View source for Talk:Combat Detector (Legend Item)

== Ratings ==
{{Rating |rater=Fluffykittens
|rating=like
|reason=Highlights a severe problem with the legend system- but as an item, it's not really useable in game.
}}
: Still not sure why/how it's a problem--much less a "severe" one. --[[User:Ghostwheel|Ghostwheel]] ([[User talk:Ghostwheel|talk]]) 08:15, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

::In DND 3e, your wizard activates Stoneskin, giving him DR10/adamantine for 100 rounds a level. This has an actual duration of 10/minutes a level, so it's probably enough time to give him protection for a few quick battles but not a protracted siege. In Legend, your shaman activates Stoneskin, giving him [lesser damage resistance] for one [encounter]. This has an actual duration of magic tea party, so it's probably enough time to give him protection for giant frog but not giant frog. The encounter based duration system works on the tactical scale but not the strategic scale, as you run into problems like the combat alchemist's "why can't I take my buff potions before combat?" [[User:Fluffykittens|Fluffykittens]] ([[User talk:Fluffykittens|talk]]) 09:12, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

:::You run into issues with the challenge scale of the system.D&D is set up so the primary challenge duration is not an encounter, but a day. Over the course of the day, you run low on spells, you consume resources,and most of the combats are not a meaningful challenge so much as a speedbump to consume your resources. They even define the challenge ratings in terms of how much of the party's resources they should consume.
:::Legend's primary challenge duration is the encounter. There is very little in the way of resource attrition over the course of the scene.When you have an encounter, that encounter matters by itself. It may very well be the only encounter you face this scene, and it remains relevant. There is no need to throw encounters at the party to soak up their resources before they face the boss. Free, at-will healing is expected, so there isn't any consumption of healing resources based on how you did that fight.This means that every battle can be interesting in its own right. You can do a short sequence of encounters or a long sequence of encounters without the game crumpling under the stress. 
:::Legend is also a much, much more balanced game than D&D. Casting a spell is a balanced activity, worth its action cost in battle, but not a sure  victory. Scene duration spells are balanced around providing a long-term benefit at the expense of having few spell slots to work with. An encounter duration spell is balanced around being cast in combat. The magnitude of the bonus is such that it is worth the bonus. If your spell lasts for multiple encounters, then you basically got free turns in those later battles, which is a tremendous advantage that breaks the expected balance and would contribute to magic supremacy, which is something Legend has fixed.
:::Operations on the strategic scale are not about how quickly you can charge through encounters to keep your buffs up. That tactic is the primary motivation mid-length spells provide. If your spell will last through 1 encounter, and may last through 2-4, you have an extremely strong motivation to make sure it lasts for the 4 encounters. Which, in turn, means moving as fast as you can. This is ''harmful'' to strategic play. 
:::In Legend, you still have plenty of scene duration spells that work for strategic manipulations. These spells are designed to work in that context. For instance, I am running a game about a group of inmates in prison. They decided they want to escape, and there is a lot of strategy in their actions. They make good use of their scene duration spells to make people invisible, establish telepathic communications, and otherwise advance their strategic position. They make a lot of use of their skills to sneak around, sabotage power supplies, steal guard's keys, capture and interrogate guards for information, etc. There is ample room in the system for strategy. Just not "Throw on all your buffs and push forward as quickly as possible before they run out". That is not the type of strategy your game system should be encouraging. {{unsigned|Mystify}}

::::"There is ample room in the system for strategy. Just not "Throw on all your buffs and push forward as quickly as possible before they run out". That is not the type of strategy your game system should be encouraging." So, why can't my combat alchemist take his buff potions before the fight?[[User:Fluffykittens|Fluffykittens]] ([[User talk:Fluffykittens|talk]]) 23:22, 8 November 2012 (UTC) 

:::::You're slightly wrong, Mystify. Casters have all of their spells on a Scene recharge schedule, so the game does not work nicely if you have a scene with only one encounter.
:::::Fluffykittens: They want to do that cinematic thing where characters bulk up, get angry, and deploy their Super Armor modes in combat, but they haven't figured out a method for it that works in a way they want people to think about. --[[User:Foxwarrior|Foxwarrior]] ([[User talk:Foxwarrior|talk]]) 23:30, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

::::::@Foxwarrior: you mean like giving the ability a cost to activate, a well-defined limited duration, and/or backlash damage based on how long it was used?
::::::@Mystify:"Legend's primary challenge duration is the encounter." I still have no clue how long an encounter lasts, so it's not a meaningful definition. "There is very little in the way of resource attrition over the course of the scene." Depends. Some abilities, such as spells, are useable a number of times/scene. So if you parcel your spells out liberally, and you DM decides to throw in another encounter, you're screwed, and there's no way you could have prepared for it, because the DM must decide arbitrarily how many encounters you get per scene, when an encounter starts, and when an encounter ends. The Legend system solves none of the problems of how to balance in-game durations, it just moves those problems onto the DM. "Just not "Throw on all your buffs and push forward as quickly as possible before they run out". That is not the type of strategy your game system should be encouraging." Are you saying that a game should force characters into certain ways of play and not others?
::::::It's not balanced. Not at all. To win, all you need is a party where everyone takes either the force of will track, at least one person takes the summoner legendary ability, at least one person takes the lurking terror track, and everyone takes a [ranged] [distant] x3 weapon. Sit in the are of the blight, and watch as enemies are cut down by a hail of extreme range attacks, courtesy of "a stitch in time". If your party is at least 5th level, you can use minions to tarpit enemies while you blast them. If your party is at least 9th level, enemies who try to close in to melee will be constantly slapped with confusion effects,courtesy of "all work and no play". If your party is at least 10th level, you can all take the minions legendary ability,granting you an additional 5 uses of a stitch in time per party member, as well as an additional 5 attacks.
::::::Oh yeah, and a 3rd circle combat alchemist can prepare cavorite serum, which gives everyone in a 30 ft burst [flying] and a fly speed for one [encounter].
::::::A 4rd circle (the higher the circle, the more powerful) combat alchemist can prepare taurus cardinalis, which gives one character a fly speed [encounter].
::::::Also, what happens if my combat alchemist uses taurus cardinalis(which lasts for one [encounter]) outside of an [encounter] in order to let his party fly? Or uses summoner to summon a minion outside an encounter to do grunt labor?[[User:Fluffykittens|Fluffykittens]] ([[User talk:Fluffykittens|talk]]) 05:49, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

:::::::@Foxwarrior: Casters have scene durations, and that is it. And even they aren't as scene-based, as its only a 3rd of your character. Well, unless you take 2 spellcasting tracks, in which case you should have plenty of spells. Even if the caster is running out of spells, its not a disaster that leads to defeat. You have the scene duration buffs still. For the first half of the game you won't be able to cast every round anyways, you are expected to have things to do for the rest of the time. 
:::::::@fluffykittens: An encounter is a fairly self-evident timespan. It ends when the challenge has been dealt with. This battle, this obstacle, is meaningful as itself, not as a way to waste your time and resources, but as something interesting itself. Legend also says that there are 3-5 encounters per scene. Getting less doesn't really break things, and if you run out of spells because the DM has through 8 encounters at you this scene, then the DM is misapplying the scene duration and you should be refreshed. following that simple guideline is not a burden on the DM. Especially since it doesn't have to correspond to a day. You can break for scenes whenever, and not worry about the headache of the party camping in the middle of the dungeon unless you want it. As for the encounter duration, I have never seen any ambiguity regarding it, anymore than there is ambiguity for when you are rolling initiative and operating in turn order and when you are not. 
:::::::I'm saying that a system that makes 1 strategy of "Pile on ALL the buffs and storm everything" is not good. There should be many strategies available, of varying degrees of subtly and cunning, and that one mechanic overwhelms all of them. It forces the game into a case that it will handle poorly. That is a bad mechanic.It destroys the challenge for those encounters, harming the gameplay, and makes everything work poorly.
:::::::your proposed scenario doesn't work that well with 1.0. You can't use stitch of time more than once per person per round. You can attack at range, but so can your enemies. Stealth will be quite effective at getting near the sniper encampment you set up, and you have clustered your entire party in AoE range. Your minions will also die fairly quickly in combat due to being 5 levels below everything. Sure, if you are sitting in a field with a bunch of melee-only enemies running down the field to engage you, then sniper team will rock. That is not really the typical situation by any stretch of the imagination. 
:::::::The alchemist problem is already known and being addressed, though its not as extreme as it looks, as there is an action disparity between those cases. In fact, most problems you can find are being addressed. The game is in beta, and there are very active efforts to fix such problems and improve the balance. The principle's behind the game are those of balance, and where the execution fails, they will correct it. 
:::::::If you are using the taurus cardinalis to grant flight, then it will generally last long enough to deal with what you need it to. You will get up the building, over the chasm, etc. If its something like an ocean, its easy to say that crossing the ocean is not a single encounter. Is it vague? sure. Could the rules expand on it more? yeah. but it does allow you to give the answer that makes sense for your game. Maybe crossing the ocean with 1 potion is reasonable for your game. Allow it. A hard answer on how long something will last will result in 1 of 3 cases. 1. It is easily within reach of the ability, and you allow it. The DM could easily acknowledge that to start, and simply have allowed it. 2. It is clearly outside the scope of the ability, and in such a case the DM could easily say "no, you can't fly over the ocean in an encounter". 3. It is of a similar length. It is now unclear whether this will last long enough. Its unclear if you will jump high enough. Now you have to figure out precisely how long it will take to fly over the river, you have to figure out exactly how wide it is, and then do some math, and come up with the answer. Or the DM could have just said yes or no based on what would work best for the game. "Can I have an army of summoned minions work in my factory?" The answer to that can vary wildly between campaigns. In some campaigns, allowing it would be very out of place, and serve as a mechanism for the player to break the plot in two over his knee, and the DM will curse the system for making such a powerful ability. In other campaigns, that will work just fine and be a natural way for the character to interact  with the world. A right answer to how the ability works in every campaign doesn't exist, so why should the system give them? Some guidelines may be warranted, but most of the time it is a really easy ruling.[[User:Mystify|Mystify]] ([[User talk:Mystify|talk]]) 08:13, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

::::::::"It ends when the challenge has been dealt with." The length of a "challenge" is not always self-evident. A rapid series of skirmishes through a forest throughout a whole day could be one challenge- or you could call each moment of difficulty a challenge. "Especially since it doesn't have to correspond to a day. You can break for scenes whenever, and not worry about the headache of the party camping in the middle of the dungeon unless you want it." Is problem of the system, not one of its benefits. A core mechanic, which much of balance rests upon, is poorly defined. 
::::::::"You can't use stitch of time more than once per person per round"- Yes, and it's still broken as fuck. Everyone with a 15-ft. (later 25 foot) radius of you gets an out of turn attack- and there is no clause saying that a creature can only gain one extra attack from a stitch in time. A party of four each using stitch of time as a standard action gets twelve attacks total. Bring in minions (via the minions legendary ability) who can also cast stitch in time, summoned creatures (via the summoner legendary ability), and you'll get to lay down a touhouesqe barrage of fire. "Stealth will be quite effective at getting near the sniper encampment you set up" Give someone true seeing and a pump up of perception and awareness, and this isn't an issue. The sniper team setup I described is very effective in dealing with stealth enemies trying to sneak in, as they can stealth too, lay down patches of damaging difficult terrain, toss around shields via stem the tide, etc. "and you have clustered your entire party in AoE range." this setup is also great for aoe healing, since everyone can cast healing burst. Furthermore, this setup does not preclude giving one party member the bastion track, another invocation and shaman magic, and another tactician magic. "Sure, if you are sitting in a field with a bunch of melee-only enemies running down the field to engage you, then sniper team will rock. That is not really the typical situation by any stretch of the imagination." The sniper team setup can beat most enemies due to the sheer volume of fire it can put out; It can attack (party members)x(party members-1) times each round. If everyone has steady old hand, they can attack that many times and get a standard and move action on top of that.
::::::::"If you are using the taurus cardinalis to grant flight, then it will generally last long enough to deal with what you need it to.""If its something like an ocean, its easy to say that crossing the ocean is not a single encounter." But crossing the ocean is a single challenge. And, "It (an encounter) ends when the challenge has been dealt with.""Is it vague? sure. Could the rules expand on it more? yeah. but it does allow you to give the answer that makes sense for your game." So, you're passing the problem on to the DM rather than dealing with it. "It is now unclear whether this will last long enough. Its unclear if you will jump high enough. Now you have to figure out precisely how long it will take to fly over the river, you have to figure out exactly how wide it is, and then do some math, and come up with the answer. Or the DM could have just said yes or no based on what would work best for the game." "just make shit up" didn't work for 4e. What you're doing here is substituting magical tea party for actual rules. ""Can I have an army of summoned minions work in my factory?" The answer to that can vary wildly between campaigns. In some campaigns, allowing it would be very out of place, and serve as a mechanism for the player to break the plot in two over his knee, and the DM will curse the system for making such a powerful ability. In other campaigns, that will work just fine and be a natural way for the character to interact  with the world." Know know what I could do instead? I could play a game that actually has rules for how long summoned monsters last, so I can figure out if getting a summoned army of factory workers is a feasible goal, and how, without playing magical tea party. "A right answer to how the ability works in every campaign doesn't exist, so why should the system give them? Some guidelines may be warranted, but most of the time it is a really easy ruling." Magical tea party is an awfully fun game. If you want to play magical tea party, why have any rules at all?[[User:Fluffykittens|Fluffykittens]] ([[User talk:Fluffykittens|talk]]) 09:44, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

::::::::::A series of rapid encounters over the course of the entire day is clerly a scene, not a single encounter. If you do make it asingle encounter, it will either be a cakewalk at any given moment as you swat a bunny, or have a ludicrously high CR. The durations are not poorly defined, they are defined in terms of what will make it balanced. If you want to run a game where the party is under a constant onsloaught of attacks, and the entire campaign unfolds over the course of a single, action-packed day, you can. You want to run a campaign with days, or even years between most encounters(I am in one, at the moment), it works equally well.For combat, whether or not you declare an encounter shift in between two rapid attacks will determine the challenge of the overall situation. If I through a CR 5 encounter at my level 5 group, then throw a second one at them without a break and say its the same encounter, then that is a CR 7 encounter. If the narration demands a long, fast stream of encounters, then you can have back to back encounters, each of which with their own CR,and declare them as seperate encounters. You don't have to space them out by 5 minutes or whatever to declare it a seperate encounter. You don't have to worry everyone running out of time-limited abilities and having the rest of the fight turn into a boring slog while they recharge. You simply run it in the way that makes the game function.
::::::::::The way you go on about this, you sound like everyone is walking around in a constant daze about whether the encounter or scene should be ending. 99% of the time, it is self-evident. that remaining 1% of the time is where the system handles edge cases that would cause problems in more specific systems. 
::::::::::You misunderstood what I said. There IS such a clause saying that a person can only benefit from one stich in time a round. Its just not released yet, because the current version of the rules are in beta. The entire premise of why that combination is so powerful has already been addressed. 
::::::::::Combat is where the rules are most important. Combat is where the rules are deisgned to be balanced for. Any conclusions you come to based on how things were balanced for combat is going to be absurd and wrong, and now the DM has to override the rules to make something sane happen. In combat, it is very important to have ways of determining who does what, if it works, and what the effects are. You need rules so everyone can operate on the same set of assumptions, have abiliteis that are balanced against each other, and present a consistent challenge. Without in-combat rules, it turns into "I swing my ax, cleaving 20 goblins in two" "no, you missed" "no I didn't" "uhuh""nuhuh" "uhuh" "nuhuh". Outside of combat,  that is much less important. You can have a more general set of abilities, and work with the GM to make it work. Look at the engineering skill. "You can design a new mechanical devicee or advanced structure. Any implementation of  your design requires GM approval. The DC is equal to identifying faults in a similar device +5". There is a list of such DCs which lay out the complexity of such devices. Is it vauge? yes. But it works much better than any precise set of rules will, unless you make an engineering manual and expect player's to have a degree. You want to design a bridge across the chasm? The engineering skill can tell you how. Whether you can get the materials and manpower to construct it depends on the campaign and exact situation. If you have access to such resources, then you could allow the player to construct civil engineering projects. If you are in a post-apocalyptic world, you might use it to construct gadgets out of scrap. A Ruleset that handles every possible case would be large and cumbersome. It would have loopholes where people can make extremely powerful things easily, while other, relatively mundane things become overly hard and complex. The vaugity of the rules is enough to determine what is within your character's skills. What they can actually achieve with it is determined in a more expansive and balanced way with that one paragraph than you could achieve with an entire manual devoted to the topic.[[User:Mystify|Mystify]] ([[User talk:Mystify|talk]]) 15:01, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
{{Rating |rater=Tenno Seremel
|rating=oppose
|reason=I don't think this item is going to work in Legend. Something with Detecting enchantment would be close enough, IMO.
}}
{{Rating |rater=Tarkisflux
|rating=dislike
|reason=If your world has metaphysics where [Encounter] is an actual thing, then it would make sense to allow you to detect those things through divination. But it's hardly the only way to make sense of [Encounter]s, and outside of intentionally genre bending games (or Erfworld knockoffs) I don't think it's even the most appropriate. So this is an item that's not going to fit a lot of games. And in it's not a particularly great item in the ones that it does, as the utility of this item is pretty marginal. There are are better things out there for you to get.
}}

I don't suppose the tautological statement "If this item can be found in the game, then the events it observes must be observable from the specified distance" is going to influence you, is it? --[[User:Foxwarrior|Foxwarrior]] ([[User talk:Foxwarrior|talk]]) 00:30, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

:Sort of. That seems like the sort of thing that should be indicated on the article page to really carry any weight. - [[User:Tarkisflux|Tarkisflux]] <sup>[[User talk:Tarkisflux|Talk]]</sup>  04:56, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

::Well, it is, implicitly, on every article page :P. What is a homebrew item if not a statement that "this item can exist with this appearance, function, and price"? --[[User:Foxwarrior|Foxwarrior]] ([[User talk:Foxwarrior|talk]]) 00:06, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

::Unless you meant I should add some magitechnobabble explaining that it measures Encounterons or something, in which case, sure, I can do that, but I've been told that Legend items aren't supposed to have magitechnobabble for some reason. --[[User:Foxwarrior|Foxwarrior]] ([[User talk:Foxwarrior|talk]]) 00:25, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

:::To the first part, yes, any item that you add to the game explicitly adds the "this item functions because the world allows it" rider. But I feel like this presumes/forces a more extreme metaphysical adjustment than most homebrew does, and I can't think of any items that do similar world feel changing things without their own sourcebook and an explicit discussion. I also recognize that's a bit weak though, and I may be talking myself into a less harsh playstyle based dislike, but meh. To the second, not really asking for that. I'm more concerned with the metaphysical implications (i.e other people's encounters are a thing you can detect non-trivially) than the fluffy technobabble. - [[User:Tarkisflux|Tarkisflux]] <sup>[[User talk:Tarkisflux|Talk]]</sup>  08:43, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

::::Ohh, well, the justification for that goes more like: 
::::1. Encounters are an actual thing in the game world. It is a simple and omnipresent fact that most power sources have their energy limited more strictly by [Encounter]s than by pettier things like conservation of energy. If this is actually the part you're disagreeing with, I can't help you.
::::2. The detection of all sorts of non-trivial things can be done at a distance through magic. See Map of the Master Strategist, Scrying, Status, Discern Location, etcetera.
::::3. The pricing of things, within the Legend system, should correspond more closely to their value than to any difficulties involved in making them, because this system's balance doesn't like items that are ''too'' useless.
::::Therefore, it is only a small jump from there to being able to detect this specific phenomenon at a distance, as a low tier item.

::::Hmm, looking over the spell list, it looks like Divinations are far less broad than I assumed they would be, and it's actually not strictly obvious that magic can show you the locations of people without being expressly bidden by you to do so. It may be difficult to find another way to show off step 1, though. --[[User:Foxwarrior|Foxwarrior]] ([[User talk:Foxwarrior|talk]]) 18:51, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

:::::I'm disagreeing with 1 in that they are not required to exist. Alternate explanations include 1)Maxwell's Encounter Demon: some undetectable overpower guy acts as gatekeeper for some subset of powers (labeled [Encounter] here) who turns things off and re-grants them at the appropriate times; 2) Random: [Encounter] durations are actually random with some distribution and rarely last long enough to make it into a new encounter or drop before the end of a long encounter (but never for players because they're special and this is a pain in the ass); 3) Mental State Sustain: all [Encounter] power require a free-action to sustain each round, but the action fails to function outside of the peculiar circumstances of combat or whatever (research into this phenomena may someday turn all [Encounter] powers into [Conscious] powers); or 4) Zoomed Out Too Far: [Encouter] powers all have well defined and understood durations for the characters, but it is obfuscated from the players of those characters to avoid unnecessary details and this lack of information is worked around by being handwavwey with time between [Encounters] and assuming that characters are prevented by in-world details (that we are also zoomed out too far to see). I'm not really interested in the holes in those (if any) or if they're deeply unsatisfying on some level, the point is that your step 1 is not a given and your item requires it in order to function. I don't like that sort of metaphysical requirement being put on a game by an article without a note or whatever. But having written that out, I've talked myself into changing my rating anyway. So there you go.

:::::And you're missing my point about trivial detection in 2. I don't dispute that divination can detect non-trivial things. I'm disputing that the thing here is detectable except in the trivial circumstances where it involves you (because it's not an actual thing under other interpretations), which is entirely moot if you assume your step 1. - [[User:Tarkisflux|Tarkisflux]] <sup>[[User talk:Tarkisflux|Talk]]</sup>  20:59, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

{{Rating |rater=Ghostwheel
|rating=oppose
|reason=Seems like a silly item that looks like a stab at the system rather than an attempt to bring something worthwhile into it.
}}
{{Rating |rater=Mystify
|rating=oppose
|reason=This item does not fit within the intended scope of the rules, nor meets the balance requirements for a Legend item.
}}
:You can't have Legend items for divination? I certainly don't want this item to be ''unbalanced''. --[[User:Foxwarrior|Foxwarrior]] ([[User talk:Foxwarrior|talk]]) 19:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
::You misunderstand. Its too weak. [[User:Mystify|Mystify]] ([[User talk:Mystify|talk]]) 22:02, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
:::Why so I did. --[[User:Foxwarrior|Foxwarrior]] ([[User talk:Foxwarrior|talk]]) 02:58, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
{{Rating |rater=Surgo
|rating=favor
|reason=A fabulous and hilarious example of why encounter-based durations are so problematic for anything that could feasably have an out-of-encounter effect.
}}
: So... you favor this article... which means that, according to the guidelines on what favoring means, think that this item should be used in virtually ''every'' Legend game ever... and the reasoning for this is because it... mocks the system? Something does not seem right here. --[[User:Ghostwheel|Ghostwheel]] ([[User talk:Ghostwheel|talk]]) 01:11, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
::Might want to go reread what "favor" means, chief, because it's not what you think it is. [[User:Surgo|Surgo]] ([[User talk:Surgo|talk]]) 03:18, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

{{Rating |rater=Cedges
|rating=dislike
|reason=Probably too week for even a Lesser Item; give it a thematically related bonus, like stealth or precision damage. In Legend, things like this (only have a narrative purpose) are usually feats. Try something like: Opportunistic Scamp. ''You have the street smarts to know when something's going down.'' As a swift action, you can image the area out to [Long] range. If there is strife or conflict occurring in range, you become aware of the intensity of conflict and its epicenter(s).
}}
Disliked	Tarkisflux + and Cedges +
Favored	Surgo +
Liked	Fluffykittens +
Opposed	Tenno Seremel +, Ghostwheel + and Mystify +