I agree that all the samurai should wield swords (or dual-wield big daggers that look like swords, for 'sins), but as we did in the Diablo II samurai team, all the team members can have/specialize in a backup weapon. Melee range should be the rule for engagement, but ranged weapons can be used for pulling, or when needed if someone needs to heal up out of melee range temporarily.

Also while the samurai gradually dying off due to lack of rez sigs is perfectly in flavor, that's going to lead to very un-fun situations; people sitting on the ground the entire time while others press on ahead, and taking copious amounts of defense that makes most places yawn-inducing so you're insulated in the hard spots. But if we want to ban the hard rezzes (sig of return/DPS) as a nod in this direction, I think that's fine.

I have to be honest here - I think that would be insane. Everyone would go afk as soon as their character died - they'd be done for the evening, as far as they were concerned, and quit the team shortly thereafter to avoid Certain Death By Extreme Boredom. I know I would. Not trying to be mean here, but realistic!

[Seijin]

I have to be honest here - I think that would be insane. Everyone would go afk as soon as their character died - they'd be done for the evening, as far as they were concerned, and quit the team shortly thereafter to avoid Certain Death By Extreme Boredom. I know I would. Not trying to be mean here, but realistic!

I think fox was responding to what I said about not using sigs?

You know, when realism meets fantasy, there's a line that will get drawn somewhere. I'm just asking why can we use sigs, but not spells? The rationale was that the samurai had no spells so we can't use them. I'm rationalizing they didn't have sigs either, so we shouldn't use them. :neenernee

If that reasoning is applied to most of the what we're doing, we're basically left with skills, stances, and attacks. If a challenge is what you want, then a challenge is what you get. Didn't half the samurai die in the movie? No rez. Anyways, I was just saying, allow some more self only healing so that sins aren't trying to rely on heal sig.

Are we allowed to wield shiro's daggers? I'm just curious because I do have a set.

Also, if the samurai were second rate, they wouldn't be that great of swordsmen. :war4:

And I can pretty much work with those rules.

As for picking up people to play. If the rules are simple but we keep dying because we have no healing or defenses, I think you'll pick people up for a while and then see them bow out because they'll get frustrated. Yeah, what I suggested was a bit more complicated, but gave more options. If I was constantly taking a dirt nap, I wouldn't be sure how long I could take it. But all I really wanted was to be able to heal myself without healsig really. I might still die, but I really hate heal sig if I'm not a warrior.

[FoxBat]

I didn't add hexes because all the non-elite sin hexes suck for pve. Doesn't make much difference.

Hexbreaker aria isn't going to do anything unless you have some assasin spells. Not that I think hexes ultimately matter anyway if you can partyheal through them.

Still wary of unrestricted chant/echo access- what about starting with just 1 character?

[Drasca]

1) KISS is important. If we want to encourage drop-ins from AB or from the rest of the guild we should not ignore this.

KiSS isn't as important as you think here for picking up others. We can send templates and adjust as necessary. Besides, how often do we get pickups? Seriously. With nudists, you had simpler rules than here, and couldn't get drop-ins because folk were afraid of the challenge and thought it was too crazy, or had scheduling issues. KiSS is not as huge a barrier as other factors (availability, interest).

3) Avoiding the use of elites is important. According to the movie lore, these samurai are second-rate, at best

I disagree the movie samurai were second rate. While I am fine with no elites, for challenge sake, the samurai were more noble and skilled than all the rest interviewed. . . a far cry above the bandits (some of whom were probably ex samurai). They accepted a token payment, like a political or business leader accepts a 1$ annual salary, while actually having real power far beyond the symbolic payment.

They were elite samurai that volunteered, men of character beyond their relative kin that looked out only for greed. The 'hungry samurai' bit was a joke and a plot device

I still think avoiding overt magic is important

Definition of magic is very arbitrary at this point.

1) At most 7 Samurai characters, anyone else must be a peasant
2a) Samurai must have 10+ base swordsmanship, other weapons optional
2b) Peasants must have exactly 9 spear mastery, and must use a spear
3) no caster classes, including dervish (only A, P, R, W are ok)
4) no rituals, pets, hex spells, shadow steps, echoes, elites, or PvE skills
5) no shields or offhands
6) (no consumeables or shrine bonii)

While I harp on KiSS not being as important, you're violating your own KiSS rule here. I'd have to comb through all this can/cannot do checklist through my skills too much to get a viable skill set. Plus, I like my caster classes.

Why do peasants have to have ANY weapon skill at all? Seriously. Role-playing wise, Peasants aren't expected to have any weapon training (other than the few days worth in the movie). If anything they should have a limit to weapon attribute, not a minimum.

Like Seijin, the fun factor wasn't there for me. As a warrior, I was just dying over and over, without doing any real damage or surviving long. No one could heal, and I could barely self heal and couldn't defend myself.

The skill set was too restrictive, and very arbitrary.

[FoxBat]

Did the local team bring things like blocking stance, armor shouts, and fall back/never surrender? I realize people want a little more in terms of motivation support, but if you aren't setting up some shout web and self-protection, you're sunk anyway. My only real self-heal was 3 regen from IWAY and yet I only died once in the mission.

If you want your mesmer stances or what not, I think things can be reworded this way:

- No pets, rituals, pve skills, elites.
- Assassin (non-hex?) spells only.

If you want to actually cast spells, that's a whole nother argument. Motivation heals are more than sufficient for NM, lets just run chants/echoes unrestricted next time and you can see.

[Seijin]

well both paragons were on foreign side, leaving one or both wars to spec as para secondary.

aside from flashing blades, I'm not sure sins have any stances that are defensive, except for one time use (block next attack and shadow step away type of stuff)

If I'm going to take warrior stances, I might as well just be warrior if I'm going to spec that way. I don't really want to go that route.

And it wasn't the physical attackers killing me, it was the casters + afflicted explosion.

I don't know, I'm starting to not even want to think about it anymore. If I start going defensive, I'm just going to start doing strange shit.

[FoxBat]

Critical Defensessssss Fair enough you couldn't use that, but the warriors had options. (Mostly, soldier's defense!)

Anyway I'll have my para hitch a ride to local, and we can set up peasants for motivation this time.

[WarBlade]

Did the local team bring things like blocking stance, armor shouts, and fall back/never surrender?

I was running Dolyak Signet with Strength cranked hard up and the only time Ragnar died was when he was running across the square and bled to death. This was because I had temporarily forgotten that I had a health bar that needed maintaining and when I did finally wake up to the threat I scrambled... to fumble the wrong key.

The downside to Dolyak of course was that there were a few times where I would be casually walking to the next bit of combat.

Hmm...

Maybe now's the part where I mention I was tinkering together a new peasant concept yesterday. I'm tentatively referring to this Me/P as "Togo's Attendant" and it's a Motivation/Inspiration support build running chants and signets designed to be set to Passive and planted next to Togo.