[Shieba]

Posting this here because I don't know where else to post it. XD;

There was a bit of confusion in the recent tourney about Diehard, which basically means that you get one attack after you reach 0 Endurance. If you kill your opponent with that attack, you win, if not, you lose. Which is...improveable, I think. The Trait is restricted and all and with the chance to miss always being there and the fact that your opponent needs to be near death as well, the Trait seems hardly worth using.

Which is why I suggest a slight change (and Dai found it interesting and told me to post it so that others could comment on it): I think it would be neat if the Trait would do kinda the same the Focus Sash does in Pokemon: Basically, it lets you survive the attack that would knock you out with 1 Endurance so that your pet can continue to fight until your opponent hits you again. Which might not be much different from how it is now, but if your opponent misses a lot, you can hang in there much longer and it would be more justified to use up a Trait slot with Diehard. o3o

[Thunder]

I like that idea and can't think of any objections to it o^o

Unrelated to Shieba's post, but I had an idea a while back about creating more traits that would help slower pets, since at the moment you basically always have the advantage if you're faster. I posted some of my ideas here and would appreciate some commentary o3o Feel free to comment on my other trait ideas too, though.

[Shieba]

Let's see, Thunder...

Bodyguard clashes too much with Damage Substitute for my liking because it's pretty much the same and DS is Shrine. o3o

Avenger seems overpowered, but otherwise, I'm in favour of it.

Liking all other Traits not related to the speed issue.

As for the speed-thing, Thunder, there is currently (well, since a long time...) a change in progress. If you look in the Test Tourney section, Dai and I tested a new system which links Speed and Precision there. Basically, the system is fully tested, but Dai still needs to show it to Baal to get it approved. I'm too tired to figure out how much it would clash with your Trait ideas right now, but I would suggest not making new Traits for Speed-related issues until the new system is in place because right now it would be a waste otherwise.
If I comment on the Traits like they are suggested now, though, I'd say that I like Accelerate, but Counter is horribly overpowered. That would have to be a Shrine one or something because jeez, Spiked Body is bad enough. Getting 1/4 damage back and the opponent taking 1/4 less spells basically doom for you since your opponent also attacks you. This would be one of the most overpowered Traits we would have if we would implement it.

[Thunder]

Hm, the difference between my idea for Bodyguard and Damage Substitute, though, would be that Bodyguard uses the bodyguard pet's stats to calculate damage instead of just taking on whatever damage the ally pet took. So for instance, let's say the ally is weak to Fire but the bodyguard is strong against Fire. If the ally takes 7 Fire damage (5 base damage + 2 weakness damage) and Damage Substitute was used, the Damage Substitute user would take on 7 damage. But, if Bodyguard was used, the ally would be unharmed, and the bodyguard would only take 3 (5 base damage - 2 damage due to resistance) damage. I guess they're still pretty similar, but that's the main difference I see between the ideas.

Avenger and Counter's numbers can be tweaked, of course. I also realized that 1/4 damage return is really overpowered after I made that post, I just forgot to edit the idea XD

I looked over the Speed-affects-Precision system quickly...it's an interesting concept, though I'm not sure how it could be easily explained to other users, lol. But even with that system, I don't think traits that help slower pets would be a bad thing since with that system, the faster pet still generally has the advantage (and perhaps even more of an advantage if Speed and Precision are linked like that), just like how it is with our current system.

EDIT: Quick question about the new revision for Diehard. If the pet manages to heal itself after Diehard activates, would Diehard activate again after the pet gets enough damage?

[Kodai]

@Diehard: Uh, prooobably not. You're already getting a pretty nice boost by not dying as it is XD

@Bodyguard/Damage Substitute: I haven't posted anything about it yet, but I really liked the idea of a Bodyguard-type Trait. o 3o The only thing would be to make it weaker than Damage Substitute (so we can keep that Shrine and not have Bodyguard be Shrine as well). Shieba had the idea of making Damage Substitute work by percentage instead of just having it heal whatever damage your partner took last turn, so for example, if you/your partner has max 100 Endurance (she wasn't sure whether to base it on you or your partner's Endurance) and Damage Substitute protects for 20%, you would end up taking the next 20 damage that would have been inflicted on your partner. (Shieba also had the idea of Bodyguard lasting for X amount of turns, costing X AP to do so. I'm not sure if I like that or the original one-turn idea better.)
Thoughts?
EDIT: Shieba had another idea where Bodyguard would depend on Speed -- you roll from 1-100, and if you land on your Speed or less, Bodyguard succeeds and you defend your partner successfully (so for example, if you had 41 Speed, you'd need to roll from 1-41 out of 100 to succeed).

[GrayGriffin]

I'd like to see some traits that benefit you if you're smaller than your opponent. Either a dodge bonus, or perhaps some sort of "constant irritation" attack?

[Kodai]

@Small Traits: Yesss, that would be good. o 3o Hmm~

@Bodyguard: So I was trying to write it up (finally) and figured out that, since I'm going with the 'X AP for X turns' idea, I have no idea if you should be able to attack while you're still defending your ally. Thoughts?

[Shieba]

I think it should be allowed, except for the turn when you declare Bodyguard.

The reason is simple: If you can only attack with one pet and not with both and your opponent can still attack with both, you are losing more than you gain since you obviously dish out way less damage, but still take close to the same amount.

"The same amount", of course, comes from the bonus damage. Let's say you have two pets, one with high Offense and one with high Defense. Your opponent naturally tries to take the Offense-pet out first to keep their pets from taking more damage and because it's faster to take the pet with less Defense out and gain a 2-vs-1 advantage. So once your Offense-pet gets low on Endurance, your Defense-pet uses bodyguard. Let's say for...three turns, hoping that this will be enough to kill at least one of the opponent's pets.

Now your Defense-pet takes, of course, less damage than your Offense-pet did, but now both foes hit your Defense-pet for sure. And now comes the kicker: You always do scratch damage and, if your pet is over level 30, you have a chance to deal up to 14 bonus damage which doesn't get blocked by Defense. So let's say both enemies hit for an average of 7 bonus damage and we'll give you the benefit that your pet only recieves scratch damage. Since most people are smart enough to raise Precision, let's also assume your opponents hit these three turns. That would be 16*3= 48 damage in the three turns to your bodyguard-pet. Which is half the max possible Endurance. And in this time, you deal only damage with ONE pet instead of two. If you get unlucky, you might very well end up with a dead Defense-pet and then your already hurt Offense-pet is toast as well.

As such, I instead think that the defending pet should be allowed to attack, but suffer a precision penalty of 50% (since it has to concentrate on defending the partner as well). So if you normally hit on 1-8, you then only hit on 1-4.

EDIT: I just thought of something...if you consider using the speed-based idea, maybe the pet should automatically attack if it fails to defend? So that if the speed roll fails, the pet gets a normal attack roll towards the pet which damage it wanted to block? Because seriously, if it's speed-based and the pet fails, then not only does the pet which needed protection get the damage still, but the roll of the defender-pet would have been wasted completely then. Then the Trait would have waaaay too little use for low-level pets who have low speed.