Post by electrohydra on Nov 15, 2018 8:12:46 GMT -5
Animal training has gotten better over time, but it still has a little way to go. I will list here the remaining issues with it and how to solve them. I've split it into two sections. Balance concerns are things that make AT underwhelming in terms of bang for your buck. Annoyances are things that dont make the ability weak, but frustrating to play.
Balance Concerns :
1 - Opportunity Cost is too high. Easily the biggest problem. A lot of people want to have pets, but then realise that they can't afford the feats required for them to be minimally viable. AT requires FOUR feat trees to be viable : One Taming line, Hunt Training, Guard Training and Animal Empathy. (You ~might~ be able to skip Animal Empathy if you are a medic, but that is both theoretical and very niche). This is much more then any other feat tree, who are all minimally viable with only 1 or 2 feat trees invested. Most characters just can't afford to put ~1\3 of their feats into one skill.
Solution : Rework where pet stats are gained from to reduce feat tax and increase flexibility. Move the +AB from Hunt Training and the +Dodge from Guard Training into the pets base stats (So it has the same +1/10 that everything else in the game has) and then combine Hunt and Guard Training into one feat.
2 - Pets are too vulnerable to AoE : For a pet to be useful, it needs to either deal damage, or soak up damage that another character would have taken instead. AoE abilities often prevent a pet from doing either. Because they have less hitpoints then a PC, AoEs often kill them very quickly, before they can deal much if any damage. And because the damage is AoE, they are not soaking up damage either - your character still takes as much damage as they would without the pet.
Solution: Give pets massive Area of Effect Resistance. This will let them either live longer through AoEs so they get an opportunity to deal damage, or force the monsters to actually use a few single-target attacks against them so that they can soak damage. I would eyeball around 50% resistance to be the right number.
Annoyances :
1 - AT progression loss from dead pets : If your pet dies mid-fight and then you flee the fight, you will lose all AT progression as if your character had died. This is the only skill where you can survive and lose your progression. And because pets are melee and squishier then PCs, they will almost always be dead when you decide to flee a fight.
Solution : Remove this feature.
2 - Downed pets block healing : When pets are down at 0 hp, they prevent their party from naturally healing their HP. It is a common strategy to sometimes retreat from a hard fight to heal before going back in. Having a pet in the party prevents this.
Solution : Remove this feature.
3 - Pets vanish mid-dungeon : If you go through a transition while your pet is dead, the pet will be permanently unsummoned. This is an issue because it forces the player and their whole party to either leave the whole dungeon to go get the pet at the nearest kennel (which can often be very far away) or continue with one character not having access to one of their main features
Solution : Make pets never be un-summoned. Alternatively (and probably even better because it also addresses more minor issues), allow pets to be summoned anywhere, perhaps with a delay (Pet whistle item?).
There is one issue which I have not addressed which is ranged-only encounters, but I feel like that one is not unique to pets so I am leaving it out of the discussion.
Balance Concerns :
1 - Opportunity Cost is too high. Easily the biggest problem. A lot of people want to have pets, but then realise that they can't afford the feats required for them to be minimally viable. AT requires FOUR feat trees to be viable : One Taming line, Hunt Training, Guard Training and Animal Empathy. (You ~might~ be able to skip Animal Empathy if you are a medic, but that is both theoretical and very niche). This is much more then any other feat tree, who are all minimally viable with only 1 or 2 feat trees invested. Most characters just can't afford to put ~1\3 of their feats into one skill.
Solution : Rework where pet stats are gained from to reduce feat tax and increase flexibility. Move the +AB from Hunt Training and the +Dodge from Guard Training into the pets base stats (So it has the same +1/10 that everything else in the game has) and then combine Hunt and Guard Training into one feat.
2 - Pets are too vulnerable to AoE : For a pet to be useful, it needs to either deal damage, or soak up damage that another character would have taken instead. AoE abilities often prevent a pet from doing either. Because they have less hitpoints then a PC, AoEs often kill them very quickly, before they can deal much if any damage. And because the damage is AoE, they are not soaking up damage either - your character still takes as much damage as they would without the pet.
Solution: Give pets massive Area of Effect Resistance. This will let them either live longer through AoEs so they get an opportunity to deal damage, or force the monsters to actually use a few single-target attacks against them so that they can soak damage. I would eyeball around 50% resistance to be the right number.
Annoyances :
1 - AT progression loss from dead pets : If your pet dies mid-fight and then you flee the fight, you will lose all AT progression as if your character had died. This is the only skill where you can survive and lose your progression. And because pets are melee and squishier then PCs, they will almost always be dead when you decide to flee a fight.
Solution : Remove this feature.
2 - Downed pets block healing : When pets are down at 0 hp, they prevent their party from naturally healing their HP. It is a common strategy to sometimes retreat from a hard fight to heal before going back in. Having a pet in the party prevents this.
Solution : Remove this feature.
3 - Pets vanish mid-dungeon : If you go through a transition while your pet is dead, the pet will be permanently unsummoned. This is an issue because it forces the player and their whole party to either leave the whole dungeon to go get the pet at the nearest kennel (which can often be very far away) or continue with one character not having access to one of their main features
Solution : Make pets never be un-summoned. Alternatively (and probably even better because it also addresses more minor issues), allow pets to be summoned anywhere, perhaps with a delay (Pet whistle item?).
There is one issue which I have not addressed which is ranged-only encounters, but I feel like that one is not unique to pets so I am leaving it out of the discussion.