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As things stand now in RPS, any character is, by default, just as good at stunning as any other. In order to make it so "boss"-type enemies couldn't be trounced, the Lieutenant and Boss designations were created to give their holder a chance-based resistance to stun, and the Enhanced Stun and Stun Resistance abilities were later added to further adjust these stun resistance chances.

I found it a nice solution (otherwise I wouldn't have implemented it), but now as I look it over I wish I had taken the time to come up with something a bit more organic. While the addition of Enhanced Stun and Stun Resistance made the power to stun or resist being stunned somewhat in control of a given character or enemy, these abilities just don't go far enough in letting a character's power decide the effectiveness of their stuns.

Also annoying was that the largest means of gaining stun resistance (namely Character/Lieutenant or Boss status) came not from character points but from fiat. Greg the Goblin Patroller could be a Boss and therefore immune to stun if I so desired. Likewise, characters could not become more resistant to stunning except by taking a single 3 CP ability, and after that was taken there was nothing else they could do.

So, what say you? Would you like a character with 12 Magic to be better at tossing a Stun Bolt than a character with 2? Should Mr. Mage with 0 Attack and 0 Combat be just as good with a Pounce as a psychopathic kitty cat with decked out stats for both? And what of our poor defender? Grok'thar No Armor with 0 Defense can just as easily resist either of these attempts as Jones The Plated with 10?

So, sound off. First off: would you rather see a system implemented where a character's stats had an impact? Of course there would still be Stun Resistance and Enhanced Stun, allowing that further specialization, but the baseline would be there too.

Second: what specifically would you say to a system where the stunner's Magic (for spells) or Combat or Attack (for actions) was compared to the victim's Defense? If the attacker's stat is bigger, stun goes off just fine. If the defender's is higher, the attacker needs to sink in 1 AP or MP (perhaps even without the aid of the party pool, depending on how abused the party pool ended up being) per point of difference? This way, it's still possible to stun the big bad, but it can get cost prohibitive really fast. I believe this needs some balancing work (especially as most mages will have much higher Magic than anyone will have Defense), but has potential as a core idea.

Edit: FARGORE

I disagree. I believe that it’s best to keep this simple. If it’s not broken don’t fix it. As a counter to some points:

If you don’t want the little weakling goblin patroller to have a high stun resistance, then don’t make him a lieutenant or boss, leave him a normal monster. That issue is fixed just by not doing something stupid in the first place since those titles really only exist for the stun anyway. On the other hand it is nice to have that option. I have a goblin that I don’t want to get stunned so I just mark him as counting as a boss and give him stun defense, there problem solved.

If you really want to drag semantics into it (which I don’t) you could look at it in an easy way. The weakling little bob the mage may have an attack stat of 0 but that does not stop him from jumping up and grabbing the big fighters arm and holding it there for a second, thus pounce or stunning blow. And Bob the fighter may only have a magic of 2 against the mage Tom with a magic of 10 but while Tom is aiming his spell at Bob’s chest Bob fires his quick little spell and with his awesome fighter trained aim hits Tom in the hand and stops him from finishing his spell. So if you want an explanation I think this works. But RPS has never been about this sort of thing and we all know it.

If you want to be able to go up in stunning then maybe we can make it where you can get each ability (Enhanced Stun and Stun Defense ) once per a 2 or 3 LV of the character. (Note: for those who don’t know, 1LV = 6 CP, the starting characters with 24 CP are 4 LV characters) and that way it’s based off of how powerful the character is, now how good they are at something in particular. I think mages should be able to use stunning actions just fine, if not then it would be a couple less actions they could use and a couple less spells the fighters could use, and with how hard it can be sometimes to find good fighter spells and mage actions I don’t think this is a good idea. This would keep the current system with just a small tweak, rather than having to make a whole new and confusing system.

I had an idea a long time ago to stop the stunning chains. Just make a simple rule that you cannot stun a stun. If Tom is stunning bob with pounce, Mike cannot stunning blow Toms pounce. There simple done, package it. If it’s something that stuns and deals damage, you can stun the damage away but the stun still go’s threw.

This would keep the current system that has been doing well so far and with a couple of small and easy to understand and manage tweaks would fix the real problems that were presented.

Sounds good so far. I never realy liked the stun efects being added to the guild, mainly becaus there wasn't anything you could do to stop it. You just had to hope their stun roll was a failure. But with your idea of adding some kind of controll to the equasion should make it a little more fair and less bothersome.

It's good to be back. twisted

Anyway, right now the percent chance does serve its role of balancing. I'm simply trying to improve the balance of it. You're right about Defense not being favored, which is why I don't feel bad about giving it something else to make it useful. Still, having it be a simple +/- 25% doesn't really fix the problem as there's no scaling: a difference of 1 is just as important as a difference of 100.

Anyway, regardless of whatever balance change I come up with (assuming consensus is on a balance change being helpful), I'd like to steer stunning away from being chance-based. You're right: dice hate players. This is a proven fact. I could tell you all about this Star Wars game I'm playing in on dndonlinegames... And besides, nothing else in RPS is left to chance (other than combat dice, but they're not so crucial as a stun), so why should something so vital to a battle as a stun be either?

The only problem is that stunning, unlike damage, is an all-or-nothing process (and I'm not going to make "action hp" to be whittled down by subsequent stuns). All I can think of is influencing the cost, so that somebody much weaker than the characters can't AFFORD to blast them with stuns, and... Well, if the groups are evenly matched, then it just makes the battle all the more dramatic to have stuns flying, wouldn't you say?

But really, is Cost = Base cost + (Defense - Combat) too complicated to go through if the Defense is bigger than Combat? Enhanced Stun could be a 1 cost ability that adds 2 to your score for purposes of calculating stun cost, and Stun Resistance could do the same for resisting. It doesn't sound any more complicated than just hitting the person. Perhaps divide Magic by 2, as mages don't have to split their attentions between multiple damage stats...

Well, running with my original idea:

Perhaps having everything ride on the target's Defense is too much responsibility for one attribute. I'd hardly like to see a barbarian or mage punished for not pumping the stat... Attacks could use Attack as their defense stat, Actions could use Combat (or perhaps Defense), and Magic could use... Magic.

Again, the goal is simple: rather than having fiat determine the bulk of stun resistance, have it (and conversely: the ability to stun) be a natural outgrowth of getting stronger. Fargore's solution of comparing land values has occurred to me as well, but I didn't favor it as it again takes control of things out of the hands of the players (as they can hardly say they'd rather be eight LV rather than five!). In RPS, power comes from gaining and properly allocating character points, and I only find it fitting to have stunning continue in that vein.

I like FARGORE's idea and I agree with his statement that stunning should be based on how powerful a character is, not how good they are at something in particular. FARGORE's idea though lead me to think of an idea that is basically the same thing with some small tweaks. What I was thinking is what if the standard was that for every level of difference there are between two subjects, the subject with the higher level would have the equivalent of Stun Defense and Enhanced Stun to the subject with the lower level. For example:

Subject A is a lvl 4 Character (24CP)
Subject B is a lvl 4 Character (24CP)
Subject C is a lvl 5 Character (30CP)
Subject D is a lvl 3 Character (18CP)

Subject A and Subject B are the same level, so when they go to stun each other they both have a 50% chance of success.

Subject A and Subject C are 1 level apart, so when A attempts to stun C, A has a 25% Chance of Success. But when C attempts to stun A, C has a 75% chance of Success. Thus it is easier for C to stun A than it is for A to stun C.

Subject C and Subject D though are 2 levels apart, so when C attempts to stun D, C has a 100% chance of success. But when D attempts to stun C, D has a 0% chance of success.

This would solve the need for there to be a status system labeling enemies as Monsters, Lieutenants, and Bosses because Monsters are already low level and thus easier to stun, Lieutenants are already about the same level or so of characters and thus would have an equal chance to stun and be stunned and Bosses are already much higher level than characters and thus are very hard to stun. Also the Stun Resistance and Enhanced Stun abilities could be reworded slightly to just state that your chances for resisting or dealing a stun are increased by one level. I think this idea has some potential, but it may still need some tweaking. What do you all think?

EDIT: I like the fact that there is a chance for failure while doing a stun. To put it in simple terms, there is a chance of failure when you are trying to prevent someone or something from doing what ever they are trying to do. This makes total sense, even from a roleplaying aspect. When you are trying to stop someone from doing something, you don't always succeed, they may have just been faster than you, or you may have botched your attempt at stopping them in some way, there are many ways it can be explained. If we eliminated the chance of failure, then there would be situations in which one character with slightly better stats (even 1CP difference) than another character can just hold out their hand and stop the other character from ever attacking while he/she beats the living daylights out of them. That does not sound very fair to me, or very reasonable from a roleplaying view point. Thus I think we should stick with a system that includes a chance for failure when attempting to stun. It's fair, it's simple, and it makes sense. To me at least.

So now there would just be no point in fighters using spell against mages and mages using actions against fighters because they are always going to get stunned.

So instead of saying “fighter mages are getting a raw deal we should help them.” you just want to say “fighter mages are getting a raw deal so let’s make it worse and eliminate any point in trying to be one.”? xp

Fighter mages don’t have to stun but if mages can easly stun their spells and fighters can stun their actions then they are going to get their stuff stunned all the time because of how easy it would be to do to them. And then there are defenders that use the defensive actions but have little to no attack power. If you use attack for action stuns their defensive actions would get stunned all the time, if you use defense the heavy damage dealers would suffer.

Really, my idea was just a compromise to attempt to keep things practically the same as they have always been for the most part, while alleviating some of the stated complaints about the current stun system. I can understand how my idea may cause problems for new characters and thus it does need some revisions... we could for example say the changes take effect only after 2 levels of difference. In which case a new character would only have problems in this respect when facing other characters that are already 12CP ahead of them, which also puts them at a disadvantage anyway. But there are other problems, such as how do you deal with characters that are barely behind the mark of being a level up combating characters that have just past that level. They are very close in CP but still two levels apart and thus my system would cause them problems... But as I said it still needs some revisions before we should even consider implementing it. But even if it weren't implemented and we did leave the system as it currently is, I would be just fine with that too. xd

eek Apparently, I am FARGORE! I didn't know this, but that is kinda cool. Not to get off subject, but damn that makes me sexy! xd (Just in case you don't understand what I am talking about, GC13 quoted me and then labeled the quote as FARGORE's. xp No offense, just cracking a small joke about it.)

Anyway, back on subject, personally I think that simplicity is key in this situation. Your idea can reasonably work out to be fair, but it is rather complicated and thus would cause more confusion and problems than it would fix. But I digress, it is not my opinion that sets this guild on the path it should go on, but ultimately it should be the opinion of the majority of the guild itself. So I propose that we refine the ideas presented here and put up a vote. Let us see what rest of the guild thinks is the best route to take with this.