More attack effects?

[indecisive]

There are currently 5 codified effects for a digimon's attacks: poison, stun, blind, paralysis and charm. Is that enough?
I think there should be a confusion condition that inflicts a penalty to attack and defense pools, like a weaker version of blind. I was discussing this in the chat yesterday and someone suggested confusion might have random effects instead.

Also, I noticed some balance issues. Poison always does less damage than a normal attack, and charm is strictly better than paralysis. Then there's the general issue of "I do no damage for 1 round so that you do no damage for 1 round" that might make debuffs too weak. Maybe a debuffed target could be more vulnerable to attacks somehow.

EDIT: Here's what I have so far.

Requiring 1 success for 1 round of duration:
Immobilized - A Digimon cannot move for the duration.
Poisoned - A Digimon takes 1 damage per round of the duration, at the end of its turn.

Requiring 2 successes for 1 round of duration:
Confused - A Digimon halves its attack pool for the duration.
Stunned - A Digimon cannot move or use [Melee] attacks for the duration.
Weakened - A Digimon subtracts 1 die from its attack pool and defense pool for the duration.

Requiring 3 successes for 1 round of duration:
Blinded - A Digimon halves its movement, attack pool and defense pool for the duration.
Charmed - A Digimon is controlled by the one who charmed it for the duration. If a charmed Digimon is forced to attack, the controlling Digimon must give up its next attack.
Paralyzed - A Digimon can take no actions for the duration.

For the purpose of counting duration, a round is until the end of the attacking Digimon's next turn.

[ragnara]

Hm, trying to remember the changes we suggested.

With charm we said that the user has to give up his next turn in order to have the enemy hit itself or an ally. And/Or needing 4 successes instead of 3.

Did we get a consent with the random table idea for confusion?

[indecisive]

I will never consent to a random table for confusion that includes "nothing happens". I don't care if one of the effects is essentially paralysis, you are vastly overestimating the impact of a lost turn.
Consider this: if you use an attack that paralyzes for 1 round and nothing else, the best possible outcome is merely annoying, as you make no progress toward defeating your opponent.
You want to make confusion cost as much as paralysis but have a 1/3 chance of essentially paralysis, a 1/3 chance of essentially poison, and a 1/3 chance of a penalty. I don't believe this is comparable to just doing 3 damage.
EDIT: After thinking about it a little more, I kind of see how paralysis could be useful some of the time, and I know I really don't have the experience to dictate game design to anyone. I won't say I'm wrong, because it's good to challenge ideas, but if I sound like I'm complaining then that wasn't my intention.


Would this work as a general rule?

Advantage
When attacking a surprised or debuffed opponent, you have an advantage: a result of 4-6 is a success instead of 5-6.
Different advantages stack, allowing a success on 3-6 for double advantage, 2-6 for triple advantage, and automatic success for quadruple advantage.

[thedarkfiddler]

Oct 17, 2012 10:18:37 GMT -5 indecisive said:

Requiring 2 successes for 1 round of duration:
Confused - A Digimon halves its attack pool for the duration.
[...]
Weakened - A Digimon subtracts 1 die from its attack pool and defense pool for the duration.

These really aren't equivalent, at all; especially not at higher levels. Any foe that has 4 dice in its attack pool makes confused reduce it by more than weakened would, with weakened's extra die from defense being the only saving grace. At, say, 10 dice in attack? It's not even a choice.

Oct 17, 2012 10:18:37 GMT -5 indecisive said:

...and charm is strictly better than paralysis.

Yeah, that's kinda true. Perhaps paralysis should apply some sort of penalty to defense pools?

Also, I like your idea of Advantage, though I'm not so sure how I feel about it stacking with itself.

Really, I think the best way to see how well these things work would be to test it... but there's woefully few games being run at the moment.

[indecisive]

Yeah, I screwed up Weakened big time. If it subtracted 1 success instead, would that be better or broken the other way? Or I could just make it cut defense in half.

Should a clashing Digimon give advantage to non-clashing ones? I don't see why not.

One more thought: perhaps damage types could be added, so that individual Digimon may have special qualities to resist them. I doubt an attack with the Damage (fire) tag would hurt a Meramon much. You could split the Poisoned effect into Poisoned, Burned, Chilled, etc. depending on the nature of the attack.

[thedarkfiddler]

I don't know, I'm kind of iffy about effects that double/halve dice pools. The fact that they're more effective on more powerful targets makes me think that their use is a bit inconsistent, and it makes me wonder if it would be too harsh at higher levels, making it almost impossible to land an attack, for example.

The damage types is definitely something I'd considered before, though the ones I'd most strongly wondered about were Focused and Spread attacks. Focused attacks, being extremely focused, would be good at piercing thick defenses (+1 die) but easy to dodge (-1 die), while Spread attacks would be difficult to dodge (+1 die) but not strong enough to pierce thick defenses (-1). In my considerations, I never made these damage types be worth more than plus-or-minus 1 die, so they wouldn't have TOO strong of an affect, but maybe I'm just a bit cautious.

[indecisive]

That's what I think about effects that double/halve dice pools as well, but then we have to try to balance those effects with one that prevents all actions.

Also, did I post on the wrong board? Shouldn't this be in D:DA Core?