Post by Reathin on Jun 27, 2017 22:01:50 GMT
Taking a discussion in the Cbox into a more formalized (and legible) format, my name is Reathin, the Clockwork Sage. And on today's very special episode, I'd like to talk to something near and dear to my heart: Crafting.
I'll start with a bit of context. I've been gone for quite a while, having burned out both my muse and general energy, doing a number of unpleasant but important stuff in RL, but at several people's kind request, I'm back. The character Reathin, one of my "primary" characters, was/is a 12th division member, and some of my other characters have crafting related stuff, so it's pretty important for a few of my two favorite designs.
Some of the changes I'd read up on have done some serious damage to my character plans. According to some discussion I've had with Marcia, I'm not entirely alone with my concerns, so if anyone else has specific issues I don't bring up, by all means, please do so.
Issues
Two major issues in my case arose:
1. Loss of non-crafting spec potential just to access Above Average crafting.
2. FORCED specialization for 12th members.
1. This one is the biggest issue in my eyes. The loss of spec and the capping of a mastery on top of that is an extremely significant sacrifice for a fairly limited gain. Indeed, normally the only thing that costs a spec slot and a mastery lowering is the actual act of specialization, which introduces powerful, gamechanging abilities to a characters. Massive costless shockwave attacks, new release abilities, removed restrictions on abilities, perfect teleportation, programmable-on-the-fly spells, all sorts of cool stuff. Spec is now much stronger than when I left .But in the case of Above Average crafting you can...make Tier V items. Now, those are perfectly nice, but not really in the same ball park. Access to tier V, VI and VII abilities in other masteries do not require this additional sacrifice, and can be used on the fly, which throws the balance off even more.
This is not to say craftables don't have a few benefits that other masteries have, and so it's understandable that something else would balance this. That's fine. I simply posit that the chosen balancing factor was far too extreme, simultaneously costing too much while also eliminating character concepts. Crafting actually has a few new balancing factors anyway, which I will bring up down below (see "Compensating Aspects").
2. Originally, 12th division was the only (or almost only) group that could spec in item crafting. The keyword here was 'could'. With the new rules, a 12th member has precisely one option, and forced limitation on character concepts like that seems like a purely punitive measure, not a balancing one. A 12th member is railroaded into "crafting crafting and nothing but crafting", which I would say isn't fair. If you're in 12th, odds are you're going to be building stuff. Cool. And the massive stockpiles and access to data/training is and should be a useful tool. But if that's literally the only option they have, you're reducing them to cookie cutter archetypes. Master craftsman who builds his own arsenal, achieving grandmastery with weapon skill? Not possible. A spec kidou user who wants to explore the deepest magical secrets and fuse them with technology to reach bold new frontiers? Not possible. And there's no in character reason why someone couldn't want to craft, and be good at it, but still have something else they're better at. What used to be possible, isn't any more, which is pretty sad. Beyond that, you need to sacrifice even MORE to get spec item creation. This means that Spec Item Creation must be MUCH more powerful than any other spec mastery, which doesn't seem to add up. Items have tier limits no greater than other techniques. Their advantages do exist (will note that below in "Compensating Aspects", as I mentioned before. Still, they don't seem so monstrously powerful as to warrant this.
Compensating Aspects:
Now, I'm going to assume that item crafting was given such overzealous restrictions to compensate for the few things it does uniquely. Specifically:
1. Items can be used by others.
2. Items can have multiple abilities in one device.
3. Items have the option of being self-powered at the cost of being single use.
So, that's something that bear examining. Taking away ALL restrictions would give them a pretty decent edge (I wouldn't go so far as to think it a one-true-build scenario, but still, worth addressing.
1. This is not a tremendous deal, outside a few niche cases. The person benefiting from the item still pays for it. Alternatively, if created in character, the 'training' still takes place, just by the builder instead of the recipient. This might seem unfair, that someone's getting something without paying for it in time or points, but the one doing the work gets plot points for it, as a form of compensation. If this is considered a big deal, a limit on non-plot-point-purchased gifts could be imposed for a while after getting something. Or maybe the crafter could be "tithed" a few plot points from the recipient? Maybe half what it would have cost to outright buy it? Enough to limit doing it all the time, but enough that it doesn't hurt too much and gives a nice gift to the altruistic.
2. This is probably the biggest individual advantage crafting has. Fortunately, the new crafting system already includes a very useful balance to it: materials, durability and the like are all new things to me, for the most part. Making sure a person has to keep up their supplies, spend their reserves wisely, maintaining their stuff and the like is a great drawback because it simultaneously balances your ability to make things (unlike other technique training, who need only time investments, items need time and supply and resupply time and such), it inspires stories! At least for the more unusual materials, you can make threads and have fun with unique and arcane materials finding. it's not as easy, but it helps site activity, I think.
3. Self-powered devices have their own cost; single use. You want to build a big arsenal of single use items, that's perfectly cool. It self balances, as you need to make heavy use of getting the materials to do it.
In essence, crafting's new, elaborate system has many things in place that already balance craft's advantages, which I believe would be a far more workable balancing effect than the tremendous costs associated with specializing. If additional restraints might be required or desired, I'd say refining these systems and adding to them would be a far more workable solution than the current pseudo-spec "price of entry".
My Own Example:
I'll give a specific example with my own character, Reathin. If you're just here for fixing rules, that's fine, you can ignore this.
He's going to become a vaizard (already approved, just hasn't happened in real time just yet), thanks to some stuff that happened in his bankai trial. The inner hollow thread that I want to write, detailing her nature, her personality, her brief history and the resolution of how things work between them. Without revealing too much, I ran into an option in the new Spec rules that fit perfectly with the result of that story. Like, custom made glove fit, couldn't have written better myself. Except as a spec result, it can't be created. Reathin had Advanced crafting from back when you didn't need to sacrifice a spec to get it. Now, I could drop it down. I've never made any items with just yet. But he's definitely a crafting characters. An inventor so much that one of his release abilities has a section detailing that it arose purely from that aspect of his nature (see Vault of Woven Dreams, last paragraph I think). So, he can either have his story cut short (the viazard thing, requiring spec mask control to make it fit just right), or I have to work with a character that can't do the thing he was originally made to do (make clockwork wonders). This is doublely an issue, since as a 12th member, he can only take spec item creation (rather than just being a good option, way back when). Even if being a vaizard gets him kicked out, he might return one day (as he didn't get infected deliberately), so that's a new kettle of fish.
I'm very fond of Reathin, as my username might suggest. I'd really like to be able to keep using him, and I'm definitely willing to negotiate on some details, but tossing aside major parts of his arc (either future or past) seems like a harsh choice to make for very little gain.
Possible Solutions
It's always frustrating to see a problem brought up with no possible solutions. Where possible, I like to give some possible resolutions. I've got a few.
1. The simplest solution would be to simply remove the entry requirements on Above Average to Mastered crafting, simply treating it like a normal mastery (and thus, specializing in it costs the same as usual). This solution accepts that the current bonus restrictions on crafting (maintenance, supplies, durability, potential for theft, etc.) sufficiently balance crafting already, and the additional restraints are a wide step too far in maintaining its power among other masteries. Personally, I think this one is probably the best. Easy to implement, and makes good use of existing restraints without making crafting useless.
2. A variant entry fee. Perhaps it's not generally accepted that the current restraints of maintenance,supplies etc. are enough. Okay, then perhaps a less extreme, character limiting restraint to entry? Perhaps items take a certain amount of focus to power properly, and thus while they're active, some of your other techniques can't be used during that period? Lesser items might just stop regular techniques of the same tier, while the really big numbers temporarily stop parts of your releases from taking place? Much like Shunko, but a bit less extreme. Alternatively, for a very sizable but not character destroying aspect, keep the "lowered mastered to advanced" capping, but do NOT remove the possibility of specialization? The spec would still have the advanced cap of its own, so you're capping two. That's pretty big, and still a bit much in my mind, but could still be made to work.
3. Specialized item creation has a "sphere of influence" concept. That could be used as something else as well, on the lower level. Remove the current entry fee. When you pick up crafting, you choose a few aspects of crafting, and you can only make things within that field/aesthetic/whatever. It doesn't provide advantages like the actual specialization field of study, they're just ways of saying "you can make these, but not absolutely every kind of item from word one". Expanding your range of crafting could be something like learning a new, relatively high level technique ie. time and/or costs of a tier VI to represent your investment in expanding your mind.
4. With respect to 12th, the simplest solution here is to simply remove the requirement that 12th can ONLY spec in item creation. Most people are pretty likely to, hence why they joined 12th, but this would simply give edge cases like myself a bit more room to breathe.
I'm sure more could be come up with, but I'm keeping people waiting for this thread and that's a fair amount to go through.
Thanks again to BM for being willing to negotiate on this topic. Nothing's more frustrating than "no, just no, and no forever", as I'm guessing you've felt before XD.
BM
Reathin © All rights reserved, 2015-2016.
I'll start with a bit of context. I've been gone for quite a while, having burned out both my muse and general energy, doing a number of unpleasant but important stuff in RL, but at several people's kind request, I'm back. The character Reathin, one of my "primary" characters, was/is a 12th division member, and some of my other characters have crafting related stuff, so it's pretty important for a few of my two favorite designs.
Some of the changes I'd read up on have done some serious damage to my character plans. According to some discussion I've had with Marcia, I'm not entirely alone with my concerns, so if anyone else has specific issues I don't bring up, by all means, please do so.
Issues
Two major issues in my case arose:
1. Loss of non-crafting spec potential just to access Above Average crafting.
2. FORCED specialization for 12th members.
1. This one is the biggest issue in my eyes. The loss of spec and the capping of a mastery on top of that is an extremely significant sacrifice for a fairly limited gain. Indeed, normally the only thing that costs a spec slot and a mastery lowering is the actual act of specialization, which introduces powerful, gamechanging abilities to a characters. Massive costless shockwave attacks, new release abilities, removed restrictions on abilities, perfect teleportation, programmable-on-the-fly spells, all sorts of cool stuff. Spec is now much stronger than when I left .But in the case of Above Average crafting you can...make Tier V items. Now, those are perfectly nice, but not really in the same ball park. Access to tier V, VI and VII abilities in other masteries do not require this additional sacrifice, and can be used on the fly, which throws the balance off even more.
This is not to say craftables don't have a few benefits that other masteries have, and so it's understandable that something else would balance this. That's fine. I simply posit that the chosen balancing factor was far too extreme, simultaneously costing too much while also eliminating character concepts. Crafting actually has a few new balancing factors anyway, which I will bring up down below (see "Compensating Aspects").
2. Originally, 12th division was the only (or almost only) group that could spec in item crafting. The keyword here was 'could'. With the new rules, a 12th member has precisely one option, and forced limitation on character concepts like that seems like a purely punitive measure, not a balancing one. A 12th member is railroaded into "crafting crafting and nothing but crafting", which I would say isn't fair. If you're in 12th, odds are you're going to be building stuff. Cool. And the massive stockpiles and access to data/training is and should be a useful tool. But if that's literally the only option they have, you're reducing them to cookie cutter archetypes. Master craftsman who builds his own arsenal, achieving grandmastery with weapon skill? Not possible. A spec kidou user who wants to explore the deepest magical secrets and fuse them with technology to reach bold new frontiers? Not possible. And there's no in character reason why someone couldn't want to craft, and be good at it, but still have something else they're better at. What used to be possible, isn't any more, which is pretty sad. Beyond that, you need to sacrifice even MORE to get spec item creation. This means that Spec Item Creation must be MUCH more powerful than any other spec mastery, which doesn't seem to add up. Items have tier limits no greater than other techniques. Their advantages do exist (will note that below in "Compensating Aspects", as I mentioned before. Still, they don't seem so monstrously powerful as to warrant this.
Compensating Aspects:
Now, I'm going to assume that item crafting was given such overzealous restrictions to compensate for the few things it does uniquely. Specifically:
1. Items can be used by others.
2. Items can have multiple abilities in one device.
3. Items have the option of being self-powered at the cost of being single use.
So, that's something that bear examining. Taking away ALL restrictions would give them a pretty decent edge (I wouldn't go so far as to think it a one-true-build scenario, but still, worth addressing.
1. This is not a tremendous deal, outside a few niche cases. The person benefiting from the item still pays for it. Alternatively, if created in character, the 'training' still takes place, just by the builder instead of the recipient. This might seem unfair, that someone's getting something without paying for it in time or points, but the one doing the work gets plot points for it, as a form of compensation. If this is considered a big deal, a limit on non-plot-point-purchased gifts could be imposed for a while after getting something. Or maybe the crafter could be "tithed" a few plot points from the recipient? Maybe half what it would have cost to outright buy it? Enough to limit doing it all the time, but enough that it doesn't hurt too much and gives a nice gift to the altruistic.
2. This is probably the biggest individual advantage crafting has. Fortunately, the new crafting system already includes a very useful balance to it: materials, durability and the like are all new things to me, for the most part. Making sure a person has to keep up their supplies, spend their reserves wisely, maintaining their stuff and the like is a great drawback because it simultaneously balances your ability to make things (unlike other technique training, who need only time investments, items need time and supply and resupply time and such), it inspires stories! At least for the more unusual materials, you can make threads and have fun with unique and arcane materials finding. it's not as easy, but it helps site activity, I think.
3. Self-powered devices have their own cost; single use. You want to build a big arsenal of single use items, that's perfectly cool. It self balances, as you need to make heavy use of getting the materials to do it.
In essence, crafting's new, elaborate system has many things in place that already balance craft's advantages, which I believe would be a far more workable balancing effect than the tremendous costs associated with specializing. If additional restraints might be required or desired, I'd say refining these systems and adding to them would be a far more workable solution than the current pseudo-spec "price of entry".
My Own Example:
I'll give a specific example with my own character, Reathin. If you're just here for fixing rules, that's fine, you can ignore this.
He's going to become a vaizard (already approved, just hasn't happened in real time just yet), thanks to some stuff that happened in his bankai trial. The inner hollow thread that I want to write, detailing her nature, her personality, her brief history and the resolution of how things work between them. Without revealing too much, I ran into an option in the new Spec rules that fit perfectly with the result of that story. Like, custom made glove fit, couldn't have written better myself. Except as a spec result, it can't be created. Reathin had Advanced crafting from back when you didn't need to sacrifice a spec to get it. Now, I could drop it down. I've never made any items with just yet. But he's definitely a crafting characters. An inventor so much that one of his release abilities has a section detailing that it arose purely from that aspect of his nature (see Vault of Woven Dreams, last paragraph I think). So, he can either have his story cut short (the viazard thing, requiring spec mask control to make it fit just right), or I have to work with a character that can't do the thing he was originally made to do (make clockwork wonders). This is doublely an issue, since as a 12th member, he can only take spec item creation (rather than just being a good option, way back when). Even if being a vaizard gets him kicked out, he might return one day (as he didn't get infected deliberately), so that's a new kettle of fish.
I'm very fond of Reathin, as my username might suggest. I'd really like to be able to keep using him, and I'm definitely willing to negotiate on some details, but tossing aside major parts of his arc (either future or past) seems like a harsh choice to make for very little gain.
Possible Solutions
It's always frustrating to see a problem brought up with no possible solutions. Where possible, I like to give some possible resolutions. I've got a few.
1. The simplest solution would be to simply remove the entry requirements on Above Average to Mastered crafting, simply treating it like a normal mastery (and thus, specializing in it costs the same as usual). This solution accepts that the current bonus restrictions on crafting (maintenance, supplies, durability, potential for theft, etc.) sufficiently balance crafting already, and the additional restraints are a wide step too far in maintaining its power among other masteries. Personally, I think this one is probably the best. Easy to implement, and makes good use of existing restraints without making crafting useless.
2. A variant entry fee. Perhaps it's not generally accepted that the current restraints of maintenance,supplies etc. are enough. Okay, then perhaps a less extreme, character limiting restraint to entry? Perhaps items take a certain amount of focus to power properly, and thus while they're active, some of your other techniques can't be used during that period? Lesser items might just stop regular techniques of the same tier, while the really big numbers temporarily stop parts of your releases from taking place? Much like Shunko, but a bit less extreme. Alternatively, for a very sizable but not character destroying aspect, keep the "lowered mastered to advanced" capping, but do NOT remove the possibility of specialization? The spec would still have the advanced cap of its own, so you're capping two. That's pretty big, and still a bit much in my mind, but could still be made to work.
3. Specialized item creation has a "sphere of influence" concept. That could be used as something else as well, on the lower level. Remove the current entry fee. When you pick up crafting, you choose a few aspects of crafting, and you can only make things within that field/aesthetic/whatever. It doesn't provide advantages like the actual specialization field of study, they're just ways of saying "you can make these, but not absolutely every kind of item from word one". Expanding your range of crafting could be something like learning a new, relatively high level technique ie. time and/or costs of a tier VI to represent your investment in expanding your mind.
4. With respect to 12th, the simplest solution here is to simply remove the requirement that 12th can ONLY spec in item creation. Most people are pretty likely to, hence why they joined 12th, but this would simply give edge cases like myself a bit more room to breathe.
I'm sure more could be come up with, but I'm keeping people waiting for this thread and that's a fair amount to go through.
Thanks again to BM for being willing to negotiate on this topic. Nothing's more frustrating than "no, just no, and no forever", as I'm guessing you've felt before XD.
BM
