Dancer Archive
Thread: Dances and combat defense
By the time we, or our sister profession musicians, reach master level, we get about 7 ranged defense and 7 melee defense for our trouble. I know that several people here are artistic purists and want to think of our profession as not being dangerous. However, I'll have to disagree. If you look at the movies, look again at Mos Eisley Cantina (Episode IV) or Jabba's Palace (Episode VI), these are not safe working environments. My first silly experience as an entertainer was taking a begineer entertainer mission within my first hour of playing. By the terminals direction and my new mission arrow, I was directed to run to my gig, So, I start following the arrow out of Mos Elsewhere and 35 minutes later I'm eaten alive by Bocats. This started my siege mentality with being an entertainer and a long proud history of dying a lot. Why not give our besieged people a little help?
Here's my proposal, what about making our 106 skill point investment, about half as effect, for defense only, as a combat profession. What real harm is there in giving us 20 melee defense and 20 ranged defense? What harm is there in giving us an edge with a few skills that might enhance other skills better? For example a master dancer might get 20 dodge, we are light on our feet after all. A master musician should get say 20 block, after all he's in a band and he's played in a "Roadhouse" before. As masters of jumping and spinning in place, why can't a master dancer have 20 points of defense vs. dizzy and 20 points of defense versus knockdown? With the mythical party life of musicians in our society, it seems appropriate to give them 20 points of defense versus poison and 20 points of defense versus disease. None of these things will make us combat ready, or even allow us to attack another player effectively, but it would be nice to add to other facets of what we do.
As for myself, I made my character with the Old West Saloon girl concept (dancer / pistoleer) in November and I've never even considered changing, though it would be nice to get something for being light on my feet.We are entertainers, but we are entertainers surviving in a tragically dangerous universe. We are more "Roadhouse" than "The Nutcracker". We are more "Once Upon A Time In Mexico" than "Fame". Why don't we request minor defense changes that help with that?
Message Edited by mutable72 on 06-08-2004 06:28 AM
Yes, nive idea.. however i think, pair Dancer with a melee class, and all cry nerf...
mutable72 wrote:If you look at the movies, look again at Mos Eisley Cantina (Episode IV) or Jabba's Palace (Episode VI), these are not safe working environments.
This may well just be nit-picking a bit, but remember that regarding Mos Eisley, "nowhere will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy". Jabba's palace is the seat of power of a vile crime lord. Tatooine is way out in the reaches of the outer-rim territories, and less subject to law and order than the majority of the worlds in Star Wars. Once you're in the core or mid-rim worlds, things just aren't like these two particular locales.
It makes sense that these two particular locations are dangerous working environments for entertainers, but I can't imagine that these are indicative of the conditions galaxy-wide. It's like assuming that if the cowboys at Bob's Country Bunker throw bottles at the Blues Brothers, that bottles will be thrown at the performers in Carnegie Hall as well.
That aside, whether or not there should be an inclusion of "combat" bonuses to entertainer professions really comes down more to overall game system balance than to explanations of the more role-played side of things. The role-played explanations can make nice justifications to why a particular numerical addition is added into the mechanics, but the mechanics should never be a slave to the explanation. This is just the limiting factor of balanced game systems... it's just the way it works. The numbers have to balance out, and if the "social professions" aren't supposed to stack into the combat side of things, they will not, no matter how much it seems like it would make sense. Yes, some combat professions have stacked their bonuses as well. The result of this is a massive combat re-balance that is taking a lot of development time to fix these problems, and away from other areas in the game that have not been patched up since launch. Like broken dances, and other issues.
To me, it's always seemed more odd that there is the inclusion of the +7 defense than a lack of other combat benefits. It's not enough to really make any difference anywhere that I can tell. As our professions were always touted as the "social", or "non-combat" professions, it's always seemed to me that including these minor bonuses served nothing more than to, probably unintentionally, whet appetites that dancers and musicians had some inherent combat role to play as dancers and musicians - which to me is counterproductive, in light of the experiment with the inclusion of these professions to fulfill a completely different play style than "kill to get stuff to be able to kill better to get better stuff".
I still feel that the further that the "social experiment" professions slide towards combat roles, the greater the failure of the experiment, and these social professions gradually slide back to being bards. It's not to say that I think that players can't have hybrid interests - but I don't think that those hybrid interests should become core parts of the professions. I think that the heart and soul of the various professions' roles should be protected, and that individual player choices of further character development beyond the entertainer professions is where the permutations should arise. If one wants to be a dancer, but also have some usefulness on the battlefield, choose how you would like to be useful, and add that additional profession to further round out your character. Hybrid-interest characters will never be as battle-savvy as a pure combat monster, but that is to be expected. Pure combat characters have focused their skill sets; hybrid-interest characters have essentially dabbled.
My 3 credits.
Dravenite83 wrote:
While it sounds great to have Dancers or Musicians get defense bonuses based on roleplaying you should look into the bonuses other professions get. I am a CM/TK and my defenses are horrible when it comes to v. states such as dizzy, stun, blind etc. I dont believe TK gets a def. v dizzy or kd at all if I am remembering correctly and if we do it isnt that high. So before you say social profs need higher defence I think the combat classes need their defense issues fixed. Hell look at BH.
I understand the premise of the combat defense. But, I kind of like it the way it is. It's nice that we have a +7 defense there as recognition of our dexterity and our nimbleness (that a word?). But, I don't think we should have uber defenses. After all, a pure dancer is not trained in combat. You get that with other skills.
Having said that, I certainly wouldn't be adverse to having more defensive capabilities. After all, a little more of a modifier to dizzy, for example, would make sense from an RP perspective what with all of our twirling about. The ability to duck quickly, for example.
So, basically, what I'm saying is that a little bit of an edge due to our ample dexterity training is a good thing, but I wouldn't want to see it go overboard.
Message Edited by Drygo on 06-08-2004 07:26 PM
Dravenite83 wrote:
While it sounds great to have Dancers or Musicians get defense bonuses based on roleplaying you should look into the bonuses other professions get. I am a CM/TK and my defenses are horrible when it comes to v. states such as dizzy, stun, blind etc. I dont believe TK gets a def. v dizzy or kd at all if I am remembering correctly and if we do it isnt that high. So before you say social profs need higher defence I think the combat classes need their defense issues fixed. Hell look at BH.
So how long has it been since you actually played your TKM or looked at their skill tree even? As a TKM you get the following:
- Defense VS Blind +10
- Defense VS Knockdown +20
- Defense VS Dizzy +5
- Defense VS Posture Change (Down) +30
- Defense VS Stun +15
Then along with those state defenses the TKM gets the following defense modifiers:
- Combat Equilibrium +55
- Defense Acuity +96
- Melee Defense +62
- Ranged Defense +45
- Unarmed Toughness +61
So you still wanna try to pull the "Wahh, I'm a poor TKM and I suck so dancers shouldn't get anything good" act? or are you done now?
Drygo wrote:
I understand the premise of the combat defense. But, I kind of like it the way it is. It's nice that we have a +7 defense there as recognition of our dexterity and our nimbleness (that a word?). But, I don't think we should have uber defenses. After all, a pure dancer is not trained in combat. You get that with other skills.
Having said that, I certainly wouldn't be adverse to having more defensive capabilities. After all, a little more of a modifier to dizzy, for example, would make sense from an RP perspective what with all of our twirling about. The ability to duck quickly, for example.
So, basically, what I'm saying is that a little bit of an edge due to our ample dexterity training is a good thing, but I wouldn't want to see it go overboard.
Message Edited by Drygo on 06-08-2004 07:26 PM
The idea here is not to make Dancers uber tanks but to allow them to be better than just a fencer,pistoleer, etc... when adding in one of those professions. I think adding +20 to dodge in the master dancer box would be great. If you never picked up fencer/pistoleer then it would never help you, but can you honestly say a dancer/fencer in RLwould not be more agile and adept at dodging than a plain fencer?
Drygo wrote:
So, basically, what I'm saying is that a little bit of an edge due to our ample dexterity training is a good thing, but I wouldn't want to see it go overboard.
I don't think that's really going to happen, we aren't meant to be Tanky, I'm pretty sure of that. Which is cool with me, I don't like playing Tanks. Living through battle would be nice though. I won't say no to defenses, but I don't think they should define us... our Dancing should.
So yeah, I'm with you. I get the idea though, both sides.
Dragul - I think I hear you being paged in the BH forum... scoot along sweetie.
Panthu wrote:
Dragul - I think I hear you being paged in the BH forum... scoot along sweetie.
(I mean besides Pappi, Kwee, and N'Jessi, lol)Message Edited by Rookaru on 06-08-2004 08:07 PM