Chaos Shield Feedback

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Hidden in the Sand
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Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Hidden in the Sand » Sun Oct 04, 2020 11:52 am

Hi. I greatly enjoy the marginal tradeoff that the chaos shield enables to exist, which is to say "Instead of a +3 tower shield (6 AC), use a +0 small shield with a percentage chance to ruin the day of whatever hits you." It's rare, expensive, and a useful sidegrade to the BiS options (not to mention that it serves as an excellent check to several very powerful and difficult to kill melee builds-- looking at you, Monk). Or at least, it was. Presently it's very expensive vendor trash, which saddens me. I'd like to suggest a number of possible changes to cut its power down without destroying its viability it by adding a save that's borderline impossible to fail.

1. Remove its ability to be Magic Vestmented. If I were trying to nerf the shield, this would be the first thing I did. Magic Vestment makes using a chaos shield a no-brainer, simply because it mitigates the only real issue using a no-AC small shield causes (I'd also do this to legacy Greensteel shields, but that's a whole different topic).

2. Add a "mundanes only" script. I don't know what builds made the team decide that Chaos Shields were so overtuned as to require gutting them, but to me the strongest candidates are melee Pale Master, Spellsword, Battlecleric, 30 Healer, Warlock, and 1-handed Barbarian. Limiting the item to characters with 0 levels in a spellcasting class would cut back on the quantity of EDR con-blobs that banking on using one.

3. Add a -1-2 CON penalty. In addition to the above, if the team still thinks that the item is overtuned, then trading away an additional 30 HP for the shield of sorrow would still make it a tradeoff that's worthwhile to quite a few characters.

Sincerely, a compulsive strength-based melee player who's sick of using an adamantine tower shield on every character.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Ork » Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:47 pm

No.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by NauVaseline » Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:55 pm

Ork wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:47 pm
No.
EDIT: I misread the original post and no longer concur with this.
Last edited by NauVaseline on Sun Oct 04, 2020 6:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by AstralUniverse » Sun Oct 04, 2020 2:13 pm

I'd agree with #1 but now that everything was added save rolls, I agree with none of the suggestions.
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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Kalopsia » Sun Oct 04, 2020 5:34 pm

With a 14% chance for an effect to occur and a 5% chance for the effect to actually do anything, the shield now has a 0.7% chance to do what it regularly did before, making it significantly less useful.

The prior effects were quite overpowered, though, so I'm neither surprised, nor unhappy about the update.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Xerah » Sun Oct 04, 2020 5:38 pm

Adding saves on these features is the far most logical option. Having it be saveless is a conversation stopper.

I am also adding a +5% modifier for arcane wild surges when you have it equipped. We'll try that out but if it is too powerful, that number might decrease; or limited to wild mages, etc.
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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Drowboy » Sun Oct 04, 2020 5:39 pm

Xerah wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 5:38 pm
Adding saves on these features is the far most logical option. Having it be saveless is a conversation stopper.

I am also adding a +5% modifier for arcane wild surges when you have it equipped. We'll try that out but if it is too powerful, that number might decrease; or limited to wild mages, etc.
Yo that sounds awesome
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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Hidden in the Sand » Sun Oct 04, 2020 6:14 pm

Kalopsia wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 5:34 pm
With a 14% chance for an effect to occur and a 5% chance for the effect to actually do anything, the shield now has a 0.7% chance to do what it regularly did before, making it significantly less useful.

The prior effects were quite overpowered, though, so I'm neither surprised, nor unhappy about the update.
I just think that a happy medium can exist between "overpowered and unfun" (which I don't really think it was, barring EDR conblob casters with guaranteed damage, and magic vestment) and "extremely scarce, very useless, very expensive garbage", which it is with all the effects locked to DC 13. Trading 5 AC on the margin for something that is hardly guaranteed to work isn't really that great of a trade for a character that has to care a lot about AC (any melee fighter).
Xerah wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 5:38 pm
Adding saves on these features is the far most logical option. Having it be saveless is a conversation stopper.

I am also adding a +5% modifier for arcane wild surges when you have it equipped. We'll try that out but if it is too powerful, that number might decrease.
I don't agree: it was saveless for years and you almost never saw anyone running them. Un-gutting it, locking it to mundanes and preventing it from having its single glaring weakness mitigated by a level 15 cleric is the most logical option, because the builds capable of maximizing benefit out of it are largely builds that either don't frontline (warlock, favored soul, non-Monk Shaman, pureclassed healer) and don't get consistently AC checked, rely on some means of frontlining via spells (battlecleric/fs, druid), or have enough damage mitigation in their kit that the extra shield AC isn't that relevant (Barbarians, DwD, CoT or Heckblade maybe). For the caster archetypes, I think this is decently unhealthy because a fighter that successfully closes with them shouldn't have a chance to get yeeted to the ground for taking a swing. That change therefore promotes less healthy gameplay by encouraging it for archetypes where it's toxic and discouraging it for archetypes where it's a reasonable sidegrade.

This item has existed for years I posit that perhaps the reason for that is because trading 5 AC on the margin for something that is hardly guaranteed to work isn't really that great of a trade, even if it can win an otherwise losing battle.

tl;dr casters with chaos shield bad because it punishes melee characters for doing their jobs (and casters lose very little on the margin to do this), melee fighters with chaos shield good because you trade a lot of survival power on the margin to use what is essentially an offhand scythe. Effects are a lot more overpowered on paper than in-game, because tanking 7 hits to get your chaos shield to proc is usually very bad for your health.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Xerah » Sun Oct 04, 2020 6:46 pm

We will agree to disagree.
Xerah wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 5:38 pm
Having it be saveless is a conversation stopper.
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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Hidden in the Sand » Sun Oct 04, 2020 7:15 pm

Xerah wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 6:46 pm
We will agree to disagree.
Xerah wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 5:38 pm
Having it be saveless is a conversation stopper.
Thank you for your well-reasoned, well thought out response. It clarified why you think that superlatively, and put all my concerns to rest.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by susitsu » Sun Oct 04, 2020 7:38 pm

Ork wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:47 pm
No.
I generally think better of you than this, so this was a very disappointing first response.

Additionally, I'm seeing Xerah not really even reading the OPs posts and being equally dismissive by focusing in on a singular point against the change itself, while not even considering the several suggestions.

Do better, guys. I shouldn't have to spell out for you what you did wrong here.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Diegovog » Sun Oct 04, 2020 7:43 pm

I don't understand all the hostility towards the OP. His suggestions are quite interesting and chaos shield went from being an extremely expensive niche item to complete trash. Looking for a spot between that is worth the topic discussion.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Aftond » Sun Oct 04, 2020 7:49 pm

Any class not focused on AC had this as a BiS. Main villains in this would be druids and warlocks.

Reverting it for mundanes would be an interesting move, but the whole problem lies in the [No Save] bit. Maybe it could be bumped to a decent save instead of 13?

Could slap a fat 100% arcane spell failure on it or something.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Xerah » Sun Oct 04, 2020 7:51 pm

There was no hostility from my part, simply stating that maintaining it as saveless is a complete non-starter. I don't know how to suggest any other way. Nothing stated in this thread leads to any reason why this thing should be saveless and it the reason why so many types look for this as end game gear.

I also made it clear that there was another niche use upcoming.
Aftond wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 7:49 pm
Maybe it could be bumped to a decent save instead of 13?
DCs are calculated on items as 10 + spell level (which probably should be 2, but this is a slightly different spell than the existing one)
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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Hidden in the Sand » Sun Oct 04, 2020 8:34 pm

Aftond wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 7:49 pm
Any class not focused on AC had this as a BiS. Main villains in this would be druids and warlocks.

Reverting it for mundanes would be an interesting move, but the whole problem lies in the [No Save] bit. Maybe it could be bumped to a decent save instead of 13?

Could slap a fat 100% arcane spell failure on it or something.
Druids made supremely good use of it, because it shifts into Monolith form, yes. EDR III Chaos Shield druid is probably the best use you can get out of it, aside from battle-cleric.
Warlocks benefit a lot from the Dwarven Rune Wall, though, because that + Elven Chain = 10% pierce, 15% slash, 10% bldg immunity (also stacks with the +3 10% slash immunity weapon), which synergizes well with EDR and 600 HP (not to mention that it also provides +4 AC to the funshield's +1). It's probably better overall, but it's not the same open-and-shut BiS that it is for cleric and druid.
On these builds specifically, I think that the chaos shield in its current incarnation is extremely unhealthy, and think that if they lost access to it that they'd still be excellent at their respective niches. If it were only usable by characters with no spellbook (and was unable to get magic vestmented), then its saveless incarnation is perfectly acceptable and balanced, since the opportunity cost of using it on a martial melee fighter is "running into melee missing 5 AC and hoping that the big damage KDs himself within 2-3 swings".

I wouldn't mind if the saves were okay, I suppose, but I think that the item isn't conceptually broken when saveless, except when paired with a consistent source of ranged DPS or tank stats contingent upon things other than AC/HP. I'd rather the peak exploitative use of chaos shield becomes a 26 base con EDR 3 barbarian with 1500 enraged HP, as opposed to now where it's either monolith druid, battle-cleric, spellsword, or melee pale masters. I think the easiest and elegant solutions to that are "remove the ability of clerics to vestment it and make it unusable by anything with a spellbook".
Xerah wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 7:51 pm
There was no hostility from my part, simply stating that maintaining it as saveless is a complete non-starter. I don't know how to suggest any other way. Nothing stated in this thread leads to any reason why this thing should be saveless and it the reason why so many types look for this as end game gear.

I also made it clear that there was another niche use upcoming.
Who looks for it as endgame gear over hard 5 runed adamantine? What builds have you seen successfully using it? Were they casters, melee frontliners, slingers? I'd put pretty good odds on "caster", because nothing else can afford the tradeoff.

I'd wager a guess that there are under 20 active users of the chaos shield currently, and that of those thin numbers there might be 2-3 no-casting melee builds among them. I'd also assert that this is only partially a supply issue, the other (greater) parts being ignorance and the fact that it's inconsistent by design, and therefore fundamentally unreliable.

I will reiterate again that it's not overpowered (even saveless!) on non-casters. If the suggestions in the OP were implemented, then it would be a perfectly adequate "back-pocket" thing for a mundane fighter to whip out when they can afford the loss of protection, and that turning it into a wild mage battery instead of a sidegrade to the ubiquitous +3 tower shield is precisely the reason why so many people derisively comment about how boring and one-dimensional it is to play a mundane.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by NauVaseline » Sun Oct 04, 2020 10:32 pm

Diegovog wrote:
Sun Oct 04, 2020 7:43 pm
I don't understand all the hostility towards the OP. His suggestions are quite interesting and chaos shield went from being an extremely expensive niche item to complete trash. Looking for a spot between that is worth the topic discussion.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by mjones3 » Sun Oct 04, 2020 11:27 pm

Maybe a fun change that keeps it still useful it would be to let it use, at charges per use, Improved Chaos shield at caster level 14?(minimum level you can cast it at) and only let it be repaired by Wild Mages (Maybe add a place that repairs a charge once an IG month in a certian FOIG place). Make maximum charges 15 or a low number so it can be used some but not spammed.

Still lets it feel like an amazing item. But greatly limits how often it can be used. And you are at the hands of a wild mage to repair it quickly, and if they don't want you having their abilities you can't use it too fast or often.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Imperatrix » Mon Oct 05, 2020 12:13 am

I have a fiendlock with a chaos shield and I'm surprised the item wasn't just deleted entirely. It was silly-broken and one of the many reasons most melee characters pretty much auto-lose to a warlock. Since the item was only useful on builds that are already very powerful (warlock, druid, healer) I'm happy to see the item disappear into meme hell.

I don't personally think any attempt should have been made to keep the item relevant instead of removing it. That said, I appreciate the devs are probably just trying to be nice and not remove a toy entirely and that's admirable.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Skibbles » Mon Oct 05, 2020 3:41 am

I've only just heard about this shield a few weeks ago (I've actually vendored a few over the years through misunderstanding what it did, and that it was saveless) and I thought it was one of the most overpowered items I've ever heard of.

Magic vestment isn't the problem. If you have the shield it's because getting hit is encouraged.

If this was a spell that could be cast, even on the slight chance it triggers a saveless knockdown/blindness/whatever, there'd be riots.

I really doubt there's going to be a happy middle ground on this. The item probably just shouldn't have existed in the first place.
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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by mjones3 » Mon Oct 05, 2020 3:51 am

That's exactly why I want to add a useful but extremely limited effect to it Skibbles. I'd seen it suggested for builds before but never understood why. Let it keep a use, but make it limited to repair. Or even not repairable at all.

Heck making people save it for pvp, an extremely precious resource would be awesome. No recharges. 3 charges, and that's it, can still degrade with everything else in combat. I've never seen one in years of playing, I'm also not a loot junky, but its rare enough that if you keep it with no saves but restrict it to 2-3 uses (as it was) that damn near no one would ever use it unless absolutely necessary.

Heck add a script in that none will spawn if anyone has one in inventory or in the bank/storage even. If two enter the same inventory they both disappear because of wild magic reasons.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by DM Rex » Mon Oct 05, 2020 6:54 am

If a contributor says no, it's probably a non-starter.
Please be courteous to one another.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Hidden in the Sand » Sat Nov 21, 2020 5:10 pm

I'm going to post here again to draw attention and ideally discussion regarding a suggestion box post I just made on this topic:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=31414

It's November 21, 2020 and Dexterity builds are still objectively stronger than Strength builds at basically every level of play, for every purpose one cares to define. Stacking two stats into AC (Dex + CHA or Dex + WIS) still produces incredibly high numbers that a well-built 46+ AB character isn't going to touch, and by virtue of them either dual wielding or being a Monk they automatically win extended, protracted encounters because they get enough APR to just wear down opponents with highrolls.

Chaos shield was a good item because it actively deterred swinging at the chaos shielder 50 times for 15-20 damage a swing. Now it doesn't do that and the builds that benefit majorly from additional APR don't have to worry about anything except biteback countering their strategy. In many ways, the shield was an ideal answer because it also gave you a way to pin down something you physically cannot knock over due to epic dodge and 67 AC (and which will either quaff healing potions or stealth to escape in the unlikely event that you can get it injured enough to do so, likely by way of true strike).

I'd like any caster who equips it to suffer a 90% spell failure penalty: arcane or divine. Perhaps make it specifically impossible to shapeshift with, too, so as to remove the hilarity that is EDR Earth Monolith that also knocks you over when you hit it. This alleviates the fact that it's way too strong on warlocks and druids (by destroying their offensive capabilities with it equipped). Casters are in a fine place and don't need to benefit from this sort of item.

Melee fighters who get hit a lot, though.. They really, really could.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by Poolbrain » Sat Nov 21, 2020 9:52 pm

I like Chaos shield, even though I'v never used it on this server. But it's a cool solution for non ac characters and so on.

However I think you're pushing your argument the wrong way. Xerah has stated several time that no-save chaos shield is a "no deal".

I think this is fair as there are really no other save-less disablers on the server. Adding hard class requirements also goes a bit against the whole server design.

I think suggestions like, increasing DC, chance to trigger or maybe different types of roll for different effect could be interesting. Perhaps the knockdown effect could be more like balagarns horn with a str check instead of a roll and so on.

You're kind of running into the same wall over and over again reading through the topic. But yeah chaos shield is really cool.

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Re: Chaos Shield Feedback

Post by AstralUniverse » Sun Nov 22, 2020 2:11 am

If we make it mundane only, it will only be seen on barbarians (possibly some heavy fighters after some of the new melee feats kick into the module). Having it saveless was broken and I do not want to see it saveless again.

And if I'm being entirely honest, I just dont think this item is balanced. It doesnt fit Arelith as a server (with it's own item economy, etc) in any variation as saveless, and with saves it's trash, but I rather it's trash then anything closer to the dumb item it was when saveless.
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