Hey again! The various donors who have the option to
offer up Q&A questions have each declined the option this month and so I'm basically
on it by myself. Yaaaay. ...Crap. Now I need something to talk about.
Uhm... hrm. Well... there are a few things to talk about!
First off, I'm in the process of rewriting everything that's been put down so far after
some pretty major and significant changes to quite a few core mechanics. Ideally...
I'd like to have the first alpha version ready for test play by the end of the month.
Yeah, I'm not going to hold myself to that though, setting arbitrary schedules tends to hamper
my workflow massively so it'll be done when it's done. That seems to make things go faster
anyway for whatever reason soooo whatevs. The important part is that Saorsa should actually
be able to be played sometime semi-soon, though good luck on determining what I mean by "soon"
because even I don't know so nyah. Second! Uhm, for a question... well, during
the rework I have my first fully fleshed out weapon skill, which is going to be used as
a rough outline for other weapon skills in the future, so let's take a little look at
that. Wait, I didn't say that in the form of a question, did I?
Sigh. Whelp, I just lost on jeapordy. Alright, what are weapon skills going to look
like for the alpha release version of Saorsa? See, question. Totally got one.
So yeah, there's a few things to keep in mind about weapon skills: first off, they come
in seven different ranks of how well trained a character is in their use. Second, each
weapon skill is comprised of seven abilities, one per rank, which are built in a set order
which gives the weapon in question a unique feel and style of play. Third, all weapon
types have an innate property which helps to make that weapon type especially good for
a particular kind of task. Fourth, skill mastery means each time a character gains an additional
rank in a given skill, all previous abilities they'd already learned gain an additional
advantage which alters how the ability works in some way, uh, if you have actually invested
in skill mastery for that given weapon skill. Soooo that sounds really confusing without
seeing an example, so let's take a look at the first weapon skill fully completed for
the game as of... a few minutes ago because I reworked it again while writing this script out.
Several times, actually. Yeah, this probably isn't going to be its final form, either,
I'm probably going to be making tweaks to this for ages, especially once it gets into
play testing and checking how effective it actually is, but anyway, let's get to the good stuff!
And that weapon skill is... claw class weapons!
Like big, sharp, metal claws you strap onto your hands to deal rapid blows of piercing
damage. These claws revolve around speed, bleed effects, and to a lesser extent, critical hits.
For an innate property, every time claw class
weapons inflict a segment of damage, they apply a stack of bleeding to the target. Bleeding
stacks up on a target and deals 1 damage per stack at the start of the target's turn normally,
or when the bleed effect is triggered. Each time the bleed effect deals damage, one of
the bleed stacks disappears, so you won't bleed forever and they keep having to be maintained
over time. This also means if you trigger bleed damage repeatedly via abilities, that
an enemy will eventually take little to no damage from such, so you need to keep those
stacks fresh! Note there is no limit to bleed stacks, as they're specifically meant to be
ideal for applying lots of them over and over to a very large enemy like a boss, and less
so for smaller enemies. In addition to such, the severity of the bleed
can alter the damage output of bleed effects. Namely, the most basic bleeding is just a
slight bleed effect, which does the default 1 damage per stack when it's triggered.
A moderate bleed effect deals 2 damage per stack, heavy bleeding is 3 per stack, and severe
bleeding is 4 damage per stack. So if you have 10 stacks of severe bleeding, you take
40 damage each time it's triggered and it goes down by one stack.
Uhm... claws really like working with bleed effects, as you'll soon see. In Saorsa, you're
also not really limited to using a single weapon type, and are in fact encouraged to
bring generally 2 to 4 different weapons for various different situations. You'll probably
have a primary, favourite weapon to use most often, but it's pretty common to have a few
options handy. Now, when you first pick up a claw weapon,
you can kinda sorta use it with some degree of competency. This is your "rank 0" skill
with claw weapons. You've kinda got a vague idea how to use them, you're not really professionally
trained in their use, but you can at least swing a sword about in a meanacing enough
manner that you could potentially do some harm if anyone gets into range with you. Or,
well, claws instead of a sword in this case. So the rank 0 claw class weapon attack is
called Maul and only costs 4 action points, henceforth called AP, just to make it easier on me,
and uh... this will hit the target twice. Combined with the innate effect of
claws, this applies up to 2 bleed stacks on a given target if both attacks land.
As a mastery effect, for each additional rank the character learns in claw class weapons,
the damage of each hit is increased by +2, so at the max rank of 6, that'd be up to a
+24 damage bonus spread across the two hits. So what this means overall, is that using
Maul on a target is good for applying stacks of bleeding, and a pretty good chunk of damage.
It's on par with the standard autoattack you get in most games, but it's the most simple
form of attack in Saorsa and later abilities will take advantage of this ability.
Now anyone who picks up a claw weapon can use Maul. It's just your basic standard effect
ability, though someone with greater skill in using claws will be able to get a little
bit more out of it than someone who's untrained thanks to the skill mastery bonus.
Oh and note that Maul counts as a combo attack due to its application of bleed stacks, which
will become important later on. Now, if you were to train in using claw classed
weapons, available at character level 1 in the game, you could learn this next ability:
Go For The Throat. Claw weapons are piercing damage, and therefore
they don't really do a lot of damage by default, but rather rely on status effects and critical
hits to do their real damage, and that's what Go For The Throat is - a critical hit.
Unlike most other tabletop RPGs, Saorsa's critical hits aren't random at all, but instead
are more like called shots, where you aim for a critical location and take a bit of
time to line up an ideal hit. These tend to be of greater accuracy, but are a lot slower.
In Go For The Throat's case, this's an 8AP attack which deals only a single hit for 2x
to 4x the normal damage. The more clean the hit, the stronger the damage multiplier.
Now if you're reasonably good with math, you may be going waaaait a second, that's 4AP
to do 2 times the base damage, or 8AP to do 4 times the base damage... or possibly less!
So what gives? Well, here's the thing - piercing attacks
in Saorsa don't really scale like normal attack damage does. Your standard hits with Maul
are going to consistently do about the same amount of damage all game, only really increasing
with the damage bonus from the skill mastery, and from the quality of your weapons. It's
meant to be a quick way to pile on stacks of a bleed on a target, and throw in some
reasonable damage while you're at it. Piercing damage gets stronger off of your
agility vital statistic by increasing the damage multiplier of your critical hits.
These are where you do big, nasty piles of damage, so that 4x multiplier might wind up being
an awful lot higher late game, more like 10x the damage. Yeah, it can sting quite a lot.
To go with this though, Go For The Throat is also a combo attack, because it also applies
a bleed effect. Better yet, the Skill Mastery for Go For The Throat is that it adds +3 to
any opposed roll for each extra rank of skill you have, assuming you have Skill Mastery
in claw weapons. What this means is that, by the time you're
at max level, you can have a +15 bonus to hit on 1d20. Yeah, that's a pretty big increase,
which means there's a much higher chance that you're going to land a clean hit even if someone
does try to block, dodge, parry, or otherwise try to avoid getting your claws in their face.
Or throat. I mean, that is the name of the skill, after all.
Now, where this really comes into play is with our next skill learned at rank 2, which
normally becomes unlocked at level 5, and after the first stride on the Path to Redemption
as part of the game's core mechanics. You can learn this at level 1, however, and before
that stride, by purchasing Skill Mastery, which basically makes you better at using
that one skill to an exceptional degree. You'd unlock your skill mastery bonuses and count
as 1 rank higher than normal. So what is this next skill? In this case,
it's called Serration, and it's a combo finisher with claw class weapons.
Now what combo finishers are is... uhm, kinda self explanatory to a degree. They... uh...
they finish combos. Yeah. So the point is that combo finishers will drain every last
ounce of action points you have left, but they tend to do something really big and nasty
with all those combo moves you'd just applied to a target.
In Serration's case, this means you lose all your AP and instantly trigger the bleed effect
on your target, since normally it wouldn't actually hurt them until the target's turn.
If you've been piling on those bleed stacks, that can be pretty nasty.
To make matters more interesting, as a combo finisher, Serration deals an additional +1 damage
for each AP spent by Serration for each time you applied a stack of bleeding
to the target this turn. So those nice, quick little applications of bleed stacks with Maul
suddenly become worth a lot more, and the more AP you had left over when you used Serration,
the stronger it becomes. But wait, there's more! Order Skill Mastery
now and get a +1 additional stack of bleeding from all critical hits for each extra rank!
Yes, that's right, you heard me. ALL critical hits. Even from other weapons. Meaning if
you master claw weapons, you can also start applying those bleed stacks with bows, daggers,
and other implements of piercing destruction. Smexy, innit?
That also means each time you land a shot of Go For The Throat at max level, you're
pounding on 5 stacks of bleed to go with it. Not too shabby!
And we're not even halfway done yet. Yeah, things are going to get more awesome as we
go along. At skill rank 3, claw users learn the Expunge
charge abililty. I've mentioned charge abilities before in other videos, but for a quick recap,
each turn you gain +1 charge, and these charges can be expended for very potent effects. If
a fight starts to drag on a little too long, you can unload these very potent abilities
to turn the tide quickly. Expunge, in this case, costs 2 charges to
use and removes all stacks of bleeding from a target of your choice in melee range, dealing
triple the bleed damage which normally would've been dealt. So yeah, you remove all your stacks
but... you do a looooot of bleed damage all at once, which makes it good for finishing
people off, because well... maybe you don't want to wait for the uh, bleed stacks to bleed
them out, you want them dead NOW. Now... what could make that better? Oh yeah...
skill mastery again. What happens with Expunge? Oh, for each rank of skill mastery, it retains
up to 1 additional severity of bleeding. If they were only slightly bleeding there's no
benefit, but if you had a target severely bleeding, like it was just gushing out of
them, and you used Expunge, any new stacks you apply would be applied at the highest
severity of bleeding again without having to start entirely all over again.
But... but we haven't seen anything yet which allows for you to increase a target's severity
of bleeding yet! Well, yeah, we haven't. That mastery doesn't
take place until the next rank after the ability's learned though, meaning the soonest you could
learn it is level 10. Which just happens to be when you'd learn your rank 4 claw class ability...
Eviscerate. Now Eviscerate's pretty nasty. It costs 6AP
to use and deals 1 segment of damage, but it also increases bleed severity by 1 stage.
This means it deals half the damage of a Maul attack, but it would also mean if your bleed
damage was only 1 per stack, it'd double it up to 2 per stack. Then to 3 per stack, then
4 per stack. Pretty nasty stuff given there's some ways in there to trigger bleed effects
early! Can that get better? Why yes, yes it can.
You'll see why at the end, but for now, not only is Eviscerate a combo ability, but the
skill mastery of Eviscerate is that it applies up to an extra stage of bleed severity. Since
this's the rank 4 ability, at rank 6, the cap, that would mean you only need to use
Eviscerate a single time to take a wound from slight bleeding to severe bleeding all over
the place, letting you really value that visceral Evisceration. Yes, I just went there. And
now I go away from there. NEEEEEXT ABILITY! Our rank 5 claw ability, which you would get
at level 20 normally, and near the final stride of your Path to Redemption, or level 15 with
Skill Mastery, is a nasty one. Ravage is an ability that modifies other abilities.
Any time you're using another ability, you can also Ravage the target, increasing the
cost of the base ability by +2, but converts any piercing or normal damage to rending damage,
and also applies +1 additional stack of bleeding any time bleeding stacks are applied.
Now... rending damage is pretty rare in Saorsa, because there aren't too many weapons that
were ever designed to cause it. The ones that do... are pretty horrific things. Like a rapier
might be piercing damage in that it pokes a hole clean through you, but its total area
it hits is pretty small, so you have to hit vital points for it to do much of anything.
Normal damage is like the slashing cut of a sword, where it leaves a rather large, but
fairly nice and clean cut. Rending damage is like ripping someone's arm
off, or attacking someone with a rusty chainsaw that doesn't so much cut as it does just dig
in and make an absolute mess. So yeah. By converting your attacks over to rending
damage, it automatically applies a stack of bleeding on every hit, and deals 'normal'
damage in terms of scaling. That means your claws now scale for damage as though they were swords...
okay that's scary. But what's more scary is that it means the claw weapon
applies its bleed stack... then the rending damage applies its bleed stack... and you
get the +1 additional stack of bleeding from Ravage... and you can hit twice with Maul...
which now does normal damage scaling... Oh. Oh that's... that's not okay.
There's nothing okay about that. Six stacks of bleeding at a time, for 6AP? That's kinda terrifying.
Oh, yeah, that's something I forgot to mention... (ACTUALLY I DIDN'T - Don't ask how this got added in here, I blame working too much today.) Ravage also happens to uh increase the cost
of using another ability with it by +2AP, so it slows down your attack because you're
basically not just jabbing into them, you're like twisting the claws around and kind of
taking your time to explore their anatomy in a rather... intimate way.
Oh and uh, one more thing... is that this doesn't just apply to claw class weapons,
it also applies to daggers or bows or any other piercing weapon. Soooo basically you
can just upgrade a different weapon as you learn how to do this kind of thing with claws.
It's not going to be quite as effective as if you were using the claws, but you get a
secondary benefit when you're using it with other weapons so it's kinda handy just in general.
But yeah, it gets worse.
Rending damage uses the base 2 weapon damage same as most piercing weapons, but it uses
the damage scaling of normal damage. For Skill Mastery for Ravage, it increases that base
damage by +1, up to 3 base weapon damage. Meaning your claws now do 50% more raw damage
AND they scale as normal weapon damage, on top of now applying a ton of stacks of bleeding
on every hit. Yay blood showers! It's going to look like
that one scene from The Shining by the time we're done...
But... that's a LOT of blood. What do you do with so much blood?
And that's where the "ultimate" ability of claw weapons comes in, our rank 6 ability: Bloodthirster.
All of the final abilities for each weapon
skill is a single, unique charge ability which acts as the ultimate attack meant to basically
turn combat around when utilized. They're large, flashy, and uhm... interesting.
Activating Bloodthirster is pretty noticible. If the glowing red eyes and the way your claw
weapons become part of your hands, growing out as long claws from your fingertips in
place of even any natural claws your species may normally possess, making it impossible
to be disarmed... yeah, if those tiiiiny details didn't give it away, the other effects might.
Once Bloodthirster is activated, any bleed damage dealt by the Bloodthirster heals the
Bloodthirster for an equal amount. Oh and it reduces any claw abilities by -2AP to a
minimum of 3AP in total. To make this even more terrifying, any critical hits you deal
also trigger bleed damage on the target, but don't reduce the stacks, meaning you can
Go For The Throat over and over again. As a final nail in the coffin, as it were...
sorry, that was awful of me. Wait, no, I'm not sorry. DEAL WIF IT! Anyway, the last thing
Bloodthirster does is that the Bloodthirster ignores all stealth, invisibility, or other
effects which would hide a target's location from them, so long as the target is bleeding.
It won't help you any against targets that are unharmed or just hurt, but once you've
drawn blood, they won't be escaping your claws. And therein we have a series of abilities
that play off one another, giving several different distinctive play styles for claw
weapons with how they interact. Claws simply just won't feel the same as a dagger, despite
being both fairly fast, melee ranged piercing weapons. When you dedicate yourself to using
a particular weapon in Saorsa, it flat out feels different from other weapons. Heck,
the combat style you employ will also change things up significantly, which we haven't
covered here today, uhm... at least not so far - these combat styles emphasize things
like being highly mobile on the battlefield, excessively hard to hit, able to brace against
heavy blows, to unleash rapid flurries of attacks, or nail precision strikes against
opponents and so on, further specializing how your character fights.
Toss in some more generalized skillsets, such as finesse-specific maneuvers and such, and
utilizing magic and your class skills to further augment your choices, and you'll gradually
build up a character who plays exactly the way you think they should, in ways that make
you just WANT to go into detail of exactly how they're tearing into their enemies on
the battlefield. So yeah, that's part of what I've been working
on just for today. There's all sorts of neat stuff like this under production right now.
I hope you enjoyed the first true look at just what kind of stuff you'll be able to
do in combat for Saorsa. We'll just pretend that someone else asked me the question is all, hehe.
So uh yeah, if you played like the DOOM 2016
version, it's kinda like that when it comes to claws.
Rip and tear until the job is done...!
Anyway, with that, I'm out. I'll see you next time!
Rip and tear your guts!
You are huge!
That means you have huge guts!
RIP AND TEAR!
As quoted by CPL Fly Taggart - Doom (The comic)
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