Ideas for a new Affinity System

Alright, although we changed the Affinity System again recently for the 50 billionth time, it is kinda... well... not the simplest. By itself, it doesn't look too confusing, but add to the fact that there's a ton of stuff to consider in battles, and it could use a simpler calculation system. I'm not sticking this on a poll yet, I just wanna see what people suggest.

Current System

The idea is that as you level your Affinity, it grows in strength against what it's strong against. If it's strong against something, you'll gain more Successes based on the target's Affinity Level. Additionally, if it's weak against something, you'll lose Successes based on the target's Affinity Level.

• Affinity Baseline:
  • Add your Affinity Level as the base.
    
• Affinity Bonus:
  • Then add the target’s Affinity Level that you’re strong against.
    
• Affinity Loss:
  • Then subtract twice the target’s Affinity Level that you’re weak against.
    
• Formula:
  • Baseline + Bonus - (Loss * 2) = Total Success Bonus
    

Lunaria System

The idea here is that as you level your Affinity, you get access to stronger spells obviously, but it grows in strength to help defend against anyone that's weak against you. Regardless of the level of your Affinity-based attacks, it will grow or weaken in strength based on the target's Affinities. That said, this miiight require higher affinity spells to get a power-up, dunno for sure.

• Affinity Bonus:
  • Add the target's Affinity Level that you're strong against.
    
• Affinity Loss:
  • Subtract the target's Affinity Level that you're weak against.
    
• Formula:
  • (Bonus - Loss) * 2 = Total Success Bonus
    

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Discuss away, folks! And if you have an alternate system idea, post it up!

The main idea with my system is to achieve two things:

A. Less to keep track of in combat.
You only ever need to know your own affinities for defending. When attacking the DM will keep track of the defending against your affinity. What this means is that when attacking you only ever need to keep track of the affinity type of your attack, as opposed to keeping track of both all your affinity levels as well as all of your opponents. This should in theory make combat calculations go faster, and leave less room for error.

B. Open up for affinity based attacks that isn't spells.
With this type of calculation it's much easier to slap affinities on artifact weapons and have it actually be functional. If all your spells are fire, finding a bit weaker weapon that attacks with neutral affinity could be a great boon, for example.

The main idea with my system is to achieve two things:

A. Less to keep track of in combat.
You only ever need to know your own affinities for defending. When attacking the DM will keep track of the defending against your affinity. What this means is that when attacking you only ever need to keep track of the affinity type of your attack, as opposed to keeping track of both all your affinity levels as well as all of your opponents. This should in theory make combat calculations go faster, and leave less room for error.

B. Open up for affinity based attacks that isn't spells.
With this type of calculation it's much easier to slap affinities on artifact weapons and have it actually be functional. If all your spells are fire, finding a bit weaker weapon that attacks with neutral affinity could be a great boon, for example.

But what about bonuses for using an affinity attack when you have the same affinity? Do you get a bonus or not? If not, it seems kinda pointless to ever take any affinities except to get spells since they require specific affinity levels; the system makes you having affinities at all that aren't Arcane a hinderance, not a boon. There's no real double-edged sword here- for players who choose mages, it might still be since they'll get the stronger spells they love to cast, but anyone else? They get no bonus whatsoever for taking non-Arcane affinities, only downsides. There needs to be a bonus to encourage people to take affinities that can wind up hurting them, there has to be a good reason for ALL players to want these affinities, and "stronger spells" is not that. A player that primarily uses Power or Courage attacks has no need for high-level spells whatsoever.

I do have to agree with Nimono on this one, with Lunaria's proposed system, there's no innate base for having a specific affinity, so in reality, what is the point of having an affinity other than determining who or what you're strong and weak against? With that setup, might as well go full Arcane and not have a weakness or a strength, and still be able to powerhouse later on with some of the high-end Arcane spells...

Here's one way to think of affinities: Sensitivity.

By taking on an affinity, your character becomes more aware of the nuances of their affinity, thus demonstrating new and creative ways to manipulate that affinity through various spells.

That sensitivity also opens up weakness to other affinities: Pitting the affinity in an attack against a stronger one will not have the desired effect, as the mastery of the other character in their affinity will easily turn the attack aside.  Being assaulted by an affinity that is stronger is, in turn, also deeply painful, as the affinity channels the dealt damage to the character instead of helping to defend from it.

These dual weaknesses can be represented as follows:

• The defender of an affinity-based attack is solely responsible for adding affinity modifiers.
  
• If the defender has an affinity that is weak vs an attacking affinity, add successes to the attack equal the weaker affinity's level.  (Fire 2 attacks Nature 3; the attack gains 3 successes)
  
• If the defender has an affinity that is strong vs an attacking affinity, subtract successes to the attack equal to the stronger affinity's level. (Fire 2 attacks Water 3; the attack loses 3 successes)
  

This has spiky behaviour - Fire 1 vs. Nature 6 gains a big advantage, after all - but that's the price that is paid for versatility and an increase in available power and scope of the spells being cast.

(Yes, this is just essentially a restating of Lunaria's, minus the doubling. What does the doubling provide?)

Yeah with my suggested system you'd not calculate in your own affinity with your attacks other than typing. Hence why I said that some spells would require re-balancing when I talked to wind about this. Your reward for specing deeper into one affinity would be to gain access to more useful spells in it.

Also questioning why someone should not spec arcane if they aren't using spells is evidently a self answering question: If a player was not planning on using any spells, why would they have even picked affinities in the first place? Though I find the question rather misleading, considering how this game promotes magic in general. You start of with spells from the get go, and even if you never put a single point into raising your mana poll, it would still go up as you accumulate magic containers.

So yes, with my system it's pointless for someone who isn't a mage to spec anything other than arcane, how is that different from before?



Seph: How exactly is that different from before? The "lost" damage/success that you'd get from taking your own affinity score into your spells would get baked into the spells themselves. (Which is why the more high end ones would be the ones to get the most changes.) None of the damage here is lost, per say: You still get bonuses for knowing your way around enemy weaknesses, the spells base damage would still be around the same. The only major change this would do is promote players to use their highest levels spells, as those would be more powerful than their weaker ones. (Compared to where they are today.)

The only thing I see lost here, is needless complexity.

Quite frankly, I don't think we're gonna come up with a quick-and-easy-fix to this whole thing without some degree of mass updating, cause all of you have good points and are pointing out issues with both suggested systems.


One of the issues I've got as a DM is when I'm trying to calculate the whole affinity strength/weakness stuff.... I have to look at a bunch of different profiles. You folks, as players, can just look at your own and then whatever you're targeting. On the DM's side though, this has always been an issue where I have to do a good amount of comparisons, which makes it really hard to actually set all enemy actions by the end of the planning phase, and then having to add time to give more time than the intended 10 minutes for players to send their actions, instead of a 30 second window at the end after saying "Enemy actions set!" I'm kind of partial to Lunaria's system as a result, but I still got issues with it (as pointed out by Nimono/Sephiroth).


I actually want to remove the whole "this affinity is Strong Against this one but Weak Against" this one system, but doing so partially removes the point of the Affinity System, so in theory, if that were to happen, then why not just nuke Affinities altogether and make all spells accessible to everyone? That said, if we were to remove this whole strength/weakness system... what would you guys suggest replacing it with? More specialized spells with each Affinity? More ways to increase/decrease specific Affinities? Ways to outright disable certain Affinities from being used?


I'm not saying we have to go with this, but I just wanna see where this idea takes us, in case it could lead to something that does work for everyone.

Okay, so we may just roll back to the old system we had, despite its issues, due to simplicity, plus it naturally scaled well without having to stick a *2 multiplier in there. Yeah, the all affinity immunity build is still there, but for that reason, we'll just add more stuff capable of disabling affinities. For clarification, how it worked was:

Add your Affinity Level and the Affinity Level you're strong/weak against.

• If you're strong against it, you gain Successes on the attack.
  
• If you're weak against it, you lose Successes on the attack.
  

And for multiple affinities, just roll that one at a time.

I feel really dumb all of a sudden. We used to have a simpler system for this crap. The reason it got replaced was cause it didn't scale well, but if that's the case, then we can just stick a x2 multiplier on it, boom fixed. So yeah, this is what it used to be, plus the x2 multiplier.

• Affinity Bonus:
  • If your Affinity is strong against the target's Affinity, you gain Successes equal to your Affinity Level * 2.
    
• Affinity Loss:
  • If your Affinity is weak against the target's Affinity, you lose Successes equal to the target's Affinity Level * 2.
    

... who's up for switchin' back to that level of nice simplicity?

I am.