Grappling ideas

[SageAcrin]

A fast set of ideas to make Grappling more interesting and useful.

Make Grappling Stance slow projectiles and raise Defense/Physical save while it's on, rather than the shoddy stuff it does now. (getStr 30 for all values?)

Add Crushing Hold's effect as an L5 effect to Clinch and remove Crushing Hold from the game.

Have Maim attempt to apply Disarm, regardless of if the target is Grappled or not, for (3, 6) turns, in addition to the slow and grapple attempt and damage.

Have Slam, if used on a Grappled target, produce a shockwave of (1, 5) radius, as you slam them on the ground.

Add in a new talent; Hurricane Throw, a talent that only works on Grappled targets. This deals (70, 130) WeaponTalentDamage to all enemies around you, then places your grappled target in a square (2, 6) range away of your choosing. Any enemies around that square will take (120, 170) WeaponTalentDamage in radius (1, 3), and the thrown target will take (240, 360) WeaponTalentDamage(but not shockwave damage).

Retool all damage values to weapon talent, both so they can hit on_hit glove procs and so they're less of a joke. (10, 30) WeaponTalentDamage every turn on Grappled targets(based on Clinch level), (90, 140) for Clinch and Maim's initial hits(perhaps a bit more for Clinch? 120, 170?). Slam deals (200, 250) to the target and (170, 230) with the shockwave if applicable(which does not hit the target).

[Shibari]

I haven't coded any of this yet but I have been toying with Brawler quite a bit. Currently on my repository clone I have the following changes:

(BASE CLASS)
- 1 rank of Unarmed Mastery at level 1. It makes a world of difference.

(FINISHING MOVES)
- Too much to list, massively buffed everything and talent 3 is now a leap with range 2+combo points that deals aoe damage on landing. Haymaker peaks around 800% weapon damage at 5 CP and is more heavily scaled by CP. I sent this to DG already along with the following (spammy!) notes: http://pastebin.com/qSxGJvgs
Haven't heard back yet so I don't know if it'll be accepted or not.

(PUGILISM)
- Relentless Strikes deleted, cooldowns changed around. Double Jab stays at 3 because of the replacement talent, Spinning Fist is around what it is with 4/5 Relentless atm, Flurry of Fists is at 25 to keep it as a tactical cooldown.

- New Talent: Hammerfist. Autoreplaces an attack if Double Jab is on CD, only does one attack but is strictly better than a normal attack. At TL3 it gains a combo point. Low damage scaling. This along with the previous change is A. To free up talent points, 4/5 relentless requirement is dumb B. To make bump attacks less horrible and C. To allow some customization of CP generation flow.

- +2 range on Spinning Fist because theres no reason for it to be so awful

(UNARMED TRAINING)
- Steady Mind deleted

- New Talent: Life is Strength. Str->Con conversion along the lines of Strength of Purpose. I like how the class scales off a ton of stats, this facilitates that a bit better and adds free survivability. God knows Brawler could use more free.. lots of things.. heh.

I like the rest of the tree as-is, Combo String is fine if CP is useful, Reflexive Dodging is one of the best talents in the game. Good stuff.

(UNARMED DISCIPLINE)
- Deleted Push Kick

- Deleted Defensive Throw

- New Talent: Revitalizing Tempo. Heals you when you spend CP.

- Planned: Change Roundhouse into a finisher. Maybe.

Its uh, a start, or something.

Edit: Oh right, Grappling!

So retooling things to use weapon damage should be done period imo, the class damage is entirely based on procs and trying to vary from that too much is inviting a balance/design nightmare.

Stance switching should just not exist. That bonus is hugely important to basic functionality. Instead, why not just let it stay up while Grappling?

Someone suggested Grapples sharing damage with the victim which would be a really useful mechanic I think.

[bpat]

A fast set of ideas to make Grappling more interesting and useful.

Make Grappling Stance slow projectiles and raise Defense/Physical save while it's on, rather than the shoddy stuff it does now. (getStr 30 for all values?)

Disagree on the slow projectiles, that overlaps with Slow Motion which Brawlers already get. Saves make sense but I'm not sure about how defense fits thematically. Perhaps increase status resistance or physical resistance instead of defense?

Add Crushing Hold's effect as an L5 effect to Clinch and remove Crushing Hold from the game.

Have Maim attempt to apply Disarm, regardless of if the target is Grappled or not, for (3, 6) turns, in addition to the slow and grapple attempt and damage.

Have Slam, if used on a Grappled target, produce a shockwave of (1, 5) radius, as you slam them on the ground.

Add in a new talent; Hurricane Throw, a talent that only works on Grappled targets. This deals (70, 130) WeaponTalentDamage to all enemies around you, then places your grappled target in a square (2, 6) range away of your choosing. Any enemies around that square will take (120, 170) WeaponTalentDamage in radius (1, 3), and the thrown target will take (240, 360) WeaponTalentDamage(but not shockwave damage).

Retool all damage values to weapon talent, both so they can hit on_hit glove procs and so they're less of a joke. (10, 30) WeaponTalentDamage every turn on Grappled targets(based on Clinch level), (90, 140) for Clinch and Maim's initial hits(perhaps a bit more for Clinch? 120, 170?). Slam deals (200, 250) to the target and (170, 230) with the shockwave if applicable(which does not hit the target).

Numbers would need testing for sure but I like the idea. I liked that Throw Down was like a rush-type Grappling talent though, perhaps something like that should be kept in the tree.

I haven't coded any of this yet but I have been toying with Brawler quite a bit. Currently on my repository clone I have the following changes:

(BASE CLASS)
- 1 rank of Unarmed Mastery at level 1. It makes a world of difference.

(FINISHING MOVES)
- Too much to list, massively buffed everything and talent 3 is now a leap with range 2+combo points that deals aoe damage on landing. Haymaker peaks around 800% weapon damage at 5 CP and is more heavily scaled by CP. I sent this to DG already along with the following (spammy!) notes: http://pastebin.com/qSxGJvgs
Haven't heard back yet so I don't know if it'll be accepted or not.

800% weapon damage on Haymaker might be way to high since it's so easy to hit 5 CP (Double Jab and Flurry of Fists gets you 5 in two attacks) but everything else here seems fine.

(PUGILISM)
- Relentless Strikes deleted, cooldowns changed around. Double Jab stays at 3 because of the replacement talent, Spinning Fist is around what it is with 4/5 Relentless atm, Flurry of Fists is at 25 to keep it as a tactical cooldown.

- New Talent: Hammerfist. Autoreplaces an attack if Double Jab is on CD, only does one attack but is strictly better than a normal attack. At TL3 it gains a combo point. Low damage scaling. This along with the previous change is A. To free up talent points, 4/5 relentless requirement is dumb B. To make bump attacks less horrible and C. To allow some customization of CP generation flow.

- +2 range on Spinning Fist because theres no reason for it to be so awful

I don't know if Hammerfist is a great idea, I feel there isn't any reason to replace bump attacks. I definitely agree that Relentless Strikes should be removed because it's not interesting and it costs too many class points to be useful (4/5 breakpoint for double jab, worthless until then). Perhaps for the replacement talent could be a low cooldown, good damage strike that's slower than usual, so there would be a tradeoff between using a bump attack or this. Agreed that Spinning Backhand could use more range.

(UNARMED TRAINING)
- Steady Mind deleted

- New Talent: Life is Strength. Str->Con conversion along the lines of Strength of Purpose. I like how the class scales off a ton of stats, this facilitates that a bit better and adds free survivability. God knows Brawler could use more free.. lots of things.. heh.

I like the rest of the tree as-is, Combo String is fine if CP is useful, Reflexive Dodging is one of the best talents in the game. Good stuff.

This could actually convince people to invest in strength, which is good. Would this be a sustain or a passive talent?

(UNARMED DISCIPLINE)
- Deleted Push Kick

- Deleted Defensive Throw

- New Talent: Revitalizing Tempo. Heals you when you spend CP.

- Planned: Change Roundhouse into a finisher. Maybe.

Its uh, a start, or something.

I agree that Push Kick and Defensive Throw should go since they overlap with Roundhouse Kick and Counter Attack too much respectively. I also think Breath Control should be removed or the activation time should be instant since it's pretty bad at the moment. Make all kicks scale with boot tier like how skullcracker scales with helm tier.

Edit: Oh right, Grappling!

So retooling things to use weapon damage should be done period imo, the class damage is entirely based on procs and trying to vary from that too much is inviting a balance/design nightmare.

Stance switching should just not exist. That bonus is hugely important to basic functionality. Instead, why not just let it stay up while Grappling?

Someone suggested Grapples sharing damage with the victim which would be a really useful mechanic I think.

I agree that weapon damage should be used and stance switching is bad. The last point about damage sharing is an interesting idea, I like the idea of giving brawlers better defense.

[Shibari]

Part of the reason for Hammerfist is that its hard to get out bumping with the class. It attacks extremely fast and only has other strikes once it has CP, which is overall pretty hard to get without 1 CD Double Jab. I won't disagree that its a bit boring though. This could easily be a more 'normal' strike as you suggest, though if I go that route it'll probably have a defensive buff or debuff attached.

Life is Strength has to be a sustain for code reasons probably. It makes getting Conditioning online not physically painful so far which is nice. Its completely out of theme with the tree its in though so making it Dex->Con and Cun->Str might make more sense.

So, unless someone has a good argument why I shouldn't, I'm probably deleting Grappling as a "stance" for the aforementioned reasons. Keeping buffs while Grappling still, just not dropping you out of your core scaler while doing it.

Is there any reason to not move Unarmed Training to Generic?

[SageAcrin]

The one purely combo point oriented talent doesn't fit as a universal generic talent.

Granted, that talent's kinda bad, so once you fix that talent to be more generalized or remove and replace it, there's no reason at all not to make it Generic.

[Shibari]

The one purely combo point oriented talent doesn't fit as a universal generic talent.

Granted, that talent's kinda bad, so once you fix that talent to be more generalized or remove and replace it, there's no reason at all not to make it Generic.

Hm yeah, that should work. I do sort of like that talent but it can always be somewhere else. Feels slightly silly since with the stat modifying talent and Reflexes that tree is far too powerful to realistically ever give to different classes, but.. That's less problematic than putting a combo point talent in Generic I suppose.

I'll try to do something with Grappling today too.

[SageAcrin]

Yeah, it's more of a theoretical thing.

You never know, some campaign down the line could be high powered enough to allow that kind of cross talent pollination. It's a good design theory to make Generic theoretically universal, even if it's OP for the current campaign, as such.

[Shibari]

Reasonably happy with the other the base tree revisions up on Git now (Unarmed Training is still class because I messed up but I mailed the fix to DG already, fairly sure I just didn't include it by accident last time), so I'm poking at Grappling for real now heh. Personal notes I threw together in 3m as a starting point:

General Notes
- Anti single target
- Remove stance so the scalers are more predictable, possibly rename Striking Stance
- 1 debuff easily re-attempted, 1 save check
- Preserve Silence, possibly preserve Slow
- Minimal weapon damage interaction
- 0-1 Finisher or 1 method of CP gain max

Basic Grapple:
- Damage share with Grappled, primary effect
- Low to moderate damage, no weapon damage
- Possibly remove reactivation on same target entirely
- Scaling for damage share and damage tick only?
- Energy refund on fail?

Something (Passive)
- Adds the extra benefits to the Grapple effect
- No separate debuffs, no reactivations based
- TL1->Silence, TL3->Slow, ???
- CP gain mechanic here somewhere?

Hurricane Throw (Active, Finisher?)
- Something involving throwing a unit really far, with no save check this doubles as a useful backloaded defense
- Slow travel speed would be a neat way to extend the disable on this
- Theme bending should be at this talent if anywhere no matter what it winds up being

Takedown
- Gap close or AoE5, SageAcrin's change
- Possibly make this a reasonably good mobility skill, but baseline mobility with Butterfly Kick is really good already. probably ok if range is TL limited
- Possibly weapon damage
- Possibly brief damage debuff on hit Grapple success or not

[bpat]

Reasonably happy with the other the base tree revisions up on Git now (Unarmed Training is still class because I messed up but I mailed the fix to DG already, fairly sure I just didn't include it by accident last time), so I'm poking at Grappling for real now heh. Personal notes I threw together in 3m as a starting point:

General Notes
- Anti single target
- Remove stance so the scalers are more predictable, possibly rename Striking Stance
- 1 debuff easily re-attempted, 1 save check
- Preserve Silence, possibly preserve Slow
- Minimal weapon damage interaction
- 0-1 Finisher or 1 method of CP gain max

Basic Grapple:
- Damage share with Grappled, primary effect
- Low to moderate damage, no weapon damage
- Possibly remove reactivation on same target entirely
- Scaling for damage share and damage tick only?
- Energy refund on fail?

Something (Passive)
- Adds the extra benefits to the Grapple effect
- No separate debuffs, no reactivations based
- TL1->Silence, TL3->Slow, ???
- CP gain mechanic here somewhere?

Hurricane Throw (Active, Finisher?)
- Something involving throwing a unit really far, with no save check this doubles as a useful backloaded defense
- Slow travel speed would be a neat way to extend the disable on this
- Theme bending should be at this talent if anywhere no matter what it winds up being

Takedown
- Gap close or AoE5, SageAcrin's change
- Possibly make this a reasonably good mobility skill, but baseline mobility with Butterfly Kick is really good already. probably ok if range is TL limited
- Possibly weapon damage
- Possibly brief damage debuff on hit Grapple success or not

Grapple should do a 0% weapon damage attack (like Switch Place) because glove procs are fun and flat damage is not (at least not on a melee character). Grappling shouldn't be entirely defensive, consider adding a physical save and physical resistance debuff to the grappled target as either part of the basic grapple or the passive. Hurricane Throw implies the user is spinning, so maybe knock all other adjacent enemies back for a smaller distance.