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Evasion Stacking: It's a thing.
Topic Started: Jul 4 2015, 09:59 AM (2,801 Views)
Flamewolf9
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So, I've been noticing the topic of evasion stacking mentioned a few times in relation to the super effective damage reduction. I have only been around since PTU 1.04 so I don't know what the world of evasion looked like before then.

My thought on the matter is why does evasion have to completely avoid the effects of damaging attacks. Completely missing does nothing to move the battle along, and simply drags it out.

I propose instead that the target of an evaded damaging attack takes some level of partial damage instead. Maybe half or a quarter. It's still quite a benefit to take a significant amount less damage, but not nearly as powerful as completely dodging the attack. This also means that every roll above a damaging moves AC does something to progress the battle to a conclusion.

I'm not sure what should be done about status conditions. Maybe status conditions could last until the end of the targets next turn. Or allow a saving throw at the beginning of the turn to negate it.


TM93's Suggestion: Lower AC and increase Cap for Total Allowed Evasion
Kairose's suggestion: Add a slower scaling Accuracy Buff to Attack and Speed

Edit to happily add others suggestions.
Edited by Flamewolf9, Jul 4 2015, 05:39 PM.
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loyalbabus
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The only issue with that is defensive stats already applying a reduction of damage. So Evasion further reducing damage if they don't roll well enough might be a bit odd in terms of calculation. It'd also make speed mostly useless.

What damage formula are you proposing, specifically?
Edited by loyalbabus, Jul 4 2015, 11:56 AM.
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Pandora
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What you're proposing sounds similar to a combination of Smite, which already has a fair presence among high DB/high AC moves, and a weaker version of Spirit Surge, which doesn't have as much but is still pretty good. I also know that Sing and Supersonic have "on miss" clauses, but those have a particularly high AC.

As for why evasion completely avoids damage: that's the very definition of the word. You aren't hit because you managed to avoid it. I personally think making everything at least hit is unrealistic, even if it would make encounters go faster. You may think it's a good idea right now from a player perspective, but flip that around to when things are hitting you for loads at even a quarter amount. There's a reason why there are ways to not take damage at all.
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Flamewolf9
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loyalbabus
Jul 4 2015, 11:55 AM
The only issue with that is defensive stats already applying a reduction of damage. So Evasion further reducing damage if they don't roll well enough might be a bit odd in terms of calculation. It'd also make speed mostly useless.

What damage formula are you proposing, specifically?


The addition to the current complete miss (Accuracy Check < AC), complete hit (Accuracy Check > AC + Target Evasion) nothing changes. Partial Hit (AC < Acuracy Ceck < AC + Evasion) (Standard Damage Formula)/4

I'm not sure if it should be divided by 4 or what the number should be divided by. But that's the basic concept.

As for defense applying DR in addition to evasion, that can modified based on the results of testing this new system. Maybe they provide evasion for every 10 points up until 30 points of (Spe.) Def. while speed keeps the current formula. Maybe defenses don't give evasion at all.

Pandora
Jul 4 2015, 12:36 PM
What you're proposing sounds similar to a combination of Smite, which already has a fair presence among high DB/high AC moves, and a weaker version of Spirit Surge, which doesn't have as much but is still pretty good. I also know that Sing and Supersonic have "on miss" clauses, but those have a particularly high AC.

As for why evasion completely avoids damage: that's the very definition of the word. You aren't hit because you managed to avoid it. I personally think making everything at least hit is unrealistic, even if it would make encounters go faster. You may think it's a good idea right now from a player perspective, but flip that around to when things are hitting you for loads at even a quarter amount. There's a reason why there are ways to not take damage at all.


Smite is why I chose 1/4 instead of 1/2 as a starting value. I suspect, but certainly don't know for sure, that the name evasion was chosen based on the effect and not the other way around. I guess it would be similar to spirit surge except that usually only applies to added effects of moves such as rage and steel wing. The other examples have specific on miss effects that are different from their standard effect.

As for flipping it around when things are hitting me, I'll let TM93's Super Effective Rant speak for the damage with a moderate investment into defense. The basic crux is that even taking double super effective damage from very DB 15 attack won't consistently finish you off in single combat in one shot. Now there is something to be said for taking multiple hits like that, but now your opponents are very open to this type of reprisal as well. To use the level 100 modified Weavile from this example, taking a quarter damage from High Jump Kick would result in 36 damage out of 185 Max HP. While not painful on it's own, it sets Weavile up for an easier finish in the coming turns by it's partners in that battle. This effect would be reduced even further if the damage was neutral or 1.5x super effective.

As for realism, I would argue that dodging out of the way of huge blast of lighting, fire, fairy light, etc. would be exhausting to perform repeatedly. Even if you avoid the main blast of a flamethrower doesn't mean that the heat isn't going to affect you in some way.

Do you have any thoughts about how to eliminate evasion stacking as an issue?
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TM93
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While I do appreciate something like an AoE Move dealing an automatic Tick of HP even on a Miss, in the end I can see how it's just an extra layer of complexity to the system. Smite may honestly be okay as a perk for a move with shaky accuracy, but it's not really a selling point for me overall: an offensive build really should be formed around HITTING the target, not MISSING the target.

I'm glad people are using my post constructively at least as a quick reference of how Super Effective Damage works in PTU mind you.

I've already proposed my own Houserule fix for Evasion Stacking: lower all AC's by 2 (getting a lot of moves that now basically have 100% accuracy against an opponent without Evasion at all) but allow Evasion to now Stack up to 12 (6 Passive+6 "Active"). This creates a scenario that makes Evasion Builds have to work a bit harder than before with a simple Instinct+Inspired Training setup (or if they lack Instinct, slapping on Double Team allows you 3 turns of +9 with the same setup, and you don't even have to use Inspired Training as Orders, or heck, just give them Bright Powder as Evasion is now, but on the other hand it means that they actually would gain a relative +1 Evasion from before if they fully invested in the Stat (which would actually be fairly simple at +6 Passive Evasion. Instinct/Bright Powder for +2 more, Inspired Training+Inspired Training (Orders) brings that up to 10, then toss in Double Team for 3 rounds of +12 Evasion.).
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Kairose
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honestly, I don't really see it as an issue: the +9 total cap means that unless you're using inaccurate moves, you never have less than 40-50% chance to hit. While that's rather low, especially compared to the early game where +3 evasion is a lot, this is actually the starting point for most tabletops, in my experience: on average, characters on equal power levels are expected to have about 50% chance of hitting each other. Investing in evasion can make you nigh-impossible to hit, while accuracy buffs are half as effective.

If you really have to nerf evasion, I would suggest making accuracy easier to increase somehow. During a PTA game before PTU existed, I attempted to add an "accuracy" buff to the Attack, Special Attack, and Speed stats similar, but slower-scaling than the evasion from Defense, Special Defense, and Speed. The purpose of this was to make evasion easier to counter, while simultaneously giving reason to invest in defenses beyond 30, as the cap was only on your AC adjustment, not the actual stat - if you had 50 Defense, then you'd have +10 physical evasion, but couldn't adjust the AC beyond +9. That means on things with low accuracy, you wouldn't get much benefit from going past +9, but if something had +6 accuracy, they'd still need to roll 5 on an AC 2 move to hit you. Unfortunately, the game died before I could test it significantly, and the last time I saw such a system mentioned for PTU, there were concerns that basing accuracy on the Attack stats would make them too powerful, so I can't really suggest this system unless you're ok changing mechanics around frequently to make it work, and certainly wouldn't want it as a standard rule without significant testing. However, some form of "accuracy" system seems like the best way to make evasion weaker, in my opinion.

Edit: Accidentally HTML'd on a forum. That was dumb.
Edited by Kairose, Jul 4 2015, 05:07 PM.
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Flamewolf9
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Great suggestions, TM96 and Kairose. I've added them to the initial post. Let me know if I've mischaracterized them in my summary.
Kairose
 
honestly, I don't really see it as an issue: the +9 total cap means that unless you're using inaccurate moves, you never have less than 40-50% chance to hit. While that's rather low, especially compared to the early game where +3 evasion is a lot, this is actually the starting point for most tabletops, in my experience: on average, characters on equal power levels are expected to have about 50% chance of hitting each other. Investing in evasion can make you nigh-impossible to hit, while accuracy buffs are half as effective.

I've had a similar experience with other systems as well. I've also had experience with systems on 2d6 where you had standing modifer of -1 to +3. You also have a chance at partial success on 7+ and full success on 10+. My players and I have found it to be quite enjoyable to have every roll move the story along in some way. The full system isn't compatible with PTU as it currently exist but it's still an interesting idea to bring to combat here to try and keep things moving along with every roll.

TM93
 
I'm glad people are using my post constructively at least as a quick reference of how Super Effective Damage works in PTU mind you.
It was a very good write up of super effective damage. It got me poking at the assumptions being made and the reasons for them. After seeing evasion stacking being an issue multiple times, I thought I'd bring it out here for consideration. What good is bringing up an issue with out a proposed solution? Another issue for evasion seems to be that it is it may be over incentivizing defense up to a certain level.
Edited by Flamewolf9, Jul 4 2015, 06:04 PM.
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Giant2005
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I think it is a pretty bad idea to screw with Speed Evasion but manipulating the others is less harsh. Keep in mind for any changes you make that boosting speed to relevant levels requires a serious investment that basically removes all other defenses. If you take their evasion from them, their only line of defense is no longer existent. If you take their evasion from them, speedsters themselves will no longer exist whether it be because they have been killed already or the players themselves are wise enough to avoid such trap options. Taking their Evasion from them is the Pokemon equivalent to removing a Monk's Unarmored AC ability from DnD - it completely removes the viability of the character option. It also makes abilities and feats that are designed to make your Pokemon more accurate, less valuable. Not only does it remove speedsters from the game but in doing so, auto-hitting moves, abilities like Compound Eyes and Focused Training become relatively weaker.
I don't really understand where all of this is coming from in the first place to be honest. Evasion as a defense is something that is common to pretty much all tabletop games and almost all of the ones that I have experienced include mechanics which make characters far harder to hit than what we have in the Pokemon system yet I have never heard a complaint about Evasion from any system but this one. I don't understand at all why there would be complaints when the system here is far less severe to the attacker than it is in others - if anything, I would be more understanding of complaints that went the other way; complaints that were about Evasion in Pokemon simply not scaling enough to be a viable defensive strategy.

Having said all of that, TM93's houserule up there is actually pretty good. It simultaneously lowers evasion for those that do not specialize in it while increasing evasion for those that have it as their main line of defense. That mechanic alleviates virtually all of my concerns but I think it does impact fighter-type trainers a lot more than it does evasive Pokemon. The Pokemon themselves have abilities and can be trained in Evasion enough to counter the -2 penalty given by the mechanic but Trainers don't have as many options of mitigating that nerf. Trainers will probably never get enough Evasion to get to where they would have been without the house-rule and for some classes like the Skirmisher that are built around Evasion, getting it up there is extremely important.
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Flamewolf9
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Giant2005
 
I don't really understand where all of this is coming from in the first place to be honest. Evasion as a defense is something that is common to pretty much all tabletop games and almost all of the ones that I have experienced include mechanics which make characters far harder to hit than what we have in the Pokemon system yet I have never heard a complaint about Evasion from any system but this one. I don't understand at all why there would be complaints when the system here is far less severe to the attacker than it is in others - if anything, I would be more understanding of complaints that went the other way; complaints that were about Evasion in Pokemon simply not scaling enough to be a viable defensive strategy.

I would agree with this point, but in most other table tops you only have one character's hp bar between you and a not so happy ending. In PTU on the other hand, there are 6 - 7 characters to manage each with their own full full set of health, battles can take for ever. As TM93 wrote up and the additional comments, part of the issue is having trouble dealing enough damage to end battles quickly against lightly defended opponents, ignoring the possibility of highly defensive types.

Going back to your comparison to DnD. That system has high evasion, but relatively low damage reduction, and there's almost always a way to negate it with the proper preparation. In PTU, one shift action can completely shift what type of target you are going against and what types of defense it has depending on what style of batlte you are engaged in.

I will agree that taking away speed evasion is not a good idea thematically or mechanically.
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GrayGriffin
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TM93
Jul 4 2015, 05:02 PM
While I do appreciate something like an AoE Move dealing an automatic Tick of HP even on a Miss, in the end I can see how it's just an extra layer of complexity to the system. Smite may honestly be okay as a perk for a move with shaky accuracy, but it's not really a selling point for me overall: an offensive build really should be formed around HITTING the target, not MISSING the target.
Wouldn't it make more sense to say it's based around damaging, instead of hitting or missing, the target? In that case, Smite attacks are obviously good, since they can do damage in more than one situation.
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