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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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Life after Slackers
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KingOfPain Wrote:Beyond Slackers - A no skill team :-D If we really wanted to go "beyond" with Slackers, we could just use the updated Slacker ruleset. The team variant rules I originally proposed were considerably less restrictive. Of course, some of us went ahead and added our own challenges on top of what the original ruleset provided for. 
Here's an initial proposal for a more rules-lite version of the 7 Samurai team variant. Commentary is of course welcome. Consider this team variant to be inspired by the movie, rather than an attempt to mimic the movie to any substantial degree. I have tried to focus on function-oriented restrictions and minimize restrictions that are more of an inconvenience than a real impact on the challenge level. Gear choice restrictions remain largely roleplay-oriented, however.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY for purposes of challenge level evaluation: - Standard cooperative team rules including item sharing, team pure, no twinking - Paladins wielding 2H swords and other 2H weapons only - Limited base DR available - No restrictions on stats - 3 skills at slvl10+, the rest at slvl 1+ - No spell attacks, merc resurrection or any castable minions ------------------------ The original 7 Samurai variant by Occhi is here: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/diablo/vlod7samurai.html 7 Samurai, Simplified -------------------- I. Story (From the film) A farming community is harried by rogue Ronin and bandits who prey upon the rice farmers. The farmers get their assets together (a bag of rice) and set out to hire some Samurai to defend them when the harvest, and hence bandit band, arrives. They are rebuffed by the out of work Ronin. The delegation, as they leave town, witness a Samurai who, disguised as a priest, rousts and executes a thief/kidnapper. Kembai Shimada does this deed for no pay other than two rice cakes, because it is The Right Thing To Do. Seven Samurai band together to save a village from marauding bandits because they are honorable Samurai cough broke cough!! The leader, Kembai Shimada, scrapes the bottom of the barrel and puts together his team. They end up enlisting the aid of the villagers to get the job done. In this version, our band of samurai (may or may not total 7) wander from village to village, fighting evil where they find it. Sometimes they rally the people that live there and lead them to drive off the foes that beset them, while at other times they fight on behalf of the townsfolk without actually leading them into battle. II. The Team The team is intended to be composed entirely of Paladins -- however many can be scraped together. This is standard cooperative team play; items found within team games can be freely shared between team members, but twinking of items from outside the team is disallowed. Muling of team items to team-specific mules, however, is fine. Team members should only party/adventure within the team, but soloing to catch up to the rest of the team in case of a missed session is acceptable. One team member could be an Amazon Spearmaiden (note - no javelins!) For 'auras', she has available Inner Sight and Slow Missles. For 'combat skills', any spear-oriented Amazon skill applies. Expect a minimal investment (1-point) in any/all of the 6 Passive skills, and no Decoy or Valkyrie. Bowskills are right out! One team member could be a melee assassin. However, claw class weapons are one-handed and thus disallowed. The following skills are acceptable: Tiger Strike, Cobra Strike, Phoenix Strike, Dragon Talon, Dragon Tail, Dragon Flight, Cloak of Shadows, Burst of Speed, Fade, Venom. Of these, only Cloak of Shadows is considered an aura, since it is the only skill that is in any sense sharable. All other assassin skills either require claws or are non-aura "ranged magic" of one form or another and so are excluded -- this is primarily a melee-oriented team variant. One team member could be a Barbarian. "Aura" skills would be Shout, Battle Orders, Battle Command. Combat skills already have their own tree, though double swing, double throw, and frenzy all require 2 weapons at once and so are excluded -- using two 2H swords at once doesn't count! Everything else would be available at slvl 1+. III. Stats and Skills There are no restrictions on stat points. Skills, however, are restricted. We are not the best of the best, we are the best of the rest! A real samurai would not be so broke... Holy Bolt, Blessed Hammer, Smite, Blessed Shield, Conversion, and Fist of Heavens are disallowed (except Smite only as a pre-req for Charge.) Choose one primary combat skill, one primary aura, and one secondary combat skill or aura. Each of these can be raised to a maximum slvl of 10+items. All other skills cannot exceed 1+items. Yes, you will have a lot of skill points left over - deal with it. IV. Equipment Team pure, no twinking. Weapon 1: Must be a 2-handed sword of some sort. Weapon 2: Any sort of 2-handed weapon. Hat: Caps, Skull caps, Helms, and Circlets (incl. exceptional/elite) are ok. Armour, Glove, Belt, and Boot: All must be cloth/leather-based. Jewellry & Charms: Whatever we can find is ok. Gems & Jewels: Whatever we can find is ok. NO USE of oskills or charges that involve castable minions, ranged damage magic, or shapechanges! Melee-oriented and other oskills are possible, and will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Cloak of Shadows from a Nadir hat, for instance, is acceptable, assuming there is no assassin in the team to cast it natively. V. Mercenaries We may only hire mercenaries from the current act. However, once a mercenary dies, he/she stays dead. There is no mercenary resurrection, even to get their gear back -- hearken back to the days of Classic! And, once the pool of available mercs is dry for any given session, that's it until the next session. You can carry over a merc from one act to the next, but only until they die...
I had given some thought to how Occhi's Seven Samurai ruleset could be amended for group of former Slackers. I even wrote up a first draft of ideas. However, Zed's outline is more complete and, of course, more challenging than my first notions.
 I really like the fact that this outline sticks to the KISS principle. I don't want to spend time in a game re-reviewing what gear is ok for which character, and I do get confused all too easily, unfortunately.  Another thing I like about this (on a completely personal level) is that I would have an opportunity to learn. I am, to be as generous to myself as I can be, 'not good' at melee characters. My natural inclination is to play ranged attackers. The natural wussiness in me is cringing at playing without those trusty mercenaries that I have come to love and depend upon. In my experiences with melee characters, it is harder to pay sufficient attention to keep a mercenary supplied with potions than it is for a caster or ranged attacker. In the heat of battle, I tend to let their needs come last. If we never resurrect them, then any we hire will be correspondingly weaker, due to not getting the benefit of leveling or hand-me-down equipment. i.e. for many fights, they will be relegated to cannon fodder status Is there a way to adjust the rule-set to keep the aid of these extra minions, but nerf their aid to us? Or would that make this team too easy?
It's possible, of course, if that's the route the team would prefer to go. We could for instance allow resurrection but put equipment restrictions on the mercs.
There are two reasons I wanted to avoid strong mercs. Firstly, they can become a crutch the team hides behind; I was hoping that the lack of merc resurrection would alleviate this and make the mercs have a more peripheral role to the team's success rather than a constant presence the team depends upon. Secondly, from a roleplaying point of view, it makes much more sense if the villagers we are supposed to be defending are all too mortal. There are several examples of successful merc-less teams already out there -- BNx, Rogue Revival, etc. None that are primarily melee-focused, I'll grant you, and we've yet to see if the BNx concept can cut it in hell, but I think it would be worth giving it a shot. Of course if no-one else likes the idea we can change things around some. One thing I would not want to do, however, is get A2 mercs. The focus is supposed to be on the team's auras, not the auras we get for free (and are much more powerful than our own.) If we're going to have resurrectable mercs, I'd want mercs we would not be able to depend upon -- probably A5 mercs with restrictions on equippable gear so that they die frequently and don't do a ton of damage. Zed-F Wrote:It's possible, of course, if that's the route the team would prefer to go. We could for instance allow resurrection but put equipment restrictions on the mercs. Good points. Quote:There are several examples of successful merc-less teams already out there -- BNx, Rogue Revival, etc. None that are primarily melee-focused, I'll grant you, and we've yet to see if the BNx concept can cut it in hell, but I think it would be worth giving it a shot. Of course if no-one else likes the idea we can change things around some. One thing I would not want to do, however, is get A2 mercs. The focus is supposed to be on the team's auras, not the auras we get for free (and are much more powerful than our own.) If we're going to have resurrectable mercs, I'd want mercs we would not be able to depend upon -- probably A5 mercs with restrictions on equippable gear so that they die frequently and don't do a ton of damage. I like the idea of forgoing any Act 2 mercenaries altogether. Maybe, once having proved our prowess without mercenaries in Normal, we could hire Act 5 mercenaries for Nightmare, with the same gear restrictions as we have? Or later, once we rescue the barbarians in Act 5 Nightmare? Or not, if we find we are capable without them? I would be comfortable with the latter, because then it would be dependent on our experiences in the game as a team.
Alright then, per your suggestion, we can try things with no merc resurrection (but you can hire whatever merc is available in the act you're in) in Normal diff and see how things go. Once we have killed Baal in normal, evaluate and see if we would like to instead try hiring resurrectable barb mercs before moving to nightmare. If we decide to keep going with mortal mercs, we can re-evaluate again a second time when we kill nightmare Baal.
Gear restrictions for resurrectable barbs - here's one thought: Barbs can wear whatever you can find for them to wear but may never have an exceptional or elite item. They might be able to soak a bit of damage but they will never leech enough to be reliable as a tank. They might be able to pin something for you with bash or stun but will have significant trouble actually killing stuff. While you can make reasonably powerful runewords in normal items, I'd tend to think that from a team resources point of view, we would probably tend to prefer to make such runewords in better items and use them on our main characters rather than hand them to a merc in a crappy normal-level weapon.
Lurking in your thread, the thought occurred to me that it might be cool actually to emphasize mercs. (Not for your next team, but just in general). I imagine a team of all female chars (maybe even all sorcies) who each have a "husband" who is an Iron Wolf (A3 merc) and they have to drag these lugs around.
Fire, Lightning, and Cold... though the Cold are so much stronger and more survivable because of the freezing thing. Probably not actually worth DOING, but it was fun to imagine.  - Sirian
Fortune favors the bold.
A variant team twist based on GGG and ACME's no skill builds - The Synergizers.
GGG and ACME use only skills from charged items and OSkills, and only skills not native to their classes (baba in both cases), and no skill points distrubution of course. The twist is each team members would use thier own native skills but only skills they do not have skill points in. Skill points are only allowed if they are synergies to the Charged/Oskill. Example - Pally using lvl 10 Sacrifice charge Max Redemption and Fanaticism would give +83 percent AR and +715 percent damage. Aura would have to come from items OSkills Pally using lvl 1 Vengeance from KingSlayer Max Resist Fire/Cold/Litn and Salv Current Skill Level: 1 11: Cold Length: 1.2 seconds 2: Fire Damage: +310 percent 2: Cold Damage: +310 percent 2: Lightning Damage: +310 percent 2: Attack: +20 percent Baba using Zerk from Passion Max Howl and Shout Attack: +100 percent Magic Damage: +550 percent Just a quick thought. needs input. KoP |
