About dem Assassassassins and Magagagi

[[MOB] OneEyedBadger]

Assassins cost 144 wealth, have T12 First Strike, and can choose their victim.

I kinda sorta understand what the GM was thinking when he made T10 units cost 20 wealth each, but this one eludes me.

A T10 Dinorider costs 2 Wealth per point of Toughness, which I think is very shaky.

12 Wealth per point of Toughness is insanely high.

Now, maybe, just maybe the ability to 'choose your target' could make them useful, but there are a few things that make that ability difficult to use as intended.

A.) We really don't have a list of all the units belonging to all the players. In order to effectively 'choose a target' you would need to know said target existed. Unless the Chaos Player is gonna have a constantly updated listing of the total number of units belonging to his neighbors (which is more work for GM and more possibilities for errors) then is ability really is more about 'guesswork' and not effectively choosing optimal targets.

B.) Speaking of guesswork, lets say an Assassin wants to kill King Elrond, my leader. I currently have 3 locations Elrond could defend, so the Assassin would have to 'guess' which one King Elrond is at. Not really possible to tell the Chaos Player ahead of time because even I do not know 100% where my King will be until I send in the final orders. An easy fix for this is the Assassin would be allowed to just choose a player and target 'their leader' without needing to specify a location to be attacked. If this is the GM's intent then this needs to be better explained in the rules.

C.) Okay, so lets say the Assassin somehow knows about his target, and actually finds the target (either by guessing or because he only needs to target a player's faction, not location), and he jumps in there to attack.... and kills King Elrond. Elrond is only T3, so if the Assassin can find him he can kill him. Then the Assassin dies if I have 36+ Toughness worth of regular units in the vicinity (decent chance seeing as King Elrond is part of a defending force).

So The Chaos Player loses 144 Wealth, and unless there are at least two Chaos Players, it isn't even like he can keep his involvement a secret.

Elrond is T3, so 3 Wealth worth of firepower lost.

Sure, he's a King, and if I have no 'heir' then I guess I have 'disorder and turmoil'. But unless that disorder and turmoil is so bad it costs me 141 wealth worth of assets then the Chaos Player actually loses out on the exchange. The Rules do not actually give us a mechanical formula for what happens when a ruler dies without an heir, so maybe its game-breaking-terrible-bad (in which case the Assassin is actually OP) or its barely an inconvenience and you lose a couple heroes andl someone takes the throne.

If I actually have an heir, then nothing happens except Elrond dies and the Hittites become very peeved off at the Chaos Player.

Is this the intent og the GM, and does this stack up well to another Way's ability which is not only more powerful and versatile, but also unstoppable and almost guaranteed to result in a break-even exchange (thus being cost-effective);

This Sorcerer Supreme (or Witch King or Magus or Great Wizard, or whatever title they prefer) uses his newfound wealth on components to cast great magics that can smite neighboring civilizations, destroying fortresses, laying waste to cities, and killing people. To order a spell cast, specify the means used (for example an earthquake, a rain of stones, a sending of spirits, infestation of plague rats, etc.) the target (which must be a civilization sharing a border with you), its intended effect, and how much was spent to achieve it. It costs as much to do the damage as it would take to replace the thing destroyed. Magicians can recruit subordinate T1 magic users at a cost of one wealth each.

So, the Sorc can just say; "I blast King Elrond into oblivion', it costs 3 Wealth, and thats that. Bye King Elrond, sir.

Also, unlike an Assassin, the Sorc can blast a whole bunch of stuff, depending on his needs at the time; not just one character; and his cost per Toughness is always gonna be 1:1.

###

So, tl;dr, but I think these two Ways need to be thought on some more. Either Assassin is overpowered (not due to himself but because of the effects of the disorder he causes - but the disorder would have to be balanced around the 140-ish Wealth differential needed to hire and Assassin), and the Sorc is SUPER-OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD OVERPOWERED (because he can do everything an Assassin can do, plus a whole lot more, all for 1/12th the cost); OR the Sorc is possible PRECISELY balanced and the Assassin is just the games worst overall unit.....

Thoughts on this topic?

[jpatte...@gmail.com]

The only real way to tell is for someone to play them and see the game through. They are too different to some of the more traditional routes to mess around with without a game under the belt

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[David Micheal Coddy]

With all respect I disagree.

When you have two Ways that have a similar power you can compare them accurately.

Plus, sure, I could maybe push to change my Way here at this point to illustrate my point, but given that I just cashed for 2900 last turn is that something you would want to face as a negative to your actual value, whatever that is?

See, both Assassin's and Sorcs have the ability to insta-kill your leader with $$$ being the deciding factor as to whether it is a viable decision.

For Assassin's to be effective their ability has to enable them to pretty much ignore most of the normal rules for attacking, but this more implied and not stated - Sorcs outright ignore normal rules in their mechanics.

As both could choose to insta-kill your leader this brings us to the 'chaos and disorder' mechanics.

If Chaos and Disorder does about 140 Wealth damage then Assassin's are viable and Sorcs overpowered.

If it does less than that Assassin's become useless and Sorcs remain overpowered.

At the medium tiers of income, 2500 and 3600 being my standard of the minimum to qualify, Sorcs become outrageously deadly.

Chaos at the same level of income is almost as deadly because they can steal cities via cultists, but they are semi-balanced because they can generally only target leaders or cities, and the more cities Chaos has the more expensive one of their specialist attacks become.

Plus, Way of Nature is outright immune to one of Chaos attacks, so maybe there is balance within the game, especially if you consider potential alliance possibilities between multiple Ways.

Sorc can pretty much do everything Chaos does, but at a better $$$ exchange, with the added bonus that Sorc also can target Nature who is immune to Chaos cultist ability.

But let's use the GM argument for T10 as a base - he argued T10 at 2 per T was worthwhile because Toughness was so powerful.

But here we have two abilities that absolutely ignore the toughness of units and instead target only their $$$ value.

In this instance for sure having lots of T5 units costing 5 wealth each would be better than having lots of T10 units costing 20 units each.

If you build only T10s in this spot you could be KO'd, in theory, by a Chaos Player half your size!

But, regardless of if you use T10 at 2 per T or T5 for 1 per T, both would suffer massively if attacked by a Sorc of equal income.

And this does not yet consider the effects of 'Chaos and Disorder' when you lose your king with no heirs; a situation with Sorcs and Chaos can artificially create.

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[jpatte...@gmail.com]

Surely that is the entire point of having these ways? If you don’t have these types of clear differences then the game simply becomes a calculation of T, wealth and resource multiplication. So for me, has anyone taken them? If not we can’t tell. If they have then over time we will understand whether they are overpowered or underpowered. You could actually argue that a few ways are overpowered, but the reality is that everything is pure theory until good players get their hands on a way and have a real go

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[ME Brines]

On 10/28/2018 7:49 PM, [MOB] OneEyedBadger wrote:

Assassins cost 144 wealth, have T12 First Strike, and can choose their victim.

I kinda sorta understand what the GM was thinking when he made T10 units cost 20 wealth each, but this one eludes me.

A T10 Dinorider costs 2 Wealth per point of Toughness, which I think is very shaky.

12 Wealth per point of Toughness is insanely high.

Now, maybe, just maybe the ability to 'choose your target' could make them useful, but there are a few things that make that ability difficult to use as intended.

A.) We really don't have a list of all the units belonging to all the players. In order to effectively 'choose a target' you would need to know said target existed. Unless the Chaos Player is gonna have a constantly updated listing of the total number of units belonging to his neighbors (which is more work for GM and more possibilities for errors) then is ability really is more about 'guesswork' and not effectively choosing optimal targets.

You know everybody has a chief/king. You can find out what people have with scouts/spies. You can make contingency order--if his king is there, kill him, if not, take out his wizard, etc.

B.) Speaking of guesswork, lets say an Assassin wants to kill King Elrond, my leader. I currently have 3 locations Elrond could defend, so the Assassin would have to 'guess' which one King Elrond is at. Not really possible to tell the Chaos Player ahead of time because even I do not know 100% where my King will be until I send in the final orders. An easy fix for this is the Assassin would be allowed to just choose a player and target 'their leader' without needing to specify a location to be attacked. If this is the GM's intent then this needs to be better explained in the rules.

Or you send some to each place. Or you spy on him for a couple turns, notice he always leaves the target in the same place.

C.) Okay, so lets say the Assassin somehow knows about his target, and actually finds the target (either by guessing or because he only needs to target a player's faction, not location), and he jumps in there to attack.... and kills King Elrond. Elrond is only T3, so if the Assassin can find him he can kill him. Then the Assassin dies if I have 36+ Toughness worth of regular units in the vicinity (decent chance seeing as King Elrond is part of a defending force).

So The Chaos Player loses 144 Wealth, and unless there are at least two Chaos Players, it isn't even like he can keep his involvement a secret.

Elrond is T3, so 3 Wealth worth of firepower lost.

Sure, he's a King, and if I have no 'heir' then I guess I have 'disorder and turmoil'. But unless that disorder and turmoil is so bad it costs me 141 wealth worth of assets then the Chaos Player actually loses out on the exchange. The Rules do not actually give us a mechanical formula for what happens when a ruler dies without an heir, so maybe its game-breaking-terrible-bad (in which case the Assassin is actually OP) or its barely an inconvenience and you lose a couple heroes andl someone takes the throne.

Maybe so. But if assassins are T12 cost 12 and choose their victim then everybody takes armies of assassins everywhere. Unless you can think of some other way, they're not very useful.

If I actually have an heir, then nothing happens except Elrond dies and the Hittites become very peeved off at the Chaos Player.

Is this the intent og the GM, and does this stack up well to another Way's ability which is not only more powerful and versatile, but also unstoppable and almost guaranteed to result in a break-even exchange (thus being cost-effective);

This Sorcerer Supreme (or Witch King or Magus or Great Wizard, or whatever title they prefer) uses his newfound wealth on components to cast great magics that can smite neighboring civilizations, destroying fortresses, laying waste to cities, and killing people. To order a spell cast, specify the means used (for example an earthquake, a rain of stones, a sending of spirits, infestation of plague rats, etc.) the target (which must be a civilization sharing a border with you), its intended effect, and how much was spent to achieve it. It costs as much to do the damage as it would take to replace the thing destroyed. Magicians can recruit subordinate T1 magic users at a cost of one wealth each.

So, the Sorc can just say; "I blast King Elrond into oblivion', it costs 3 Wealth, and thats that. Bye King Elrond, sir.

Wasn't my intent to allow individual targets. An infestation of plague rats that brings on a huge plague doesn't just kill the one guy you wanted. He might die, but so will a bunch of other people, maybe the whole city, and maybe the whole city gets wiped out but he might survive. Probably should be rephrased somehow.Maybe detailing cause but leaving the effect more vague and up to the GMs discretion? Then they could throw around a lot of destruction but at a heavy cost.  

Also, unlike an Assassin, the Sorc can blast a whole bunch of stuff, depending on his needs at the time; not just one character; and his cost per Toughness is always gonna be 1:1.

###

So, tl;dr, but I think these two Ways need to be thought on some more. Either Assassin is overpowered (not due to himself but because of the effects of the disorder he causes - but the disorder would have to be balanced around the 140-ish Wealth differential needed to hire and Assassin), and the Sorc is SUPER-OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD OVERPOWERED (because he can do everything an Assassin can do, plus a whole lot more, all for 1/12th the cost); OR the Sorc is possible PRECISELY balanced and the Assassin is just the games worst overall unit.....

Thoughts on this topic?

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[ME Brines]

I think you can have discussions like this with "Just suppose..." scenarios and questions. You guys will think of things I haven't. I'd sooner find out something is overpowered before somebody signs up for it, and then breaks the game and then gets mad when I have to "fix" his position. I'd prefer somebody pointing out how, say, the wizard can pick off the enemy king for $3 making the $144 assassin pointless.

I think the wizard's fine as long as it's rewritten so that he gets to choose the means but not the precise effect--he can burn down a city but maybe misses the royal family (or maybe not).

But the assassin's obviously not workable. I wanted to put something in where the Chaos guy could attack stuff and maybe do assassinations, but not so powerful that he's unstoppable. Any suggestions?

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