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Post by Divergent Reality on Aug 14, 2018 22:40:30 GMT -6
Energon is a peculiar fuel first created by the Warforged. It is manufactured by processing energy produced from any other source: solar, hydroelectric, combustion, etc. This form allows containment of energy for later usage without the bulk and abysmal capacity of chemical batteries. Energon changed energy usage in the same way the standardization of screw threads changed manufacturing. It provides a consistent, high output, explosive energy source capable of powering tools, vehicles, weapons, artificial lifeforms, and more. This particular form of Energon is a technologically and magically aided refinement traditional Energon Cubes into indefinitely stable materials. It interacts with bumps and scrapes like plastisteel, meaning it does not blow up when jostled or shot. The right collaboration of magic and science are needed to create even the simplest items from this refined Energon. With the best of both schools working together following the exact same steps a successful portion is not guaranteed. This delicate balance of skills and the risk of catastrophic failure restricts the amount of this wondrous material. When items are successfully created they are able to draw upon the high energy potential of their unprocessed form allowing items to go harder, faster, and allow controlled use of it's explosive properties. Items made of Energon look like they are made of a softly glowing pink-purple plastic.  They look good enough to eat. Deals X damage with the Brütal property. Ranged Weapon: Deals X damage with the Composite property, substituting the Artifact's rating for strength. Vehicle and Spelljammer scale weapons given the properties of Energon count as Artifact 3 weapons regardless of their VP or BP value. Standard weapons can have a maximum rating of 'Artifact 6' when applied to a weapon of Mythic Rare or greater value.Ammunition: Confers the Variable property to the weapon. Ammunition packs made from Energon will slowly replenesh themsleves at a rate of one round per minute. In addition, Las Weapons and weapons that use solid ammunition may use this Artifact Ammunition. Armor: Grants +1 Armor to all locations until end of the user's next turn for each Hit Point lost. Bionic Arm: Unarmed attacks with your bionic arm deal X damage. As a Reaction you may replace your hand by conjuring a weapon of crystallized Energon. It has the profile of a Hand Weapon (3k2 E, Melee) with Combat Sheath and one of the following: Armored & Defensive, Balanced, Brawling, or Flexible. Bionic Locomotion: Once per scene as a Reaction, everyone excluding the bearer within 2m takes 2k2 E damage. If you move during this attack, this affects everyone that you come within 2 meters of. A target can only be affected by this effect once per round. These legs also grant +1k0 to Bull Rush and Charge attacks. Bionic Heart: You are now the Energonzer Soratami, you just keep going. When you would receive Fatigue subtract one from that amount, to a minimum of zero. Promethean Asset: Energon Constructing a body out of an energy source sounds quite mad. When properly built these shells are fast and grow more adept at using their explosive nature with age. Prometheans with this asset gain +1 Speed and may spend a Pyros to use a flame attack with the following profile: | Promethean Asset | | Name | Type | Damage | Pen | ROF | Range | Special | | Energon | Basic | (Generation+1)k2 E | 0 | S/- | 20m | Flame |
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Post by Divergent Reality on Dec 18, 2019 9:02:30 GMT -6
12-19-2019 Updated Bionic Heart. Updated Bionic Locomotion and Artifact Ammunition. 12-20-2019 An update to Ammunition, rewording Bionic Arm, Bionic Locomotion, and changed the damage profile of the Promethean Asset.
12-21-2019 Fluffed the Fluff.
Replaced the Promethean Asset table 12-25-2019 Changed damage types so they are consistent. 08-09-2021 Clarified ranged weapons for Vehicle, Spelljammer, and standard weapons over Artifact 5. Added clarification about that types of weapons may use Energon ammunition. |
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Post by a nony mouse on Dec 18, 2019 20:11:38 GMT -6
There's a real thematic problem here. Specifically, standard energon (by the original continuity) will tend to explode if cut, shot, or whatever. Having armor that responds to attacks by exploding is kind of problematic. Additionally, making energon is *easy*, if you have a decent amount of energy available and the right tech, which means that as a magical material, it makes no sense - if it *did* work for those thigns, the ready availability woudl mean that it would be commonly available, rather than rare enough to require an artifact background. As for the crunch specifics...
- There's no indication what the Xs for melee and ranged weapon are. I guess I could... sort of guess? If it is tied to artifact rating, then your artifact rating is boosting you twice (once for having a rarer and more powerful weapon initially, once for feeding the artifact bonus) and it becomes underpowered for more common atifact weapons,a nd overpowered for less common one.
- Variable Power Setting is really weak on an artifact ammo pick because if you're getting any benefit out of it at all, you're burning through your ammo supply very quickly.
- For bionic locomotion, having your legs explode is exciting, but explaining how you have legs afterwards is a bit interesting. Is it self-damaging? Does it require actions?
- Bionic Heart is *awfully* strong. "Reduce all fatigue costs by 1" is practically speaking very close to "ignore fatigue" - something that had, prior to this, only been available on exaltations, and something that opens a number of interesting potential combos.
- Promethean asset flamethrower is basically useless at level 1, and very strong at level 5. That seems... off. Generally speaking, attacks that come with exaltations don't scale with level.
Basically, you need to either come up with a completely different material, or provide some explanation for how energon (or specially treated energon?) is both viable as an artifact material and rare enough to work as one. After that... you probably still need some work.
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Post by Divergent Reality on Dec 19, 2019 0:47:13 GMT -6
There's a real thematic problem here. Specifically, standard energon (by the original continuity) will tend to explode if cut, shot, or whatever. Having armor that responds to attacks by exploding is kind of problematic. Additionally, making energon is *easy*, if you have a decent amount of energy available and the right tech, which means that as a magical material, it makes no sense - if it *did* work for those thigns, the ready availability woudl mean that it would be commonly available, rather than rare enough to require an artifact background. As for the crunch specifics... I like the analogy of comparing Artifact Energon to Metallic Hydrogen, traditional Energon and gaseous Hydrogen are abundant and volatile. The Artifact Material detailed in this post is something beyond what average citizens of The Wheel encounter. - There's no indication what the Xs for melee and ranged weapon are. I guess I could... sort of guess? If it is tied to artifact rating, then your artifact rating is boosting you twice (once for having a rarer and more powerful weapon initially, once for feeding the artifact bonus) and it becomes underpowered for more common atifact weapons,a nd overpowered for less common one. Refer to page 202 in Book 1, X is the standard shorthand for Explosive damage. - Variable Power Setting is really weak on an artifact ammo pick because if you're getting any benefit out of it at all, you're burning through your ammo supply very quickly. That is the point of Variable Power Setting, you exchange ammunition for damage. An addition I forgot to add that was previously discussed is giving Energon Artifact ammunition to Las weapons. By RAW only slug throwers get Artifact ammunition. - For bionic locomotion, having your legs explode is exciting, but explaining how you have legs afterwards is a bit interesting. Is it self-damaging? Does it require actions? They are not destroyed, they produce a blast. I will add an action activation cost and a self harm stipulation. Thank you for pointing those out. - Bionic Heart is *awfully* strong. "Reduce all fatigue costs by 1" is practically speaking very close to "ignore fatigue" - something that had, prior to this, only been available on exaltations, and something that opens a number of interesting potential combos. It is not the same as ignoring Fatigue. The most abusive aspects of this updated Artifact are the Reigunner's Soul Bullet Factory and the Reticulan Commander's Mind Merge. My main goal was to reduce critical effects Fatigue gains. There were a few additional interactions they were acceptable and those two previously mentioned that were exploitable. If Fatigue is that big of a problem to a character build you can take one of the several races that ignore Fatigue instead. - Promethean asset flamethrower is basically useless at level 1, and very strong at level 5. That seems... off. Generally speaking, attacks that come with exaltations don't scale with level. "Generally speaking" is not "always." You start with a low power weapon and end with a pocket Lascannon. Basically, you need to either come up with a completely different material, or provide some explanation for how energon (or specially treated energon?) is both viable as an artifact material and rare enough to work as one. After that... you probably still need some work. After receiving feedback from playtesting I can modify anything outrageous, which does not work well, or as intended. |
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Post by A nony mouse on Dec 20, 2019 0:10:29 GMT -6
I like the analogy of comparing Artifact Energon to Metallic Hydrogen, traditional Energon and gaseous Hydrogen are abundant and volatile. The Artifact Material detailed in this post is something beyond what average citizens of The Wheel encounter. Well, you need to make that clear in the fluff text, then. Play it up a little. Talk about the long, arcane processes and the improbable results. Discuss how they reverse-engineered the pyros reactors of captured and defeated prometheans, and managed to come up with a weird bootleg version. Give us some fluff explaining why the stuff has actual structural integrity. Provide some justification. Don't just ignore the problem. One of the cool things about refining the fluff a bit is that we might be able to come up with some other reference to tie in as well. Multireferences are awesome, when you can get them. They have a sort of elegance to them, if you can get them right. My point is that artifact ammo is limited in quantity, to a degree that standard ammo isn't. Having Variable Power Setting on a firearm effectively reduces the clip size in exchange for more power, but that just means that you're reloading more frequently. Artifact ammo only gets one clip to begin with (two for pistols). You effectively get far fewer artifact-boosted shots, in addition to the need to send a turn in recovery. It's a *lot* more useful to have that feature on the gun than on the ammo. I suppose I might suggest saying that energon ammo comes with twice as many clips? Regardless, the fact that it's available for las weapons is at least interesting. That was kind of the joke. How are you explaining "My legs are made of energy. They sometimes emit explosions." without involving at least horrific wear and tear on the legs in question? If you can come up with an actual justification (and include it in the fluff text), that would be awesome. (Perhaps the arcane lore manages to invert them from hyperfragile power storage to durable power emitters? Maybe it's not actually energon at all, it's just that it uses large quantities of the stuff to make, and the people who are capable of making it call it that to confuse those trying to replicate their work? Maybe there's a huge mystery about this new stuff that looks kind of like Energon but not really and obviously behaves differently and there's all sorts of speculation?) If Fatigue is that big of a problem to a character build you can take one of the several races that ignore Fatigue instead.[/quote] None of those races are in either of the base books. I haven't seen any races on this board that have such a thing either. Zoltan paragons can, but that's tied into the exaltation slot. Other than that, there are a number of races that don't need to eat, sleep, drink, or breathe, but that doesn't mean that they get to ignore fatigue. Let me be clearer then. I believe that that's the way everyone else does it for good reason. The asset has to be taken from chargen. In the early levels, it's near-useless. For the later levels, "I have an area-effect pocket lascannon with no Recharge or Reload delay" is way too powerful. Sure, it costs pyros. Pyros certainly isn't the cheapest resource in the game, but it's cheap enough, and there are ways around that as well. In any case, trying to balance things on the back of "there's a big payoff at the end, but you're kind of weak until you get there" is bad balance, especially when there are so many ways to speed-level in this game. You initially posted this in august of 2018. Do you expect a significant amount of playtesting any time soon? I figured that if you can work out the first set of kinks in discussion, then your playtesting time can be with a version that's a few steps forward to begin with, and you can get more refined feedback than "this is kind of broken". |
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Post by Divergent Reality on Dec 20, 2019 16:27:47 GMT -6
Well, you need to make that clear in the fluff text, then. Play it up a little. Talk about the long, arcane processes and the improbable results. Discuss how they reverse-engineered the pyros reactors of captured and defeated prometheans, and managed to come up with a weird bootleg version. Give us some fluff explaining why the stuff has actual structural integrity. Provide some justification. Don't just ignore the problem.
One of the cool things about refining the fluff a bit is that we might be able to come up with some other reference to tie in as well. Multireferences are awesome, when you can get them. They have a sort of elegance to them, if you can get them right. Sure, I can clarify. My point is that artifact ammo is limited in quantity, to a degree that standard ammo isn't. Having Variable Power Setting on a firearm effectively reduces the clip size in exchange for more power, but that just means that you're reloading more frequently. Artifact ammo only gets one clip to begin with (two for pistols). You effectively get far fewer artifact-boosted shots, in addition to the need to send a turn in recovery. It's a *lot* more useful to have that feature on the gun than on the ammo.
I suppose I might suggest saying that energon ammo comes with twice as many clips? Regardless, the fact that it's available for las weapons is at least interesting. Twice as many clips, double the ammunition available in a clip, give it a slow recharge time are a lot of ideas. They will receive a one shot per minute recharge time. There are other Artifact ammunitions, if they work better for a specific weapon you want, take it. Not everything needs to be cranked to eleven awesome. How are you explaining "My legs are made of energy. They sometimes emit explosions." I'm not directly explaining it. None of those races are in either of the base books. I haven't seen any races on this board that have such a thing either. Zoltan paragons can, but that's tied into the exaltation slot. Other than that, there are a number of races that don't need to eat, sleep, drink, or breathe, but that doesn't mean that they get to ignore fatigue. This Artifact material is not in Book 1 or 2 either. I looked at what causes Fatigue in Book 1 and 2 then decided that this worked better than gaining two buffer Fatigue. You initially posted this in august of 2018. Do you expect a significant amount of playtesting any time soon? I figured that if you can work out the first set of kinks in discussion, then your playtesting time can be with a version that's a few steps forward to begin with, and you can get more refined feedback than "this is kind of broken". This was initially posted in 2017 on the old forum. You may have noticed the lack of board discussion, that was all left behind there. The DtD community is quite small, playtesting is a slow process. I have no timetable on it until someone else picks up this material to use in their own game. |
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Post by Amanojyaku on Aug 9, 2021 12:46:01 GMT -6
Thoughts about proofing came up randomly, to wit: If something can cause a weapon of MRare or greater rarity to become an Energon weapon, what is its artifact rating? Daelkyr paragon had to outright state that if X+1=6 the new artifact can be MRare, by way of comparison.
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Post by Divergent Reality on Aug 9, 2021 18:43:33 GMT -6
Changes applied, thank you for pointing out that issue.
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