Style balancing

[Coolthulhu]

There are some weird styles that are hard to balance:

[ul][li]Dragon’s gimmick of intelligence boosting damage is quite bad, but its techniques are really solid: stun on non-crit, counter on both block and dodge, knockback on crit to cheese hulks[/li]
[li]Tiger is amazing with hydraulic muscles, but its gimmick of stacking damage per hit is only good vs weak crap that doesn’t need that. Lack of techniques too. Still, it’s amazing with hydraulic muscles.[/li]
[li] Centipede is rapid+stacking attack cost decrease. Sounds like it could get amazing after a long combo, but it needs very low encumbrance to shine.
[/li]
[li]Scorpion is weird. It has guaranteed stun on both crit and non-crit. It is supposed to kick stuff back 3 tiles on crit, but only kicks it back 1 tile. Good multipliers on damage too. It’s unlearnable (trait only).
[/li]
[li]Toad grants armor. Not much - just 6 (hoodie). It has full damage rapid attack with downing on non-crit. But no crit technique. Also starting only. Between kinda bad and really bad, unless you’re playing a 4 dex 4 per nudist.
[/li]
[li] Snake/Viper. It needs a rework. Its combo doesn’t work. I don’t think it was ever really tested, just added and then left in to sit there. And back then crits were way easier to gain than they are now.
[/li]
[li] Karate is quite bad. It has rapid attack, more dodges and blocks, and stun on crit, but that’s it. It’s Krav Maga on reverse-roids (testosterone blockers?).
[/li]
[li] Aikido deals half damage. Half. Damage. I guess it could get a giant bonus to dodge to cheese hulks with it?
[/li]
[li] Judo gives you immunity to downing, but sucks. And you don’t want to use it against bio-ops because they zap. Not sure what to add to it - a bonus to landing against hulk smash? But then it would not be a combat technique, just something you switch into before getting smashed.
[/li]
[li]Tai Chi. You can’t block a hulk smash. You can’t block a bite. Needs a rework.
[/li]
[li]Capoeira has a gimmick of giving bonus dodges and blocks on attack and bonus damage on move. But it has no techniques and doesn’t allow blocking (except with arm guards?). Needs a rework
[/li]
[li] Taekwondo - it is a weird combination of defensive+push+downing. No specialization, no direction. Brawling’s hipster brother.[/li][/ul]

Looking for solid ideas, preferably from people who tried to use said styles.

[BeerBeer]

Hehe… How about this for Tai Chi

If you perform Tai Chi during the sunrise hour, or the hour following it, for one minute (attacking an empty tile), you get a morale bonus, a slight health bonus, and +1 to Perception for one hour. Each consecutive morning you practice Tai Chi, you get an increasing amount of morale, capping out at some point.

Because Tai Chi is basically yoga.

[Mecares]

I have just recently watched Equilibrium again and would love to see some kind of the Gun Kata of the Tetragrammaton Clerics.

[WIndburns]

Toad style-armor probably could act like the thief’s defense stance (reaction ability) from FFTactics, once delt damage by, your character goes into a stance with increased armor corresponding to the enemy who iniated the hit (damage).

[ShinQuickMan]

Dragon’s gimmick of intelligence boosting damage is quite bad, but its techniques are really solid: stun on non-crit, counter on both block and dodge, knockback on crit to cheese hulks

Define “bad”. Works quite well for super-genius builds. A non-option, if I dare say. Unless that’s exactly what you mean by bad…

[Coolthulhu]

Define “bad”. Works quite well for super-genius builds. A non-option, if I dare say. Unless that’s exactly what you mean by bad…

The need to build a super-genius to seriously use the bonus counts as bad.
Otherwise it counts just as a flat bonus. For most characters, replacing it with a flat bonus would be better.

You can gain some extra damage on top of the strength bonus and Dragon’s per-point bonus is one of the best around, but it scales of a stat that otherwise has nothing to do with combat (unlike 3 other stats). And even though its one of the best scaling bonuses around, it still doesn’t beat strength point-for-point. Compare with Tiger, which scales off strength twice - once for being bashing, once for being Tiger.

Still, “bad” may have been too strong of a word. Now that I look at it, you can easily gain 6 extra damage (pre-scaling) compared to average by just not dumping strength.
It’s more like it’s just a flat bonus, with the gimmick of it depending on intelligence only being relevant in rare cases.

[someguy]

[quote=“BeerBeer, post:2, topic:11347”]Because Tai Chi is basically yoga.[/quote]It’s quite rare admittedly, but Tai Chi is occasionally practised as a combat sport.

So no, it isn’t. That’s like saying boxing is basically aerobics because you’ve only ever seen people doing boxercise.

[kevin.granade]

Indeed, t’ai chi is foremost a martial art.
Denigrating t’ai chi because people co-opt the name for a vaguely related fitness program is like saying the same about Brazilian jujitsu for the same reason, or for that matter claiming karate isn’t a real martial art because of the existence of terrible karate studios in strip malls.

[Noctifer]

If Taekwondo is but fancy brawling, then why not add specifications to differentiate itself, a couple special moves would not hurt.

[iceball3]

One thing I noticed, using the Fencing martial art, is that stop thrusts seem to take up an entire turn, and are compulsory counterattacks. This means that at relatively high-ish skill level, your character can end up being stun-locked by being forced to counterattack all incoming attacks, if enough units are fighting you at once, even in sticky situations such as acid or fire being on your feet. Perhaps have the stop thrust query if you want to complete it if you take damage or pain in it’s duration, and if you say no, it disables stop thrusts for a good ten turns? Maybe have an (I)gnore distractions option alongside the no and yes, that makes it so you don’t get queried for the next 10 stop thrusts. Apply the same to other martial arts which have a turn-eating counterattack.

[kevin.granade]

Something I’ve been thinking of for counters is to give the enemy a 1-turn effect that makes them vulnerable to a counterattack instead of an automatic hit, then it’s the player’s choice to make the buffed attack instead of it being mandatory.

[iceball3]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:11, topic:11347”]Something I’ve been thinking of for counters is to give the enemy a 1-turn effect that makes them vulnerable to a counterattack instead of an automatic hit, then it’s the player’s choice to make the buffed attack instead of it being mandatory.[/quote]Oooh, now that sort is pretty cool. I imagine the effects on top of stopping damage and increasing the damage returned could vary on what style’s counter you’re using, yeah?
It would mean the end of people reading/crafting/whatever while a horde tries to pile up on them and [the horde] dies in the process, which is quite silly, so it’s for the best.

[kevin.granade]

I hadn’t even thought about the countering-while-crafting thing, that’s a plus.

[jcd]

Meh, i like the ‘i-can-kill-zeds-in-my-sleep’ feeling fencing has. Once i did too. Heavy sleeper, got hit and countered killing the enemy.
Wake up, realize what happend, then ‘oh well, back to sleep’

(ok i concede that its unrealistic :P)

[TheFlame52]

Where can you find fencing?

[ShinQuickMan]

“The Modern Swordsman”, I think. You can occasionally find those in mansions.

[TheFlame52]

Ah, thanks. I would like to be able to counter attacking zombies while I butcher their buddies.

[Azrad]

Ah, thanks. I would like to be able to counter attacking zombies while I butcher their buddies.

Did that quite a bit, even thought it could be a fun challenge on the gods of the cataclysm thread.

If I recall, zui quan and bionic combat also has similar counter attacks.