Another Marauder feedback and suggestions post

Peerless warriors of varying types, from hulking armored dreadnoughts to stealthy light-footed nightblades.
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saladbowl
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Another Marauder feedback and suggestions post

Post by saladbowl »

My main character is a level 52+ Marauder and I am heavily biased in making this class the coolest. That said, here's yet another feedback and suggestions post.

General class direction

 I think Marauders should focus on debuffs and buffs, creating advantageous situations for themselves and denying advantages to opponents. I also wish to see Marauders become a wide net for 'basic' warriors beyond the big-talking bar brawler: a brave peasant who reached for their farming tools when defending another, an old mercenary footsoldier who knows formation fighting like the back of their hand, a scholar of warfare knowledgeable in pitched battles who obsesses over old children's knight stories and swords, the list goes on. Pragmatism is the basis of all combat techniques, be they from a nervous press-ganged sailor who flinches at loud noises or an egotistic ritual gladiator mocking others to imaginary roars of the crowd: if it doesn't work or there's a better option, don't do it! Performing a triple backflip corkscrew spin and slicing someone into bloody mist with 1000 cuts is great, but why not just stab them with careful measure and move on? Basically, I don't want that philosophy of brutal effectiveness to be limited to warriors full of themselves like I've seen other suggestions push Marauders, but to be open to any flavor.

 I suggest a voluntary ability to take away the stealing and maybe palming aspects of Artifice, kind of like a reverse Thief's Tricks. This should allow battlefield savants - be they of ill intent or saintly demeanour - to focus entirely on applying Artifice to combat and morphing the skill's purpose into "combat +". If someone wishes to play a Marauder with stealing and palming and maybe future mugging tricks reliant on stealing, they would not have to take this. As some ideas, takers could get some or all of the following in return:
  • When any looting of dead riln-bearing NPCs is done by you or your group, there is a very minor chance to loot extra riln as if they were successfully stolen from. This follows the rules of normally stealing from NPCs, where if someone stole from them in recent time there will be no coin purse to steal from (and the coin purse will not refill, because they're, y'know, dead). Through a veteran's experience, rough shaking and listening, or perhaps a gold-sniffing nose, you can guess where combatants secret away valuables.
  • A reroll when defending your possessions from thieves. Training Artifice already provides a bonus to sensing pickpockets through knowing how to steal yourself, maybe giving up training on how to steal would leave more time to practice defending your spoils of war. I think this shouldn't activate against any other sneaky-beaky activity in the area, only vs. stealing attempts on your stuff.
  • A flat bonus to dirty trick rolls. Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty-five at most.
p.s. Improvised weapon proficiency is beyond awesome as an ability, it opens up a ridiculous amount of (viable) character concepts while also enhancing Marauders in mad scrambles, love it


Tactics: Marauder

 Beyond the versatile armor penalty reductions, I feel this ability is underwhelming with no cool factor. With their tactics, Marauders can utilize dirty tricks. They come separately. In comparison, Dreadnoughts get lowered defenses but damage reduction and may counterattack, Guardians get increased defenses with lowered offense and may intercept attacks on party members and and may counterattack, Nightblades hijack Risk into a class resource with reroll bonuses and penalties based on its management, Bersekers gain a Fury class resource which they can burn or save as the situation requires, and to a lesser coolness extent, Duelists get a bonus to armor-chink.

 I propose packaging a small defensive trick that activates on parry/dodge/block, which would go a long way in clearing the "boring prerequisite feat" feeling and help Marauders get into their groove sooner than later. And a manageable resource. Did I say resource?


Conceptual class resource

 I believe by introducing a class resource into Tactics: Marauder, which I will call Flow in this post, tricks can vary in power and have far more decision-making built into them instead of just always firing. Tricks turn on their lesser automatic effects when at or above a Flow threshold, and have a far more powerful "active" effect unlocked at the automatic threshold, used via command input which consumes Flow. Examples!

Class resource: "Flow"
  • When any combat action is performed by you or targeted at you by an opponent, Flow generation begins or is maintained for five seconds, ticking up at one Flow point per second. Caps around 50. When Flow is not generating, it instead ticks down at one point per second.
  • Abilities could consume Flow, add Flow, slow generation (for those powerful abilities/toggles), or even increase generation (Channel Flow) as balancing methods.
  • Represents general confidence in ability as a fight progresses. This can encompass pretty much anything, from mentally referencing combat manuals, horrible anxiety resulting in more and more desperate attempts to end a fight, alcohol kicking in for a drunken pugilist, etc.
Supplementary ability: "Trade Balance"
  • Trade all positive Balance to Flow, or trade all Flow to Balance.
  • Could be the trick packaged with Tactics: Marauder. You know, I'm second-guessing having a class resource instead of suggesting they be absolute Balance monsters, but I'd hope any ideas are welcome as stepping stones.
Lesser dirty trick: "Feint Expertise"
  • 15 Flow automatic effect: Successful feints sap 12 Balance.
  • 10 Flow consuming active effect: Combine a normal feint and weapon attack, only incurring the RT of your weapon attack. 10s cooldown.
Moderate dirty trick: "Opportunistic Grapple"
  • Thought about this when followup punch activated after a disarm. If someone takes away your weapon, are you going to back up to a respectable distance to engage in honorable duelling? Heck no! You're rushing forward in hopes to eliminate any reach they have while they're still getting back into position!
  • 25 Flow automatic effect: If you are disarmed, immediately use the now free hand in a grapple/tussle attempt.
  • 20 Flow consuming active effect: Attempt to grapple/tussle with the opponent with an added Artifice bonus. On success, might sheath held weapon and draw a designated dagger-class weapon if not already held. High success margins may force the opponent into a sitting position, prone on massive success margins.
Moderate dirty trick: "Formation Fighting"
  • Learn to use Artifice in covering for your teammates. Requires Side by Side.
  • 30 Flow automatic effect: When an opponent attacks a group member, pass an Artifice check to add a reroll to that group member's defensive roll. Caps at 1 added reroll even with multiple Marauders, follows the same RT rules for procs as Side by Side.
  • 20 Flow consuming active effect: Prepare to strike alongside a group member, combining your damage with theirs on the hit location before damage reduction, if any. This uses the group member's damage type (eg. crush) for reduction calculations, even if your damage type (eg. pierce) would be different.
Powerful dirty trick: "Clangorous Disarm"
  • 40 Flow automatic effect: Requires use of parry defenses. You constantly bat at your opponent's weapon, reducing the accuracy of incoming attacks. Roll an Artifice check when you are attacked in melee: the resulting margin of success creates that much of an aim penalty for the opponent's attack. If the incoming attack isn't aimed, you instead gain a chance to entirely ward off the attack, similar to and stacking with long-range melee weapons warding off attacks.
  • 40 Flow consuming active effect: Smash your weapon into the opponent's. This may fracture their hand/hands, deal durability damage to their weapon, and disarm them on moderate and above success margins. The degree of success influences the fracture and durability damage, and if the opponent's weapon is held in two hands, the disarm difficulty increases. Might be an invisible parrying stance which, if an opponent fails to notice through an Artifice check, has your parry defense use full melee attack instead with all those above effects added.

On skill substitutions

Having tricks or general abilities able to substitute Artifice into combat skills would be great for lessening skill burdens. I always look at Dreanoughts and think, "Wow, they can do all their awesome stuff with only two main skills! Think of all the free points for professions." With Marauders, or at least how I play one, Melee is your highest skill between 600-700, you're going to have Shield Use as your main defensive tool at 600, high Artifice is required for dirty tricks to function in combat with 400-500, Armor Use is required to consistently avoid roll penalties at around 300-500 depending if you want heavier armor, and you'll try to fit in maybe 300-400 Dodge in for situations where you won't have a block or parry roll, probably from being disarmed out of 2h: medium armor is good but it has no damage reducing abilities attached. After factoring in necessities like 300-400 Perception, 200 Meditation, 100 Climbing, 100 Swim, and 100 Riding, there's not a lot of breathing room.

 Yes, it can be argued you can skim down on combat skills and the latter for more profession and scholar skills, but then you're probably just a worse warrior than a Dreadnought with their two main skills, who still gets a bunch of free points for non-combat skills. I might not know what I'm talking about. I'd just like more free points to justify 100 Dancing.


Miscellaneous thoughts

 My Marauder has Willpower as their primary attribute. I know it will always be vastly inferior on warriors (especially on Marauders) compared to the always applicable Strength, Agility, Constitution, and Intuition, but he rocks it anyway for story purposes. Right now Willpower only applies to one ability Marauders can gain (Adrenaline Rush), and because the attribute bonuses don't push the duration past maximum, Willpower is left unused in what feels like 98% of combat encounters. When balancing Willpower attribute bonuses on abilities for classes which rarely use or cannot use sanity-lowering abilities, have no occult channelling to reroll, and have base Meditation caps, I think having the attribute bonus be far higher would be awesome. Awareness falls into a similar category.

I've been painting them as adaptable generalists, and Marauders seem the type to carry multiple weapons, rapidly switching to what's best for the task at hand. When affinities are released, giving Marauders a small "general weaponry" affinity which applies to all weapons but is beaten by higher weapon specific affinities would be cool. Maybe abilities which sheath one weapon and automatically draw another to attack with some attached effect? On brutally effective ranged weapons, maybe briefly substituting Artifice for a ranged weapon strike from a hurled stone or crossbow shot? Ranged marauders briefly substituting Artifice for melee and ramming a crossbow stock or bow stave into someone's face?

I think they should be the undisputed champions of grappling. The imagery of an armored warrior dropping their weapon and wrestling another armored warrior to the ground, getting position over them, and attempting to shove a dagger into visor slits to poke their brain comes into mind. Another would be the constable forcing a lawbreaker into submission, or once again, the bar brawler slamming someone through a nearby table. You should never ever ever want a Marauder over you.


And that's about it for my thoughts on Marauders. Still figuring out how to indent properly as spaces don't seem to show up on the preview. I've never made a massive post like this before, so hopefully it's understandable. Thanks for reading :)
Gorth
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Re: Another Marauder feedback and suggestions post

Post by Gorth »

I know this is major necromancy, but I've played a Marauder for quite a while now. I'm about level 60, and I'd like to bring this back up to attention for ideas and to reaffirm that I think these are wonderful ideas.
I think Marauders should focus on debuffs and buffs, creating advantageous situations for themselves and denying advantages to opponents.
I've been trying to play my Marauder as a Crowd Control, Stun Locking sort of Battlemaster type of fighter, meaning I focus less on actually killing in groups than I do tanking people's balance and getting them staggered/knocked down. I also play as a bit of a tank myself, trying to guard as much as possible and use my monstrous defense to full affect, where possible. This lends it's self to Crowd Control in some ways, allowing me to get off Tactical Dodge trips. Or it would, if I get my Dodge up and get my suggestion added, as follows:

I believe it was Heron who suggested this, a long time ago, when talking about experiences with Duelist and there passive defenses. It would be nice if all related defenses were rolled, to possibly offer the chance to trip if you would have hit that threshhold while still having a Shield out for defense rolls. I recognize this kind of takes away from the whole Combat Defense system, as you set a prefered defense method, but I imagine more as the following:

Maya get's attacked, D700(): 101.
Maya Rolls Primary Defense (Block): D900(1X): 100.
Maya Rolls Dodge: D800(): 652.
Tactical Dodge triggers.

Perhaps we could balance this by not allowing the Dodge to take over it if wouldn't PROC the Tactical Dodge, so that I don't get affectively three or four atempts to dodge something based on rerolls.
The idea of this is so that I can take advantage of even having Tactical Dodge when I am a primarily Shield Block user. I want to be defensive, more than anything, and I think being able to slip out of the way of attacks just the same as Blocking them with a shield could be greatly helpful. This could also come into play if we ever get a change where we take Concussive damage from blocking heavy attacks, god please no.
I suggest a voluntary ability to take away the stealing and maybe palming aspects of Artifice, kind of like a reverse Thief's Tricks. This should allow battlefield savants - be they of ill intent or saintly demeanour - to focus entirely on applying Artifice to combat and morphing the skill's purpose into "combat +".
I like this idea. I ended up making the stealing and Sleight of Hand aspects of Artifice into personal RP for my Marauder, as I couldn't justify the skill in my mind otherwise. I personally probably wouldn't take this myself, but I know a few Marauders who definitely wouldn't be the stealing type.

Several of the Flow, mentioned later, ideas could perhaps recieve minor bonuses/subabilities as related to taking the more physical version of this, though we don't want to overload Marauders with too many options.

Tactics: Marauder: I agree that this ability can feel overwhelming. The automatic PROC of Dirtkick on every other attack has led me to a slower style of play as I optimize the timings on when to dirtkick, Tackle, and Shield Bash to keep my opponents on the ground the longest, which I appreciate. My worry comes in when we end up getting more Dirty Tricks. How will the game decide how to dispense the tricks? My suggestion is thus:
  • Offer instead of all, a list of Dirty Tricks that you can set yourself.
  • Actually make it so the tricks can PROC on defense as well. MAKE SURE that, if my earlier mentioned multi-defense idea gets added, it doesn't end up doing multiple a defense, as it rolls Block, and then Dodge.
  • Each PROC of the Tactic moves down the list, provided that trick is off of cooldown. If it isn't off cooldown, either do not do anything, or move to the next.
Alternatively, we could drop the automatic Dirty Trick of the Tactics intirely, and perhaps replace it with the Class Specific Multi-Defense, as described above, allowing the Marauder to be uniquely defensive, or Crowd Controlly. That could, of course, be massively overpowered, though, so it might require tweaking.

Conceptual Class Resource: I like the idea that this is a fast to generate, quick to flee type resource. It should, perhaps, offer no effect beyond the actual abilities, thus perhaps being a bit underwhelming until abilities are taken.

Trade Balance: I like this idea. Marauders have no abilities, excluding Truestrike, that eats balance. I often find myself at 25 balance with little to do with it. Tackle, knocks down, imediately circle again, back at max, attack, shield bash, down to twenty, circle again. Unless I get caught in the open with a few feints, I never really hit negative balance. It could be nice to have a panick button option to gain a bunch of Flow to fire off a quick
Crowd Control ability and back off to rebuild.

Feint Expertise: I'm a little iffy on this one. I don't think 2 or 3 additional balance loss on feint would affect a bunch, but Marauders can already get very high Feint Offense Rolls. I rarely, if ever, fail to Feint, even at 500 melee and 300 Artifice.
Active Affect: I like this, a lot. I've found that I often have to change my entire style around people's passive defenses. Often times, those with passive defenses I wish to overcome are explosive damage dealers, meaning the fight will likely be quick unless I can start the Stagger Train. This could assist in that.

Opportunistic Grapple: We're unsure if Grappling will ever be a thing, and if so, what the mechanics will look like. I like this idea. Marauders are versatile, and most of my Marauder concepts are fighters that work off of desperation and a need to live. Losing your weapon in a fight, if multiple enemies are present, can often spell absolute death, or loss of that weapon, until you can find the perfect opportunity to grab it, which requires group coordination, luck and means you are useless for quite some time.
Even if this is a Cloak Parry-esque, small balance loss, roundtime inducing thing, I could get behind it.
Active Affect: I'm a little iffy on this one. We don't want to overload Marauders with balance tanking things, and while I like the idea, I think something needs to be said for other people. If you manage to get someone's weapon out of there hands, it should be terrible for them. Likely this could end up with you remaining in advantage state, even without a weapon, as your opponent eats stagger, large balance loss, and then asumedly aditional stagger locking as you now get to rain down Dirty Tricks with Shameless Opportunist rerolls.

Formation Fighting: This is neat, and I think in character. The high Flow requirement means it will only be happening when fights have been going on for a few rounds, when you should have figured out your opponent and move in for kills or power moves. My worry comes in where, we don't want to step on Duelist's toes with Combat Analysis. It feels almost as if we're conceptually trying to do similar, but perhaps I am thinking to far into it.
Active Affect: A stance. Yes. I like stances, where you commit to an option, perhaps at the negative to other stance options. Thus, perhaps an active command that puts you into a stance that allows you to do this affect, at the disadvantage that you are more offensively focused and drop your defense rolls a small bit. Perhaps we should also insure that the resultant attack doesn't PROC a Dirty Trick, would probably require playtesting.

Clangorous Disarm: I'm not sure how to think about this one, as it wouldn't affect my character, considering she uses Block and Dodge. Reduction of raw rolls isn't particularly game breaking, I suggest that stay the case with this to bring rolls on par with automatically less powerful Parry rolls compared to other defenses.
Active Affect: Another stance, this time defensive. I like this as a sort of almost actively triggered disarming move. A lot of Disarms come at surprise, and are hard to react to. If you were more able to predict a disarm happening, you could react accordingly to press your advantage further.


Personal Thoughts:

Arrow Guard: Arrow Guard is cool, but niche, niche to a fault. It's helpful if you're fighting archers all of a sudden while using a 1.5H weapon, but it's gotten in the way more than it's ever helped me. I've often slung my shield to have an empty hand to pull someone up or shake them, but had that attempt ruined by being shot at. This also doesn't work from surprise, which is fine, making the ability kind of a failed convenience atempt. I suggest either removing it or modifying it to increase defense against arrows or some such thing.

Cheapshot: Cheapshot is cool, I guess? This has already been discussed in the Ability's thread, but I rarely ever remember to use it, even with the notifications. The need to hold off and focus to use it in time often isn't great enough to make me change focus from my standard requirements.

Dirtkick: Dirtkick is great, perhaps too great. I think operating on every other attack is a bit much, but also...it might become obsolete if nerfed much.

Followup Punch: I never use this, mostly because I find the rolls for Shield Defense to be much better to have. If we got more abilities that made this neat to use, I would, probably, or at least try to find situations to use it. I've had situations where I do try to use it for more Side by Side chances, though, and Arrow Guard screws me over on that one.

Improvised Weapon Proficiency: Neat, not applicable to my character in most cases, but still great to know that I could pick up anything and still be a viable combatant if required.

Multi-Throw: I don't play a ranged Marauder. It personally seems like a waste of an ability slot, to me, but I don't think it's terrible enough to say you couldn't play a Ranged Marauder.

Shameless Opportunist: Again, this has it's own thread. I still think it's very good. I've gotten 6 or 7 reroles on horseback. I don't think it's game breaking, but I know several people cry out about it. If we were to nerf it, I suggest it be only two rerolls. Any lower than that and I fear it just not mattering.

Shield Bash: The second reason I keep my shield out at all times. Damage isn't bad, fractures are great, and rerolls from Shameless Opportunist mean you can knock down pretty reliably. I would suggest this get a bonus to the Roll related to Shield skill, but I don't think it really needs it. With 500 melee, I roll D600 on it, and, unless I'm fighting someone with Agility and Acrobatics, it's usually enough to overcome. However, I think Agility needs to be nerfed, personally. It's bonuses to Shield Bash, Charge, Tackle and Sweep, especially coupled with Tumble and Flip make it nearly impossible to land those moves on them, even with Shameless Opportunist. I've missed Shield Bashes by large margins on prone and staggered people, a lot of times, and I find that a little silly.

Tactical Dodge: I find this useless to even speck into, myself, as Shield Block takes care of a majority of situations. If my Multi-Defense idea, discussed above, were to be added, though, I would likely have another skill point dump, at least to 200 or 300.

Other than that, this is my favorite class by far that I've played. It feels like you can control the fight if you do everything right, and it still feels like you can have your world rocked if you mess up, which is exactly how I think the combat system should feel.
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saladbowl
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Re: Another Marauder feedback and suggestions post

Post by saladbowl »

Looking back at this hurts. Most of my thoughts in this post are pretty old, I'm hoping to readdress them in a future post.
Howard
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Re: Another Marauder feedback and suggestions post

Post by Howard »

I was trying to brainstorm less code-intensive methods of adding a few items to the marauders. Would it be a good idea to add sweep (and, possibly, quick strike) to the marauder toolkit? Sweep, in particular, seemed like a good possible additional dirty trick to add along-side dirtkick.
Gorth
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Re: Another Marauder feedback and suggestions post

Post by Gorth »

Sweep could be nice. I like the idea, and I think it definitely fits as a Dirty Trick-esque thing. HOWEVER! Two classes (Duelist, Nightblade) Already get access to this. It becomes a bit less unique, I think, and both of those classes already borrow a lot from each other.

Quickstrike is a hard no from me for one reason and one reason only. Dirtkick. Dirtkick on a Quickstrike, and then you get another attack during the stagger+roundtime of the Dirtkick seems very, very good. Dirtkick seems to be designed with the idea that one person should not get two attacks off during it.
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