Ninja Development Thread

[kablizzy]

Thread for discussion and development of the Ninja basic class.

Ability	Description	Range	Effect	Speed	JP
Grapple	Grapple your target, allowing the use of Grapple: Toss, Grapple: Slam and Grapple: Break. Success: Grapple (75%)  System: Inflicts the Grapple status effect on both you and your opponent.	1	1 v 3	Now	0
Grapple: Slam	While grappling, viciously slam your opponent into the ground. Success: 100% (Hit Rate), 10% (Stop) System: Both you and opponent must have the Grapple status effect. Inflicts 250% damage to that opponent.	1	1	Now	150
Mossfungus Dust	Blow poisonous dust at all nearby. Success: 100% (Hit Rate), 100% (Add: Poison) System: Inflicts 40% Poison-elemental damage.	0	2	Now	200
Magic Shear	Strikes into the very soul of your enemy, causing their mental ability to fade. Success: 100% (Hit Rate) System: Inflicts MP damage instead of HP damage.	1	1	Now	250
Grapple: Break	Wrestle for your opponent's weapon, tossing it aside. Success: Disarm (50%) System: Both you and opponent must have the Grapple status effect.	1	1	Now	350
Garrote	Choke your opponent, causing a loss of voice. Success: 100% (Hit Rate), 40% (Add: Silence) System: Must be standing behind your target. Inflicts 100% damage.	1	1	Now	400
Throw	Throw a weapon from your inventory. Success: 100% (Hit Rate) System: Inflicts damage based on the weapon's power.	4	3	Now	500
Grapple: Toss	Pivot and throw your Grappled target across the battlefield. Success: 100% (Hit Rate), 70% (Knockback) System: Both you and opponent must have the Grapple status effect. Inflicts 145% damage to your Grappled opponent and relocates that unit to the targeted space. If the space is occupied, Inflicts 145% damage to that unit as well and causes Knockback.	3 v 2	1	Now	600
Shadow Slash	Slash into your opponent with dark powers, slowing their movements. Success: 100% (Hit Rate), 20% (Add: Slow) System: Inflicts 125% Dark-Elemental damage.	1	1	Now	700
Heart Strike	Aim a thrust at your opponent's heart. Success: 100% (Hit Rate), 70% (Add: Hemorrhage) System: Inflicts 180% damage.	1	1	Now	800

Reaction

Name	Description	Trigger	JP
Abandon	Evasion UP	Physical Attack, Some Magicks	400
Sunken State	Add: Invisible	HP Loss	900

Support

Name	Description	JP
Fugu Treatment	Chance to Add: Poison to each physical melee attack.	250
Spellbreaker	Every melee attack you make also reduces the target's MP by 20% of damage inflicted.	450
Ninja Blades	Allows the character to equip and use two Ninja Knives.	900

Movement

Name	Description	JP
Waterwalking	Walk across and even stop on the surface of water.	300
Jump + 2	Increases your character's Jump rating by 2.	400

[Schwerpunkt]

With the Thief-turned-Vagabond idea I proposed in the other topic, that basically frees up the Ninja to basically be nothing but raw dps. That was basically his role in FFT, anyway. The theme I'm running with is "mage killer."

Tier 0 (free)
Grapple - 75% chance to Grapple the target, freezing him (and you) in place until your next action. Allows the use of Grapple: Throw, Grapple: Slam and Grapple: Break. While Grappling a target, your evasion is set to 0. Any damage received by you or your target breaks the effect. Enemy spells will fire as normal.

Tier I
1 - Throw Shuriken - Ranged attack (4 tiles) for 125% damage.
2 - Poison Dart - Ranged attack (4 tiles) for 100% damage, plus an additional 50% over five turns.
3 - Grapple: Slam - Inflict 250% damage on your opponent with a 10% chance to inflict Stop for one turn.

Tier II
4 - Distracting Strike - Attack for 40% damage, with a 20% chance to interrupt the target's spellcasting.
5 - Grapple: Throw - Pivot and throw your Grappled target into one of his friends. Inflicts 145% damage to both targets and knocks the secondary target back. If the secondary target cannot be knocked back, inflicts 250% damage to both. Range of 3.
6 - Shadow Slash - Attack for 125% damage with a 20% chance of inflicting Slow. Can only be used when directly behind the target.

Tier III
7 - Grapple: Break - You exploit your superior physical conditioning to disarm your opponent (50%).
8 - Heart Strike - Aim a thrust at your opponent's heart. Inflicts 180% damage, applies Hemorrhage for an additional 60% over six turns.
9 - Garrote - When standing behind the target, attack for 40% damage with a 60% chance to immediately transition into a Grapple.

Reaction
Spell Eater - Reduces all incoming spell effects (including both healing and damage) by a percentage equal to your P-Ev. Does not affect status effects. Sets P-Ev to zero.
Smoke Screen - When HP is reduced to critical, detonate a smoke bomb and turn invisible for 2 turns. During this time, P-Ev is set to 75 and M-Ev is set to 25 (regardless of base evasion rates). If you take any action against another player (includes 'beneficial' actions such as healing), the effect ends. If you are affected by a spell, the effect ends.


Support
Spellbreaker - Every melee attack you make also reduces the target's MP by 20% of damage inflicted.
Fugu Treatment - Every melee attack you make also has a chance to apply the Poison status effect to the target.
Ninja Blades - Allows the character to equip two ninja knives.


Movement
Jump +3
Waterwalking - Pull a Jesus.



I'm extremely hesitant to include Caltrops because even if it only applies Don't Move for one turn, the Ninja will probably be faster than the other dude and can literally sit there throwing Caltrops at him until the heat death of the universe. Same for that dart ability, really.

Also, ninjas get huge damage coefficients because Dual Wield effectively means they always deal 200% damage. The point is to make these attacks viable for them so they don't wind up like Ninjas in FFT -- just spamming regular attacks. As a secondary class, the damage coefficient would probably be cut in half -- unless they also have the Ninja Blades support, in which case they'd just get regular damage coefficients. As a balancing effect, the ninja blades themselves would no doubt have lower WP/FP/P-Ev/M-Ev than any similar-level weapons.

There are really only so many "I hit you with my sword" attacks a ninja can have when they didn't really engage in prolonged swordfights -- they ambushed and tried to kill as fast as humanly possible.

Instead of giving them a stealth (which makes all kinds of sense but is horrifically broken), I decided to give them Grapple. This is partly because I really want to see someone just grab a knight and throw him bodily into a priest (or maybe out a window in a plot -- death by defenestration is pretty reliable), but also because the irregular method of attack really fits the historic ninja, who wasn't keen to get into "fair" fights with his target.

[kablizzy]

For those abilities that do don't move or Stop, we can make that a low chance.

I also love the concept of, "Oh, hey, Ninja can throw shuriken and a Knight Sword, AND A KNIGHT." And defenestration is always supported.

[Schwerpunkt]

Nobody expects the Defenestration Dilettantes!

Anyway, the reason for moving away from CC is because the Ninja already hits like a runaway freight train. Under the right conditions, for instance, he can do 500% damage in two turns. Between that and his numerous DoT effects, I'd rather not be giving him CC with any reliable rate to fire. That's why Grapple: Slam, which requires two turns, only has a 10% chance to apply Stop -- for all of one turn. Shadow Slash comes kind of close (20% per hit), but he's only doing 62.5% of the damage he'd be doing if he simply used a melee attack. So if he attacks five times (in order to reasonably assume a single application), he's only doing 312.5% damage compared to 500% damage. That's a pretty significant trade-off. And it requires the Ninja be behind the other guy to boot.

If there's any class that really should be a one-trick pony, it's this one.

[kablizzy]

I can get behind that. I just want a couple low-percentage ability so that he doesn't get outrun by a class who's equally as fast (Move-wise) and also ranged. For instance, if Archer got Jump+3, that archer could potentially just go places the ninja couldn't follow and snipe away, or at least make the ninja walk the long way around, which might cause a couple problems. I can see a couple of these scenarios, actually, but there are a number of solutions to it, so I think we'll be good.

[kablizzy]

The more I look at this, the more it reminds me of the Combo-master class from v2 Master development. And it was eleven clusterfucks. This is much better, since every ability isn't dependent upon another, but I'm still a little leery around combo abilities. Although this is a rather elegant way of doing it. On to individual abilities!

Grapple: I have a few problems with the concept, and I'm not sure how to work around them. First, if this is a free ability, what's stopping other classes taking this as a secondary / tertiary choice? Also, if it's a 75% chance to inflict Don't Move, I could see this being used as its own ability just to inflict Don't Move for a turn. Also, I can see each of the other abilities being standalone abilities quite easily, if we balance them right.

Beyond that, I love Poison Dart, Shadow Slash, and Heart Strike. Throw Shuriken is a cool stand-in for Throw (Anything), but I'd like the Throw (Anything) concept to stick around if we can.

Garrote is weird, but I like it. I suppose it depends on whether we have problems with Grapple or not.

Love Spell-Eater, and Smoke Screen can be conglomerated with Sunken State easily.

All three of the support abilities are awesome. Love 'em.

I do like Jump + 3 being added here, but I guess some of that depends on where our P/S/T breaks come in and how we cost it. Waterwalking is standard, of course.

I'ma edit your stuff into the first post and hopefully, Ilium will respond shortly.

[sunspawn]

But that's why the ninja gets Throw, isn't it?

[kablizzy]

That's the concept, yes. That they can throw anything well. Also, since shuriken are potentially buyable, they'd just be included in regular throw.

[sunspawn]

Thus our sneaky spy/assassin guy gets a ranged attack and stops being under danger of getting sniped at by archers from a distance. That's the (turtle)knight's schtick.

By the way, just an idea, but how about making the percentages for status effects be variable, with the difference between levels increasing them? Because it'd be strange if a level 30 master ninja can't Stop a level 1 redcap reliably. It'd be mighty embarrassing.

[kablizzy]

Not a bad idea, but there are two small problems with it - First, I don't know if a level 30 is going to have any reason to use a stop ability on a level 1. I mean, ponder it for a sec - Why would he use a stop ability on the dude, when he could probably just Tiger Uppercut him into The Sun? Beyond wanting to be a dick. And secondly, unless we get some automation for the site, we'd have to add a level modifier for every ability in the game. Because in all fairness, if a normal attack isn't based upon level, then why would a status effect? Why not Fira, Firaga, Meteor? Et cetera.

[Schwerpunkt]

Apr 29, 2013 11:12:12 GMT -6 kablizzy said:

The more I look at this, the more it reminds me of the Combo-master class from v2 Master development. And it was eleven clusterfucks. This is much better, since every ability isn't dependent upon another, but I'm still a little leery around combo abilities. Although this is a rather elegant way of doing it. On to individual abilities!

Grapple: I have a few problems with the concept, and I'm not sure how to work around them. First, if this is a free ability, what's stopping other classes taking this as a secondary / tertiary choice? Also, if it's a 75% chance to inflict Don't Move, I could see this being used as its own ability just to inflict Don't Move for a turn. Also, I can see each of the other abilities being standalone abilities quite easily, if we balance them right.

I have no idea why we'd ever want to stop people from taking this class as a secondary choice. Grapple is an integral part of a third of this class's skillset. To simply cut it, or forbid non-primaries from using it, severely degrades the class's overall appeal. It also puts us in a really weird balance position because no other class is getting hamstrung that hard by taking a secondary.

I kind of see the argument about Grapple being kind of unbalanced. But at the same time, it's extremely easy to break. If the guy's turn comes up before yours, he can just hit you with his sword, the effect is broken, and you basically wasted an entire turn to keep him in place (and then get smacked in the head for it). It's a skill that's at its best when the target is either already CC'd or when you can get two turns in before his next turn. Otherwise all you're doing is forcing the enemy to act before he moves. That has tactical value, but I really don't see it being worth giving up an entire turn when you could try to at least hit him with Slow.

And, for the record, I wasn't actually planning on consuming shurikens to throw them. It seems kind of unfair to require the Ninja spend his gil on consumable weapons when we don't require that of anyone else. Archers don't buy arrows, magi don't buy spell reagents, Knights don't buy whetstones, etc.

[kablizzy]

I was operating under the assumption that we were doing JP caps like we've done in the past. I wasn't around for that part of development, but I've posted a bit on it in that other thread there.

Also, as a standalone ability, it's a free 75% Don't Move, which isn't the hugest, but I can see issues with it.

I can see Shurikens being non-consumable. I'll ponder on that a while, 'cause it makes sense.

[Schwerpunkt]

It's not even a 75% Don't Move. It's a 75% chance to apply Don't Move until someone hits you (or him). At that point the effect is broken and he can move freely.

The tactical value of the Don't Move comes primarily from grappling him when he's within range of a caster (or something), which forces him to act before he moves, thus potentially keeping him from breaking the caster's skull open. But that's such a conditional ability that I doubt we'll ever see it in battle tactics.

[sunspawn]

The tactical value of the Don't Move comes primarily from grappling him when he's within range of a caster (or something), which forces him to act before he moves, thus potentially keeping him from breaking the caster's skull open

And besides that seems like something a tank should be doing.

So yeah, unless he has a time mage to assist him or something of the kind, Grapple will not be as effective as it seems.

Spellbreaker seems kinda... I dunno, adding MP dmg to EVERY SINGLE melee attack? Maybe, convert 20% of dmg into MP dmg? Considering that ninjas as you designed them in your post will have high damage as is, this will be quite powerful.

[Schwerpunkt]

We may be operating on different wavelengths. When I say "melee attack," I mean a regular attack without using any skills. Given that, the Ninja is basically giving up the added damage bonus associated with skills, so I'm not sure what the purpose of further reducing his physical damage is. That would disincentivize the player and make the skill more or less useless. As it is, it's "oh, hey, if none of my other situational skills are desirable, I can just smack him and do MP damage too." That seems like a strong and viable support skill to me (especially compared to "all your regular attacks have a chance to poison").

And Grapple is supposed to be extremely situational. That's why it's free.