Vizard Thoughts

[swaswj]

Those insults have happened, just not in the thread. The people involved know who they are.

Meaning, that you've made your mind up before you even hear what the other person is saying. That's disturbing to me.

Consider it a budget and work with it. You're asking for $200 and I say you have to work with $100. Spending the majority of the thread arguing this point isn't getting you anywhere.

I'm going to be the one doing the work, so I have some prerogative over how much work I'm willing to do. I don't feel as if people have even play-tested the current version that Sev and I reworked and you're so quick to discard. That's a lot of effort with no payoff.

Speed while masked is clearly shown in at least SEVEN fights, strength while masked, ditto, and so on. It is indeed vague what impact it has on Kidou. Ichigo goes from getting hit, and being unable to hit Byak, to easily out pacing his footwork and doing hard damage to him. Yammi vs Ichigo, ditto. Grimmjaw vs Ichigo, ditto. Ichigo vs the Vizards, ditto. Turn back, ditto. Ulq vs Ichigo, ditto. Wonderwiess vs that Captain, ditto. Seems pretty consistent to me. But for the sake of the RP, I had already said just one, so I suppose that's moot.

Ichigo vs Byakuya: as soon as Ichigo goes Bankai, he moves so fast that Byakuya can't follow him. He slows down afterward -- Byakuya makes a point of clarifying that. The first thing the hollow says as it takes over? "Can't believe you're getting beat up by your own bankai." When the hollow takes over, it's increasing Ichigo's resilience to the negative effects of his own bankai. The speed improves, but nothing beyond what Ichigo's bankai was capable of to start with.

That initial plateau set by his bankai seems unreachable afterward except when Ichigo is masked. For others, we don't have pre-mask speed to really compare to. Against Yammy, in the first few seconds of Bankai, he dis-arms Yammy so fast it can't be seen; then the mask incapacitated Ichigo, it didn't help him. Against Grimmjow, Ichigo starts his first fight on the offensive with bankai; he's able to dodge Grimm's initial attacks, but can't cut through his hierro, and once he slows down he takes a pounding. He never uses the mask in the first fight. In the second and third fight, he starts with it. I'm not sure if we see very much of the other vizards fighting without their masks. Every fight onward, he pretty much masks at the start.

Wonderweiss was an arrancar.

I mean, both of us could be making a mistake here looking for consistency in Kubo's work, but this at least seems to hold up.

As for questions about masking, all already have been answered, leading me to reiterate paragraph two.

Humor me and break down the responses by question?

Now, give and take? Didn't I gut their: unique feat slot, extra kai slot, and throw on a penalty already? Seriously.

It's a continual re-evaluation; you can't just drop some weight and then add things. You know this as well as anyone.

 

[Eidolon]

Spoiler: long post is long as I try to hit each thing in turn.

Yesterday was a terror day, sorry for the slow response. Onto the meat.

I'm a little put off by the budget theory. The reason being is that I think its an assumption to say that 'adding or not adding an emptiness bar will change the amount of work that has to be done in balancing the end product.' As I said in the last post, with or without, the goal is the same. So, you're be balancing one more complicated asset versus two simpler and distinct ones. You've got some coding experience on your belt now, so you I hope you can appreciate the analogy of having two simple functions in a class versus one complex one that does two transformations of data. Their unique purposes makes it easier to debug them, and tweak them as needed.

Now, I respect that you're concerned I'm discarding the existing model quickly, but I believe the reason for doing so is sound both mechanically and thematically. Thematically, in the SS and early Vizard arc, when someone masked you were just like holy shit. Look at all those vizard AMV's on youtube. It got people excited and pumped up. A lot like for me, when I was knee high, when Goku first popped his power up. You're just like, "Holy Shit its going down now." Of course, most shounen fuck it up by normalizing the effect of their version of masks, but at least Kubo is trying to keep it real by showing its power (in the latest chap with that cap that was V wonderwiess and his VC). Late, but gj Kubo.

The current rendition lacks that feel and power. A meager rei bonus, a feat slot that doesn't have to be concerned with being masked: these two feel quite lackluster and unfocused. An extra kai slot: quite powerful but I don't see a basis for it. DR is there too. The whole package is all over the place mechanically. It isn't cohesive nor does it feel like its about the centerpiece of the class, the main visual and thematic component: the mask. Now don't get me wrong, I had a hand in it too, but its neither what I served up the first time nor was even that right.

This whole thread was an attempt to elicit the many capable opinions of the RP on the topic of bringing Vizards back into focus. Trimming fat, adding meat. As for the questions, based what was said so far by the whole of the thread. We were nowhere close to being finalized when the interjection came, but here's where we were.

What is getting boosted? One stat, by 20%, that cannot be changed(unless you pay Kan for a stat change) and is picked when the Vizard is made.

What is the requirement for putting the mask on?
Be a vizard. Don't have capped emptiness or rage.

What is the cost for keeping the mask on?
Each round that you do not expend Rage, you gain emptiness at a purposed base rate of 5% a turn. A high emptiness bar is bad, hurting you while not masked. A full emptiness bar is death. That's as far as we got. I wanted to explore the topic of adding a 1% cost per round of consecutive non-rage use, etc, to find the right measuring stick for duration. from 0 to 100% with that is 11 rounds(10 is 95%)

Why should a vizard want to use their mask?
Using the mask not only increases their base combat capacity, but it allows access to Rage techniques and the purposed modified kai slot.

Why should a vizard not use their mask at all times?
Its impossible in an environment where resources are monitored. You only have so much rage (~50% of your rei in total for boost, but slightly better and worse depending on the techs you chose). Using the limited resources of time (emptiness) and power (rage) carry penalties for the Vizard that aren't cooled off quickly. Capping either results in the permenant loss of your character. That's about as far as we got.

Should there be a way to forcibly unmask a target?
Can you force out a bankai, can you force the end to OD, can you turn off a quincy's bow? I don't think its been talked about because if the option is there, suddenly everyone will have it.

I'm not just adding and dropping randomly, it was based on suggestions I was able to elicit from members before the interjection and my own hope of trimming down and focusing Vizards. Things that are out of focus got tossed: the feat slot, extra kai slot, rei boost. This wasn't purely because I was looking to balance them mechanically, but again, theme and focus. Emptiness was purposed as a suggestion, and as I've said before was shopped around and met with a generally positive response. Some had questions to help flesh out what it really means, some had encouraging thoughts, a few were turned off. Its not realistic to hit a 100% consensus, but its good to have a strong majority. Of couse, no one's going to want to comment as it suddenly been made taboo.

Which is off to my last point: you nuked this thread into oblivion by coming in and dropping a hell no. As a leader in the RP, if you drop into a thread and say something like "Fuck this never." Its done. Other people aren't going to want to post, no matter their opinion, for fear of the clint squint by the staff. I feel like that's pretty irresponsible for a person in that position. I've done this of course in the past, though a few different positions. I felt in retrospect each time it was a bit dumb. A good team is always able to outpace an individual, even if the individual is talented. Those social science and psychological geeks have studied this.

To use an example at least some what in line with this. When leading a WoW guild that was a bunch of casuals miraculously diving into end game content, our best wasn't when I was like: "Heres my plan execute or diaf."(Van yelling soundboard best thing ever produced by WoW) It was when I opened up a line of discussion from each persons perspective, including role leaders (tank/healer/mdps/rdps) and members of those groups about how to handle specific challenges. Why not give this a chance to work that way? Its quite frustrating to have a something attacked before its even close to being done.

 

[Sormeki]

While I understand that it can be frustrating when someone tells you that a mechanic you really like will not be coming back any time soon, or ever for that matter, isn't it better for the thread if the conversation move on to other aspects besides that mechanic? It seems to me that people might not want to post because this thread seems to have become one person, Will, who asked that the topic be taken another direction because emptiness won't come back and another person, Van, unable to move on to other aspects of the race that may or may not need changing.

From what I understand, the idea here is that the mask needs to be more important. However, I would like to point out that the mask can be made important without bringing emptiness back. Beyond that, of course, if you really want to plead the case for emptiness, perhaps it has gotten to the point that that should be taken care of in a private manner with Will in order to not derail this thread with him saying no and you peppering in condescending comments about how he's not doing his job in a way you think is right while you attempt to explain your point of view. Veiled, or even not so veiled, insults are not a good way to get people to see eye to eye with you.

Now, in an attempt to bring this thread back on topic with some other aspects of Vizards that might need to change, I am first going to provide a link to the Vizard Sheet so people can see what we have now.

One thing I do have to agree with is that the feat seems a bit out of place, at least as it is now. For example, let's say I become a Vizard, now I get a feat slot I can use to make my shinigami side stand out more if I so choose. The unique feat should be something related to being a vizard. Now, I've never been one to normally advocate limiting something like that, but in this case it might not be a bad idea to consider, especially since Vizard is now set up almost like a prestige class with Shinigami as the base instead of letting people join it right away like back in the olden days. To equate with to D&D terms, it is like how the bonus feats a fighter gets as he levels up must be taken from a specific list of bonus feats for fighters, where as the normal feats he earns he has a bit more leeway with.

Much like the fighter whose bonus feats help define him as a fighter, the vizard's bonus feat should help define him as a vizard.

As for the stat boost, I'm perfectly okay with stat boosts from everything just disappearing altogether. While yes, in Bleach we see that sometimes speed is enhanced by a mask or release or what have you, however I don't feel that translates well into an RP were stats are guidelines for were to role play your character's strength. For example Player A has 4000 Hohou, Player B also has 4000 Hohou. However, did does not mean that Player A and Player B have to be 100% perfectly exactly the same speed. It just means that they have similar grasps on that particular aspect of themselves, which manifests as Shunpo, which may or may not be played in the same way.

That being said, if someone wanted to role play being a little faster when their mask was on I feel that would be fine, there is already some leeway to be given since everyone writes differently. As long as they don't give themselves access to new techniques. I feel that they boost in reiatsu when masked both can show this "increase" in speed without actually changing the stat, as well as demonstrate that when masked a Vizard is stronger then when they are not masked. So as far as that goes, if anything I would say keep what is there because it represents what it is suppose to represent in a much better manner than saying, "My vizzle gets a boost to Zanjustu, making him better with a sword when he puts his mask on, but then he forgets how to be that good with a sword when the mask comes back off".