The Force Next Timeline (important post on page 6)

@Xavious I was INCREDIBLY naïve to a lot of the lotj politics and the undercurrent of (for a lack of a better word) powergaming in the forcer world when I made my engineer/guardian choice. I would have made a lot of different choices code wise if I knew better. There were a few other first time forcers that were similarly ‘handicapped’ because they did not know better. Chalk this up to poor research ahead of time however by the rules you are not supposed to openly talk about your character on OOC or communicate with people outside of the mud so informed choices for those dipping their toes into the forcer world is a tricky thing.

I think one of the issues with the forcer game is it appears (keyword appears) to be mostly dominated by those who have 1-2 forcers every TL. I am not saying force should be easier to get, I believe those who buy force earned it via the existing point system as intended, but the system needs to be tweaked so it is not the same ol’ steamroll vs the steamrolled. I won’t pretend to have an answer as I am still on that side of ill informed when it comes to a lot of this and I am only going off of my previous and current experiences in the forcer world.

@Kirash: I do like your level-less suggestions like an added combat round for Guardian. Maybe give one class an increased success rate in spell casting or something?

I still think a flat level increase would be needed to boost non combat forcers enough to not be totally hindered in forcer PvP, since that’s what’s going to make or break them eventually.

@Kirash: I personally think it’s selfish to have a high level forcer and not have high combat levels. It’s a combat geared subclass and part of your job is to defend your clanmates. Picking Sage on Torom was actually pretty selfish, in my opinion, and you even kind of walked that back and switched to a subclass that made you more combat oriented later on anyhow.

@Zeromus: My Sage subclass wasn’t changed. My leadership subclass was considering it was a severely detrimental mistake and the Imms agreed. Chalk it up to still being relatively new to the whole Forcer game. I’m not saying I do not “get it” when it comes to why Forcers need combat boosts especially in LotJ where it is mostly PvP with RP. I still believe it needs to be reworked to something better.

Fair enough. I personally just don’t buy the “It was for the RP, remember me as a saint!!!!” bad choice explanation as you and all the people who rely on you crash into the sea and drown. It is a competitive game and at some level you are expected to sink or swim. The way to minimize that is make the compelling RP choices also mechanically sound ones.

It would be neat if there was a battle meditation ability that worked like this:

Let’s say you have a clan where you have two active Jedi. There’s a knight who has capped out at 80 and a master who has capped out at 100. The master is not a mechanically sound player but is a pretty solid roleplayer, we don’t want to exclude that person from being able to contribute. The knight is a mechanically proficient player that just isn’t capable of standing up to a standard 110. The master could use battle meditation to lend his lightsaber mastery and senses skills to the knight for a certain period of time. The concentration from battle meditation would make it so the master couldn’t use the skills or would reduce them to 50% for the duration of the buff, but the more proficient less powerful character would get a temporary boost from the presence of the master.

We could just make a standard boost to forcer levels that was across the board when awakened. Maybe something along the lines of 50 combat, 15 piloting, 15 smuggling, 30 diplomacy, and 20 leadership. (Cap would be 150 regardless of where you fall should you roll force)

All forcers could get a standard 25 force points/level with their class being a feat based choice.

Guardians get an additional 5 fp/level plus 1+attack/round -10% damage taken.
Sentinels get an additional 5 fp/level plus can sneak and hide (regardless of smuggling levels)
Consulars get an additional 10 fp/level plus to all diplomacy skills, ie propaganda, inspirecrime double in effciency, +1 language, -10% damage dealt to enemies.
Sages get an additional 15 fp/level plus all their force skills are 10% more effective when applicable, +2 languages and -10% damage dealt to enemies.

Forcers would have to pick one of these as a feat taking up one of their three available choices and couldn’t pick more than one.

I would love to see battle meditation in game.

I personally think if it were implemented that the apprentice/knight should be able to separate from the master with the master having to remain still. At which point he would be vulnerable to attack(No reflect if shot at/lessened damage from backstab, ambush etc). If they were roused from the battle meditation in this fashion they would then only be 50-60% as effective as normal (for a certain amount of rounds) with the knight/apprentice losing the bonus completely.

@Zeromus: I like the idea of battle meditations. There are some interesting scenes in the Darth Bane trilogy where jedi and sith alike used battle meditations aboard their fleet ships to give their pilots confidence and achieve overwhelming victories, even in space battles. This could translate to more than just other forcers, but @Seryb raises a good point about proximity. Perhaps a limitation to be in the same sector if it was determined a proximity limitation was required for balance. It would definitely need to be limited to the other player being logged on in order for the buff to be active. The buffed player would be stripped of the affect when logging out.

@Seryb: I think those are some reasonable suggestions, but I believe it should be something to replace the way sub classes work now and not be tied into feats. There is the possibility of someone being awakened after they have already picked their 3 feats and I don’t feel sub classing needs to be mixed in with feats anyway, in my opinion.

I think you are definitely on the right track to offering reasonable suggestions for revamping sub classes though.

@Xavious: Oh damn I didn’t even think about someone having picked three feats already. I think you’re right that it shouldn’t be tied to feats now that you bring that up. Also with regards to the points you make on battle meditation you would absolutely have to be in the same system and logged in for the teammate to receive the buff.

So for shits and giggles I wanted to throw together a dark side component to the sub-classes rather than what we have currently where both draw off the one.

Dark side level perks could be something like 70 combat, 20 pilot, 30 smuggling and 15 leadership.
Dark siders would get a standard of 20 fp/level

Warrior: Additional 5fp/level. 10% damage boost, 10% damage reduction, can wear medium body armor
Marauder: Additional 5fp/level. can wield 2 lightsabers, 5% increased damage to enemies, +5% increased damage taken.
Assassin: Additional 5fp/level. can hide/sneak regardless of smuggling levels
Inquisitor: Additional 10fp/level. 3% of damage done to enemies is absorbed, reduced cost of force lightning with increased damage

Thoughts?

I like the idea of separating the LS/DS Jedi sub-classes, but I feel that they ought to be pretty close to the same. Either way you go – Having sentinel or guardian and equiv. DS subclasses dual wield is something I really want to see.

why pigeon hole sith/dark side to combat perks?

also what happens if they flip aligns? do they gain/lose the appropriate abilities?

By all means post your own I just put these in there to get the discussion started I’m by no means gonna be the one to implement these. 😛

Forcers make me not want to log in still today. Can we rename the mud Legends of Everyone Except for Jedi and Sith in the Star Wars Universe and fucking roll with it?