praetarius5018

8 hours ago, rpschamp said:

Maybe you want them to be equal in melee, but Hawk has other stat and spell advantages, so I think the melee advantage should go to Kevin, in general.

What I could do would be to adjust how much damage they get out of 1 point of attack post def.
E.g. if both have 100 attack and attack the same target, Kevin may deal 25 damage per hit and Hawk only 20 or something like that.

4 hours ago, rpschamp said:

Since you're adjusting the damage color scheme, maybe the damage colors of the level 2/3 tech could simply be changed to counterattack colors to show that it cancelled Dolan's Energy Ball?

I can try.
Though, does that even help?
If I understand you right it would only show yellow if it does something.
Which is currently already shown by you not getting 999'd.
So there'd be no hint before getting a game over if you manage to land a Lv2/3 tech before he does the first energy ball (aura wave and increased tech gain items come to mind).

10 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

I honestly don't get why Dolan is such a touchy subject. Yeah, he can kick your ass, but isn't that the point?

It is the point that the bosses are a challenge.
The problem they argue about is that they can't figure out what they have to do.

Maybe they are too used to prior bosses where you don't really have to pay attention what exactly the boss does?
I mean like, taking damage is just damage doesn't really matter what caused it, you heal it the same way.

15 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

My vote is for a Super Saiyin-style Kevin-exclusive melee/tech buff

So you wanna do DBGT?

I think wolfform is a good enough base, it allows him to use his higher VIT as additional attack. So if you wanna compare it like that it is:
STR+VIT vs AGL+LUCK

21 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

If you haven't already realized, unmarked jokes have a tendency to fall flat on these boards.

That's got nothing to do with the boards but the written medium in general.

Dolan was always a touchy subject; I know that it isn't super obvious to others (why else would it be a puzzle boss) but whenever I asked back noone could ever offer a way to make it better within the constraints I have with the game, if I even get an answer at all.
And completely dropping the gimmick is not something I accept.

22 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

If you have no plans for Ancient 3 though, it might be nice to give Kevin something unique with Pressure Point, especially with that cool wolf head icon. A unique buff would make him more attractive to players if you feel he's underused. An aggro/shield spell is still an option. Give it some thought.

No idea if I'll follow this path at all but an "aggro spell" is certainly not on the table.

What I meant was that he was more or less at a good place.
Considering he is one of the rarest used members in the Character/Job Party Recommendations topic (at least it feels like that, didn't exactly count) I don't think he warrent yet another beating with the nerf stick.

And then what exactly?

I think Kevin has strong enough melee by itself.
And technically he can use Aura Wave (at least on Death Hand, was sure at least one more Kevin class had it, huh) to convert MP into TP = more physical dps.

9 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

I just think this could be something unique to add for Kevin to address some of the misgivings you're feeling about how he's been changed.

Where did I say nerfing Kevin was a bad thing?
Vanilla Kevin was stupidly OP.
Not only could he stack wolfform to have more damage per swing than Duelist Duran and attack twice as often on top of that, he also gets a free power up buff when he gets hit in wolfform. And sometimes his dual swing glitches out to make him go on a non-stop rampage.

Just now, rpschamp said:

What about Pressure Point? I don't think this is currently being used, and it's in the original game. The spell with the wolf head icon that only Monk gets.

40 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

Pressure point was already sacrificed for Archdemon.

24 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

Understood. Well, what if you give him some upkeep abilities to recover some of his melee dominance? He could use his MP to maintain some unique advantage in melee through upkeep spells. Thematically, this is kind of the point of the classically trained monk.

No idea how I would do this in spell form.

25 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

Other unused spells could be repurposed to different effects.

I've only one unused spell atm - Ancient 3. That wouldn't fit thematically on anyone but Angela and she doesn't even have Ancient 2.

19 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Whenever I look at the history of major things I've changed it feels like the majority is to Kevin's detriment, some deserved, some not.

Like forced stat recalc on map transition is half a buff (no longer loses attack power temporarely if he levels up in wolfform) and half a nerf to him (can no longer stack wolf bonuses).
L2/3 techs actually profitting from saber is probably to his detriment as the formerly dominant L1 techs got less dominant.
How about penalizing damage on dual attackers.
Fixing AGL and LUCK (crits) is also arguably to his detriment as his stats in both are not the best.
Or now me taking away the ability to gain multiple TP per attack through hitting multiple targets and/or sub-hits.
And much more stuff.

He went from the king of the arguable most OP fighting style to whatever he is right now.

17 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

Here's a spell idea for Kevin: Use his previous "Pressure Point" spell to give him shield/aggro. (As in he becomes the point of pressure.) He can maintain this as upkeep. This gives him a novel shield option that he can use without sacrificing equipment.

If you don't like that idea, the spell can still be repurposed to help him fill out his spell roster.

Pressure point was already sacrificed for Archdemon.

Even then I'd want some choice there for consistency.
3/4 Kevin classes have 8 spells currently, the last 6.
So I'd at least want a cap of 7 and a total of 9-10.

Not sure this is a good idea, this is just asking for confusion.

Well, lets continue the Kevin bashing.

27 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

And there's always the option to restrict access to shields again to Light Duran

Not happening.

Stat bonus instead of spells are not an option either.
If I give just stats or even leave spell slots open the ring that teaches the regeneration spell wouldn't be a tradeoff. Ok, it still has a cost in the sense that it takes a ring slot but that is a small cost to get a full healer, much less than ring slot AND a potentially valueable spell down the road.

What I have so far:

Angela

Charlie

Lise

Hawk

Biggest change there is Ninja Master.

Duran and Kevin will be a problem.
Their current incarnation have about 6-7 in most classes, so bloating that up to 12 is problematic, especially given how little spells fit them thematically..

12 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

Any thoughts on this, or do you think that it would make Dragon Master too powerful? Also, do you have any changes planned to Ghost Road or Demon Breath? I think Ghost Road is fine as it is, but Demon Breath's Dark element makes it more of a liability in the endgame for an MT spell. To balance this, you could remove the Dark element (Air and Fire should be enough) or add a Curse option to it.

I don't want it on DM as demon breath really only works well if you have anti-magic and Evil Shaman already has that combo.

51 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

you sold your mod as an Hardtype mod

ok, where does it say that?
the most offputting tag there should be "beta"

55 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

If I am a stranger looking to play SD3 with a mod and pick your mod what guaranteed me that you actually won't require a specific spell or item at one point ?

Technically nothing, aside from it being bullshit design to only give a hint that you may require ability X like 20 hours into a game when the choice was right at the start.

Though is it too much to ask for some trust after working 6 years on this?

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

-I and other mention several times for mounth how Spike damage were OP, you didn't address it until last version
-I told here several time over multiple month how the armor that make spell neutral was glitched sometime just after post of yours, yet when the matter was bring on discord it's as if you discovered it.
-I mentionned several time Day Bonus could be exploit to increase damage, yet it only became an issue because a guy who didn't even know the mechanic complain about it on discord.
-I also mentionned multiple how you could use Earth Bracelet to get the Final Weapons earlier, yet again it became an issue when someone who didn't even know about it complain about it.
-The stacking 6 beastman collars one is even sillier, I got insulted for suggesting it on Discord, while originally it was someone on this forum (think it was Serafie actually) who suggest it to me after I run into money problem on my first run, and it actually save my first run, I used it on every run afterward and mention a LOT of time it's efficiency, so it's effiency and fact it broked the money curve was prove since at least 2 years, yet became only a problem when a guy who didn't know about it complain about it on Discord.

Back then when you brought it to my attention it sounded like they were "nice to have" bonuses; like with the collars, can you afford more stuff with them? yes, that was their point.

But then it got to a point where every idiot under the sun treated 6 collars like it was a "must have or don't bother playing" type of deal. Same with thorns armor and day bonus.

No idea what happened with the armor bug, sorry.

42 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

The best feedback is to abandon playing the mod, since it has never been about a challenge mod.

Since I get nothing out of this but frustration, feel free to do so, saves me a ton of work.
Technically I was "done" about 5 years ago, everything after that was only because people kept asking for more.

49 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

but the mod itself is overly tedious and focuses on giving the player the middle finger in every possible way

Please explain.

47 minutes ago, hmsong said:

It's true that some of the GB gimmicks are a bit tough to figure out.

Funny thing is, I expected Death Jester's one to be incomprehensible but seemingly everyone figured it out. *shrug*
Neither did anyone complain about Dangaard or Zable Fahr, so who else?

50 minutes ago, hmsong said:

For example, in FF6, we have that one crazy boss, MagiMaster.

I would actually call BS on that one;you have to do a whole dungeon AND a boss fight until its last HP before the trick even appears. So you easily lose like half an hour.
Dolan has a save statue directly before it and starts with the kill move. So it is 1-2 minutes tops.

2 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

I like the idea of making Dragon Master a more summon-centric class for Lise, but there's no option here to get both Power Down and Mind Down

You need to get 13 PIE as Rune Maiden to learn the other 2 debuffs as ST.
Then as DM go 23 INT and 23 AGL; the spells after sleep flower should've been AGL as well... I blame copy-paste.

20 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

These clues are only in your head.

How is him casting Energy Ball and Howl in my head?
If you are blind that is not my problem.

22 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

You can keep claiming all you want that the solution is obvious when you already know the solution

I never said it is obvious, stop that bullshit.
I said that there are many options you can exclude via logic, like any of the stuff that would require the presence of a specific character or class.

21 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

I figured it out "semi-legit", by spamming save/load states for 15 minutes and trying all kind of random things until I figured out what cancels the 999 attack.

Please tell me what options you thought of.
I'm legit curious what other skills I have to work with in SD3 that I'm so far not aware of.

You don't even have to figure out that energy ball is the culprit.
You start the battle, he slams you with spiral moon - you don't die.
The does energy ball, howl, spiral moon - this time you die.
Does it even matter whether it is eb or howl?
You just have to figure out that you have to do something.
What can this something be?
Not spells since there's little guaranteed overlap between possible teams.
Items with their high prices shouldn't be the solution either.

25 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

and since you are most likely occupied debuffing him at the beginning you might not even get to use one early in the fight

Great, by doing that you have already eliminated that you got one shot because you didn't debuff him.
Buffs should also be done because of how much time he gives you while he climbs up.

Doesn't really leave many options open then.

I currently have for Lise:

base:        11/11/10/10/10/9
no spells

Valkyrie:    17/16/16/15/16/14
Protect Up (11 PIE), Speed Up (13 PIE)
Airblast (12 INT)

Rune Maiden:    16/17/16/16/15/15
Speed Down (11 PIE), Protect Down (13 PIE)
Unicorn Head (12 INT)

Vanadise:    31/31/31/29/31/29
Protect Up, Speed Up
Flame Saber (18 STR), Power Up (20 STR)
Freya* (18 PIE), Tinkle Rain (19 PIE), Heal Light (21 PIE)
Body Change (16 INT), Thunderstorm (19 INT, replaces Airblast), Mind Up (22 INT)
Holy Ball (16 LUCK), Thunder Saber (20 LUCK)

Starlancer:    32/30/30/30/30/30
Dark Saber (18 STR), Saint Saber (20 STR), Power Up* (23 STR)
Energy Ball (17 AGL), Ice Smash* (18 AGL), Speed Up* (20 AGL)
Airblast* (17 INT), Fireball* (19 INT), Mind Up* (22 INT)
Marduke* (18 PIE), Aura Wave (20 PIE), Protect Up* (23 PIE)

DragonMaster:    30/31/32/30/30/31
Unicorn Head
Jormungand* (18 PIE), Speed Down* (19 PIE), Protect Down* (21 PIE)
Ghoul (17 INT), Ghost (18 INT), Lunatic (20 INT), Mind Down* (23 INT)
Sleep Flower* (18 AGL), Gremlin (19 AGL), Anti-Magic (21 AGL), Power Down* (23 AGL)

FenrirKnight:    31/32/31/31/29/30
Unicorn Head
Leaf Saber (17 INT), Transshape (20 INT), Poison Bubble (22 INT)
Moon Saber (19 AGL), Black Rain* (21 AGL), Speed Down* (23 AGL)
Ghost Road* (17 LUCK), Mind Down* (20 LUCK)
Lamia Naga* (18 PIE), Protect Down* (20 PIE), Power Down* (23 PIE)

12 entries total for potential learnable spells
each spell may appear only once, doesn't matter the target type.
Overwriting/upgrading a specific skill of the prior class that no longer is in the list is ok.
Upgrading a spell from the current list is not.

Out of these 12 you can keep 10 or less if a spell from some other source takes a spell slot.

3 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

I thought that if you knew 10 spells, you couldn't learn any subsequent upgrades.

That as well, but temporarely upgrading ST to MT via white light ring is still possible.

Doesn't work, can't have the same spell twice in the list.
Even if it did work, the MT power up would then overwrite ST power up, meaning you use 10 spell slots total and miss 0.

24 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

Have you thought about designing Vanadis to have the option to go for the 4 MT buffs, being the most support-oriented Lise class (with Heal Light, Tinkle Rain)?

Perhaps as in giving up Heal Light to learn all 4 MT buffs?

Not sure how I'd even do that.

I'd have to be something like:
stat1: x, x, x, heal light
stat2: x, x, def up, other buff
stat3: x, x, speed up, other buff

Would people even be ok with waiting until that deep into the stat tree before she gets the first "relevant" buff for a buffer?

Also, Vanadise doesn't get MT buffs at all.

1 minute ago, Serafie1999AD said:

That's typically a sign of pathetic design choices.
I think Dolan and every enemy in the game needs to be replaced with level 99 Black Rabites with 100 million HP and max stats, each attack doing an unblockable 999 damage to everyone, and your characters should be capped to level 1 with 1 HP and 0 MP, and if you get a game over, the game will automatically delete all your in-game saves.

Great idea, I'll get right on it!

Ok, seriously, wtf is your problem with the boss?
Having a boss threaten with a OP charge move is standard RPG fare.
Time limit bosses like various wall bosses in FFs, SoM1, ...
Bosses that prepare for a supermove (FFs Odin usually when he raises his sword)
All the same concept.
You get a tell and then you have to either defend or cancel the move asap OR DIE.
THIS IS NOTHING NEW HERE!!

1 minute ago, rpschamp said:

Love the customization options here. Thematically strong too: Why would a girl who looks to the stars waste her time learning Diamond Missile?

1. I was going for a classical red mage here: fire, ice, lightning
2. she is affiliated with wind, so earth as the opposite isn't as welcome
3. as a princress she wouldn't throw away precious diamonds /joke

3 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

Second, I can see why you "finalized" Angela first. Her relatively organized spell sets make her design options the most straightforward.

Angela, Charlie and Hawk (minus ninjamaster) were the easy first candidates since they had already full lists so I only had to shuffle them around and maybe exchange 1 or 2 spells, like Bishop with both Holy Ball and Saint Beam is redundant.

4 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

Finally, off topic, do you still have a set of accessories open, or do you have plans to fill those in already?

How is that off topic?

I still have open:
1 weapon
1 armor
2 accessoires

Others would still be exchangable if I like different ideas better.

2 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

This may be the most controversial idea of the topic yet. So much for stealth! You have my support though.

I think as long as there is an option for at least one of the Light Lises to learn her four stat buffs, there will not be mass revolt.

She had 7 or 9 spells, so under the 10 spell cap nothing would change.
Now I fill in some gaps. So you have to sacrifice 2 spells.

So consider this setup (still working on it):

Valkyrie:    17/16/16/15/16/14
Protect Up (11 PIE), Speed Up (13 PIE)
Airblast (12 INT)

Starlancer:    32/30/30/30/30/30
Dark Saber (18 STR), Saint Saber (20 STR), Power Up* (23 STR)
Energy Ball (17 AGL), Ice Smash* (18 AGL), Speed Up* (20 AGL)
Airblast* (17 INT), Fireball* (19 INT), Mind Up* (22 INT)
Marduke* (18 PIE), Aura Wave (20 PIE), Def Up* (23 PIE)

No matter what you do, at best you get 2 ST buffs (def up, speed up) and 2 MT buffs or 3 MTs and lose one buff completely.

Assuming you go for power up and then mind up you already have 8 spell slots filled if you went out of your way to not pick up airblast as valk.
Say you pick marduke and aura wave, that's then all 10 slots so def up won't upgrade.

In short the char/class discussion topic will have field days here.

21 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

Very interesting; I like the stat-based series approach. Do you plan something similar for the other characters?

Plan, yes. Duran&Kevin will be problematic since they barely know any spells and there is little that is thematically fitting, so giving their classes a spell choice is difficult..

I also may or may not take this opportunity to stealth nerf light Lise *cough*

21 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

EDIT: Any changes to the final weapons? Or the status effects of Rune Master's spells? More generally, are you sticking with the plan to keep Snowman and Petrify exclusive to Rune Master (weapons included)?

I see no need to adjust final weapons at this point.
Considering the buggy nature of snowman I want to keep it as limited as it is.
Considering the game breaking nature of petrify, same.