Grouping

[Elystole]

I'm wondering if there is some way to make grouping more resilient. By 'resilient' I mean, for example, that you don't suddenly ungroup if the person you were following dies as that can have some nasty ramifications for certain abilities if your group disbands in the thick of combat.

Maybe when you're grouped, you're flagged or something as part of that group, and if the leader dies then leadership is assigned to the next person in the group?

[Rias]

I'm looking at it. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was slightly amused by what happened, though.

[Elystole]

I'm looking at it. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was slightly amused by what happened, though.

Oh, if I was you, I'd be highly amused.

[criticalfault]

Its just a bummer to finally have your crap together and then when the party breaks..accidentally kill a few folks and injury others. It makes me want to retire from using nova kind of ever. Then again...its the only way i can play with the big dogs. More grindy grind for me.

Would be slick if the party just got a new leader and again i beg and plead for nova to omit mounts!

Still....i did kill the hell out of some neatherium....

[Rithiel]

Personally, I see the fact that these powerful spells are dangerous with a group as a feature, not a bug.

It's not like there's some magical force field that protects people from nova or haunting. I imagine that people are precisely placed and what not. When things get messed up in battle by leaders falling or moving or whatever, it would mess up this precision. So mages and rooks have to be careful about when they're casting these uber-powerful spells, instead of just spamming them. Timing is everything.

The mounts thing is a different story (assuming you're actually mounted).

[Rias]

I agree the wide-area spells should be dangerous (which they are), but I don't think a group leader biting the dust means everyone previously in the group should start getting hit by the novae and hauntings of their buddies. I like the idea of group leadership passing to someone else in the group if the leader dies.

With mounts, I hope to make it so that if the mount belongs to someone in the group, even if the mount isn't in the group itself, it won't be affected.

[Isiaa]

Perhaps the leadership chain would need to be established beforehand and if it isn't the group dissolves upon the death of the leader. This would lead to people who want to lead the group competing for the position of second-in-command, third-in-command etc. I need to start playing again.

[Jaster]

That's actually a cool suggestion, Isiaa.

[Vertebrate]

A thought I had is having various formations for groups, and also that the group leader assigns roles instead of people jockeying for position.

[Makkah]

That's actually a cool suggestion, Isiaa.

You'll always be my #2, Jaster.

[Jaster]

I'm ok with being a #2.

[TwistedAkai]

Timing is everything.

Having used aeromancy as a primary weapon, this is very true.

[jilliana]

I'm not a big fan of assigning positions to your group members. Sometimes there isn't enough time IC to do that.
Defaulting to the person next in line is simple and uncomplicated.

[TwistedAkai]

I'm not a big fan of assigning positions to your group members. Sometimes there isn't enough time IC to do that.
Defaulting to the person next in line is simple and uncomplicated.

If there isn't enough time IC to declare someone to step up if something happens to the leader, then the group's ability to recover from the loss of that leader is questionable at best, and disbanding may be valid.

[Stranger]

I am thinking a better way to do this would be to have the system automatically pick another leader if the first leader falls.

Lore wise: In battle, if a squad leader falls and there is no clear chain of command, people we either just run or look to the strongest persona for guidance. This is not a pondered decision but rather an act of desperation in the heat of battle.

Mechanically: It would just pick the player with the highest armor or combat skill. This would keep the group together, even if this player is not the chosen leader (which can be re-chosen by the players at another time.) If the GMs wanted to be cruel they could even give this a chance to fail, saying that the group gave into fear and disbanded in the panic.

[TwistedAkai]

I am thinking a better way to do this would be to have the system automatically pick another leader if the first leader falls.

Lore wise: In battle, if a squad leader falls and there is no clear chain of command, people we either just run or look to the strongest persona for guidance. This is not a pondered decision but rather an act of desperation in the heat of battle.

Mechanically: It would just pick the player with the highest armor or combat skill. This would keep the group together, even if this player is not the chosen leader (which can be re-chosen by the players at another time.) If the GMs wanted to be cruel they could even give this a chance to fail, saying that the group gave into fear and disbanded in the panic.

I like this idea.

[Elystole]

The easiest way to do this might be to have leadership pass to the first person who joined and so on. It's easy enough for the system to track (I think) since it knows when people joins the group and likely has them in some sort of list. It's easy for players as most of them likely won't care but the ones who do care can simply make sure they join in the right order.

[jilliana]

Exactly what I was trying to get at Elystole.

[Makkah]

Stranger wins.

[criticalfault]

If AoE will always be dangerous thats fine. Lets see the other guilds AoE act the same as well then. Haunting was the first other guild power i've heard about that affected friendlies. Good to hear people say damn elemancer and rook :P

[Kiyaani]

I don't think anyone is condemning those guilds, but you also have to consider most other guilds don't have channeled magic or 'AoE' in the sense that you're talking about. Their AoE attacks are normally melee attacks and wouldn't affect non-group members anyway. Rooks and Elemancers are meant to be powerful. They channel energies that most people can't and that's useful and effective, but there's also great risk involved. Not to get all nerdy, but Uncle Ben had it right - with great power comes great responsibility.

I'd say if you're super concerned about accidentally killing teammates in battle you could just make the elemancer the party leader. Then if they die the channeling will stop, your friends can regroup and everything can continue as normal. For rooks it's a bit different since hauntings persist. You just have to be careful and use judgment and tact when choosing what spells you want to throw around in combat.

It's not necessary for the game to do everything for us. If the leader bites the dust, people should RP and make their own decisions as to new leadership, running in terror, continuing to press on as a team or going separate ways.

[Elystole]

It's not necessary for the game to do everything for us. If the leader bites the dust, people should RP and make their own decisions as to new leadership, running in terror, continuing to press on as a team or going separate ways.

I'm thinking about why those AoE spells don't hit group members in the first place.

For Elemancers, I am thinking the party is bunched up close enough to the Elemancer for the nova to originate outside of them. Having the leader get killed doesn't mean that suddenly everyone is outside the eye.

For Rooks, I would think the haunting doesn't affect group members because the Rook wills it. Just because the leader dies doesn't mean that the Rook suddenly forgets who is a member of the party and who isn't. It makes more sense for everything to go to pot if the Rook is killed (which is what I hope happens).

Also, when you have a party of six people going up against two dozen of whatever, there's not much opportunity to RP anything. You're in the ninth level of spam and usually just hitting your attacks and hoping for the best. Whenever I've died in those situations I've had to scroll back up to see what got me, and I'm pretty good at scanning text.

Fortunately, Rias already said he's looking at it.

[Kiyaani]

Maybe AoE from elemancers should hit group members in the first place. There are AoE spells that do. Minor Beacon for example.

I'm not saying this to try and make elemancers less fun or make people upset, but let's think about that spell a moment...

Is the nova emanating from the elemancer or is it a ring starting distanced around them? How does that work? How are you melee fighting if that's the case? How are you flanking opponents with a giant ring of death around you? How are you using surround mechanics? How is the enemy using surround mechanics? Maybe only those using ranged weapons can attack if someone uses a Nova. I don't think it's Custer's Last Stand and you're all in the middle surrounded by a giant ring of fire, but I could be wrong. To me it sounds like a pulsing wave emitting from the elemancer. If you are in the middle of a ring and the leader dies, sure I can see how it might be weird for the spell to suddenly affect you, but why isn't it affecting you in the first place?

Here's what we have from Rias: A nova is an expanding ring rather than a sphere, roughly on a plane centered at the midesction of the caster and following the average horizontal plane of the immediate terrain.

And the Wiki: By employing this pattern, an Elemancer can release an expanding ring of a single element from around herself. Those close enough to the Elemancer at the time of casting will not be affected, but anyone else, be they friend or foe, will be struck by the effects of the nova.

Why is that? What keeps everyone safe?

*****

I don't mean to make this a mechanics discussion. Honestly I don't really play with elemancers all that much and don't have much interest in the guild. I'm also not saying it's a bad thing if Rias wants to make groups persist through death of the leader. I just don't see it as necessary and I don't see this as a reason to make it necessary. Elemancers have gotten on in group combat just fine before this incident and will continue to in future incidents.

There's a lot of chaos in battle. If you see one of your friends go down in front of your face, who's to say you don't leave that protected area and get hit? Who's to say the elemancer doesn't get distracted and lose focus and accidentally hit their friends, or drop channels completely? Maybe the elemancer *has* to drop channels if someone dies to re-balance the nova. Not everyone in a combat situation is battle-hardened or so insensitive as to not be affected by what's going on around them.

Ever see Fellowship of the Ring? When Frodo gets hit and everyone thinks he's dead, the group members all pause dramatically to express disbelief/horror/anger before resuming the fight with increased vigor. In Clok you're often using Battle, Barrage, Trance etc. and the fight just continues, the fallen unnoticed, or someone may say something like flee, or regroup, or <name> has fallen, but is still fighting normally because that’s how auto-fight mechanics are. There's no built-in recognition that you've just witnessed someone you care about dying and that's where the RP comes in. But it's also not really fair to just say that the elemancer would be totally unaffected by witnessing such a thing and the spell would go on normally either or that the group would have the mental state to stick together.

Maybe if there is a lack of care, it's a result of knowing everyone with you can be brought back to life and that's something to consider too.

With regards to leadership... Any RP regarding group leader could happen after the immediate fight concluded. We've had party leaders die in battle before - even in battles with similar odds to what you described. People are generally able to muster around someone on their own (usually one person will join someone and everyone else will just follow).

Rias did say he's looking into it, but that doesn't mean he's decided what he wants to do and it doesn't mean we can't express alternative solutions, new perspectives or opposing viewpoints. For the issue of grouping, my solution is simple and doesn't require any effort - just make the person putting everyone in danger the leader and if it's a Rook - watch yourself.

[Rias]

I'd rather not make elemancer novae hit friendlies even if grouped and thus only useful when solo. That would destroy the dynamic of, "There's a huge horde of monsters, everyone group up and guard the elemancer so they can set off some novae!" which, I think, is the most fun aspect of "area of effect" stuff.

If I need to BS a little to make it so they're group-safe, I will. For now, let's assume that the elemancer has enough control to open brief gaps to avoid friends when nova-ing. It's already assumed there's a part of their brains that's savant-like enough to swiftly imagine and picture the incredibly complex patterns of elemancy, so I think we're okay to say that this part of their brain can also help them keep track of the positions of friendlies and time the gaps precisely enough to pull this off.

As far as group leadership, I'm leaning toward auto-choosing another leader if the current leader falls. I think it'd be pretty crappy to have the group dissolve amidst crazy chaos and suddenly have hauntings/novae/hostile shouts/other AoE stuff suddenly start nailing your previous group members without people realizing it amidst the screen scroll, just because the leader died.

[criticalfault]

I have often wondered if the triple channeling was more affective and less dangerous than the novas. Something to consider for sure, i think in general i am the only one really having the issue, so as always it could very well be my poor ability. still, i would welcome the change but dont truly worry or lose sleep over it