Author Topic: New herbs make herbalism too easy and probably too powerful  (Read 6657 times)

Nemesis 24

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Re: New herbs make herbalism too easy and probably too powerful
« Reply #50 on: October 12, 2018, 03:32:46 AM »
I used to harvest 800 herbs over 72 hours or so when I was doing it for another.  That sort of thing is entirely feasible.

Silas Rotleaf

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Re: New herbs make herbalism too easy and probably too powerful
« Reply #51 on: October 12, 2018, 09:26:31 AM »
I dunno... I just feel like people have this weird idea that there is some sort of danger of the game becoming easier when almost everything in the environment is brutally unforgiving.

 Okay mist herbs for example... Are usually in areas where there are greater mist horrors. Those have an aura of fear you have to overcome and can spam a negative energy attack just by you touching them.  You can get dead, pretty fast from just one of those and they tend to be in groups. They decloak and your mid level char is essentially boned if they wind up surrounded.

Oh think you can just wipe out the swarm of those guys guarding the sweet, sweet herbs? No, they are tanky with high hp and oddly completely fireproofed.
It takes several hits to down one.  You can turn them as an undead but if you aren't a cleric with repose domain that just gives the GMHs a temporary fear effect back on them, which means they are still running around on the map and going to hurt you when you crash into one or vice versa.

I've seen some high level chars do it and crunch past a pack of them eventually but your level 18 druid, ranger or paladin isn't gonna have a complete breeze walk in the park when there are other factors to consider.

Maybe people should chill a little?
« Last Edit: October 12, 2018, 09:29:28 AM by Silas Rotleaf »

Iridni Ren

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Re: New herbs make herbalism too easy and probably too powerful
« Reply #52 on: October 12, 2018, 10:22:57 AM »
I dunno... I just feel like people have this weird idea that there is some sort of danger of the game becoming easier when almost everything in the environment is brutally unforgiving.

My argument (balance) is the opposite. You conclude by talking about high levels succeeding. That's the point of balance.

I don't think anyone would disagree with these two statements:

1) POTM is intensely hard for truly new players with truly new, low-level PCs.

2) At some point, experienced, high-level players are no longer challenged by the server itself. Although a few pockets of content may be undoable (for example, Ooze City, or so I'm told), they know to avoid those places. Otherwise, they have beaten the game. What keeps them coming back is interactions with other players and DMs.

For extremely high level PCs played by experienced players, the DMs have quite the difficulty in coming up with encounters that are balanced and challenging. They must control the number of PCs in attendance because crafting an encounter for three or four 16+ levels is a different beast than eight 16+ levels.

I am not arguing at all that herbalism makes the server too easy. What I'm saying is it furthers imbalances toward players who have played and play more and also tips the balance more toward those who do it versus those who do not.

On that point, if herbalism becomes so good it is a no-brainer essential, then those who have the time to invest in it are favored over those who don't or would rather spend their time doing something else.

And if it is "controlled" by putting herbs in difficult content areas, then it increases the disparity between powerful PCs and those who aren't as strong.

In an earlier post I quoted Soren extensively on why elements like scrolls and potions are bad for the server's goal of shared narratives, so I won't repeat him again and thus myself. But I, at least, am not arguing herbalism makes the server too easy. What inevitably happens is, to compensate, the server is actually made harder and harder...for new people.

Herbalism was plenty strong before, and now it is much more difficult to learn as a new player/PC, but also a way for someone playing in relative isolation to leverage extensive play time toward greater power. That is the hallmark of the kind of play POTM has historically discouraged. Consequently, I think the changes have been largely detrimental to the server's unique and fragile ecosystem.

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Silas Rotleaf

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Re: New herbs make herbalism too easy and probably too powerful
« Reply #53 on: October 12, 2018, 10:51:17 AM »
Ah, those are some good points too Iridni.

noah25

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Re: New herbs make herbalism too easy and probably too powerful
« Reply #54 on: October 13, 2018, 02:09:24 PM »
The reality of any crafting system is that it favors those who have put more time and resources in to it. Which frankly, to me, just makes sense. Yes, you are going to have the players who try to hoard resources and spend unbelievable amounts of time playing. But unless you are going to limit how much someone plays, that is going to happen no matter what you do.

I feel like I am a player who plays somewhere between casually and moderately. My herbalist is a 20th level druid. On average, I probably produce 3-5 heal potions a month because I only produce for self consumption. I then use 1-3 per month if I don't go to sithicus, or 5-10 if I do try sithicus that month. Hence, for the vast majority of high level players I doubt they are just sitting on stacks of potions. Also, most potion brewers will only sell the same buyer one potion of heal at a time which limits this tremendously.

The other part that isn't being considered by the perceived inbalance is higher level characters need higher level material to receive the same effect. Saying high level characters shouldn't have more access to high level things means what they have access to, is actually, less helpful for them .

Let's say a level 10 char and level 20 character have the same access to high level herbalism ingredients. This means they would have similar access to the amount of high level healing potions. However, the 20th level character has twice as many hit points as the tenth level character. This means the character needs twice as powerful of a potion, to achieve the same effect.

The only potion I am worried overspawns has already been addressed and that's the misty willow. The rest of the system seems well enough balanced to me.

Iridni Ren

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Re: New herbs make herbalism too easy and probably too powerful
« Reply #55 on: October 13, 2018, 03:14:53 PM »
One other detriment I forgot to mention about making crafting in general more powerful while making it more difficult is it adds to the reluctance of players to closure their PCs. Because of the grindy, repetitious nature of crafting, when players talk about having stockpiled 100 healing potions, for example, who would ever want to do that again?

This is true for all crafts, but herbalism has been the least like that. Making it more powerful will cause an urge to make it more difficult in the name of balance (although this introduces other forms of imbalance that I explicated previously).

Being an accomplished herbalist, therefore, will represent another huge time sink on a PC and thus deter a player from letting the PC go.

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Crimson Shuriken

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Re: New herbs make herbalism too easy and probably too powerful
« Reply #56 on: October 16, 2018, 01:46:05 AM »
Potions of spells higher than 3 are simply doing more harm for the feel of the server, its gameplay and its party make up dynamics than I believe the people implementing such potions would immediately realize. If you make something farm-able, it will be farmed. We have to account for the fact we have players clocking over 60 hours of gameplay a week. In any D&D setting, but perhaps especially in Ravenloft, anything in potion form beyond a Potion of Water Breathing or Oil of Keen Edge should be seem super rare and powerful. Even accounting for our persistent world set up, I believe we do our setting a disservice by making potions for most spells and beyond the spell levels intended.

I would suggest making wands a craft that fills those needs and moving much of the spells of 4th and 5th level off the potions list (And therefore requiring no class restriction or skill ranks) and move them to the wands (where they are class locked or require the use magic device skill). Not only would this make higher level spell effects more difficult to acquire but it would make a fighter have to find a person that knows how to use a wand or fake it.

For the longest time we filled such gaps with single use and charged items along the lines of a wondrous item in flavor, to fill in gaps, but it never fully bridged the need to benefit of others. The need for others should achieve "getting access to spell effects I do not have access to" rather than "getting to save my well stocked inventory resources because I am getting the same spells for free" That's just my old, grumpy, well meaning, two-cents.


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