| Welcome to Pokemon Tabletop. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
| Putting together combat-based trainers; I want discussion on combat trainers | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: May 18 2015, 02:26 AM (2,973 Views) | |
| Domo | May 18 2015, 12:23 PM Post #11 |
![]()
Kawaii Detective
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Let me dissect this a moment.
This is openly false – the SE damage nerf has made elemental coverage not as important as it once was and lets big damage neutral moves compete with low damage SE moves more evenly. But the trade off there is that low damage SE moves can be used many more times in combat, becoming invaluable once your limited frequency showstoppers are done. And unless you're only poaching high AC moves from classes, it's not like the hit rate between neutral and SE is any different. You're also outright ignoring that trainer elemental coverage isn't just competitively effective, it's also crazy efficient. You can pick up four combat classes and get access to a huge variety of types (say, fighting, flying, dark, or normal from the core combatants, plus a single other type from an elementalist). Trainers have infinite move slots, so a deeply invested combat trainer will have a much bigger toolbox than any single Pokemon does. There are fewer wasted actions when you don't need to switch to have good damage readily available.
It's difficult to judge the actual effective difference in investing between support and combat classes, but lets try for a moment. Your specific example is Fire Ace vs Aura Guardian and it's honestly skewed completely in AG's favor. On the round Incandescence is used, that trainer/Pokemon is doing the single fire move used plus a little bit extra, as fire types make poor mixed sweepers in general, with +5 or +10 from last chance. Let's call it something like 15 extra damage on top of a flamethrower. Aura Guardian gets his Pokemon's attack (conveniently also stab flamethrower) and then pops someone in the mouth with his own aura sphere. This is why point for point comparisons don't work. With just one class in the equation, it's extremely difficult for support trainers to outdamage combat trainers. Ever. At any point in the game. Support classes can do cool things, but rely heavily on synergy between classes and orders – that's how you get reliable additional effects or crits, or easily pump up stats with training/stat link combo, or any number of other things that require split attention.
Which is why I'll skip to this one. Combat classes, yes, have reduced outright synergy because they mostly already function as independent units. You don't need anything else to make AG good, it's just good. And yes, there are outliers here; Marksman is a known case where not only does it not function on its own, its best synergy is a one feature dip for sniper. And even with less hard synergy than support classes, that doesn't mean it isn't there. Berserker/Tumbler/Athlete? Hard to kill, hard to pin down, has access to at least three elements, and hits like a truck if he ever gets knocked below half health. The weapon classes trick people into thinking 'I can only ever use weapons now' and that's a shallow understanding of the system. You pick any four combat classes and as long as they don't have competing stat focuses, the build will just work.
Math problem. A level 1 trainer has a stat total of 45 before feats (49 with four combat feats). A level 30 trainer has a stat total of 74 before feats, up to 89 with tier bonuses, up to 118 BST with nothing but combat feats. A level 5 Pokemon, of a traditional starter species like Squirtle, has a total of 45 with its level up points spent. A level 60 Pokemon, now a Blastoise, has 124 BST with level up points spent. It takes a long, long time for Pokemon to even squeak past full combat trainers in stat totals, though you can slightly accelerate it with a raw stat focused support spread. Even at the 30/60 comparison, it ignores that Blastoise's useless attack stat is higher than the trainer's, which is anywhere between 1 and 4 dead points for that species, with more or less depending on what exactly is being compared. If you think trainer's get less health per level, you aren't reading the rules carefully. Trainer's get just as much per point (3 hitpoints per HP) and also get twice their level in hitpoints compared to a Pokemon. A level 50 trainer is getting 100 points from levels compared to a level 100 Pokemon's 100 points. I'm not going to argue that status effect point because that's just about the only argument you've made that is valid, but it's still an intentional design feature. Combat classes have limited access to status effects to keep them from being constantly available. |
![]() |
|
| GrayGriffin | May 18 2015, 08:55 PM Post #12 |
![]()
"Ah, you unmasked me. Whatever shall I do."
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Am I the only person who thinks Skirmisher fits well with Marksman? They usually don't take up the same types of actions at all, and Skirmisher doesn't rely on melee attacks one bit. |
![]() |
|
| Onidrill | May 18 2015, 09:33 PM Post #13 |
|
Pokémon Trainer
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Regarding trainers lacking type coverage: as people have already pointed out, for a good little while at least, trainers tend to be stronger than Pokemon in the early game. They have unlimited movepools, more Hit Points on average, can use equipment that now provides moves of their own that have the potential to be quite powerful or simulate abilities, and if you use the Alchemized weapons in Game of Throhs, type coverage becomes as accessible as the GM wants it to be. This already to an extent - it's understandable that your character to stand out as especially powerful in any tabletop system. But what you don't want (and if you do, again, I'm not sure why you're using a system intended to support Pokemon-oriented games to begin with), is to make your Pokemon entirely superfluous, which trainers are already dangerously close to doing. Type coverage is probably one of the biggest things Pokemon have going for them that trainers don't, right now. Factor in all the above benefits of being a trainer along with the number of bonuses you gain with any given elemental class (half the benefits of being a Poison type for Poison elementalist, and none of the drawbacks like weaknesses, as a stand out example), there's a clear reason why trainers can only take one elemental class. But even factoring that restriction in, trainers can use Poison, Flying, Dark, Fighting, and Normal moves in addition to a single extra type of their choice through Elemental Connection. A Ghost elementalist/Martial Artist has flawless coverage with just two classes easily, and still has 2 free slots to do with as they wish. They're straddling a very fine line right now between trainers being too powerful, in my opinion. Edited by Onidrill, May 18 2015, 09:37 PM.
|
![]() |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · Pokemon: Tabletop United · Next Topic » |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
| Track Topic · E-mail Topic |
1:21 AM Jul 11
|
Pokéball created by Sarah & Delirium of the ZNR






![]](http://z4.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)




1:21 AM Jul 11