Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5204494" data-attributes="member: 2011">This.We have 6 PCs and in a standard encounter with 6 PCs and 6 NPCs, there are usually 15 to 30 different buffs, debuffs, conditions, and bloodied that we are tracking on the 12 creatures at level 16 most rounds. Nearly every single creature has at least one and often two or three things that are being tracked. The vast majority of these do not come from the monsters, instead come from the PCs.In fact, I took notice of this yesterday in our 4 encounters due to the recent conditions discussions here on the board, and every single non-minion monster that got killed had 3 to 5 plastic tokens on them when I removed them from the board. Every single one.Typically, 2 of these 3 to 5 are marked and bloodied. But, there are also typically others as well.There are several issues here:1) Not every other power should throw out a condition, a buff, or a debuff. There are two many powers that do this. When over half of the At Will and Encounter powers do a condition, a buff, or a debuff, this level of bookkeeping will need to be done on over half of NPCs most rounds. This does not even include attacks by monsters where conditions, buffs, and debuffs have to be tracked on PCs.2) There are too many powers that last for a single round and two few powers that last for the entire encounter. It is much easier to track conditions that last for an entire encounter than it is ones that last for a portion of one or a few rounds, especially since powers can last until save ends, start of target's next turn, end of target's next turn, start of user's next turn, or end of user's next turn. For my money, effects should end in one of three states: end of encounter, end of user's next turn, save ends. There should only be 3 possibilities, not 6.It's easier to track something if the player of the PC or NPC who used it is the one tracking it. End of "user's" next turn every single time for certain types of effects is preferable to multiple possibilities.3) It would be better if buffs and debuffs fell into three categories: Minor +1/-1 lasts until the end of the encounter, Moderate +2/-2 save ends, and Major +3/-3 end of user's next turn. The game would be much simpler if there were not so many different values for buffs and debuffs, rather there were just a few.If each of the 3 types had keywords like Minor Power Bonus to hit, everyone would know that it was +1 and that it lasted until the end of the encounter because of the keyword.4) Certain conditions like Weakened could be dropped. A monster that weakens a PC could do a debuff instead. For example, a "Minor Weaken" could be a -1 to all D20 rolls until the end of the encounter.Organizing and simplifying the entire status system from a design perspective could make it much easier for everyone.</blockquote>

Verification