Daily Archives: April 25, 2011

Sometimes the grass really is greener.

“So yeah, here’s how it works. We burglars have this skill, right? The skill is on a reasonably long cool-down but it has a good chance to hit the enemy. Now *if* it hits the enemy it will stun them for six seconds, but there’s also a base twenty percent chance that it will trigger a damage over time debuff on that enemy. Now *if* my skill has hit and *if* the damage over time debuff has been triggered then I roll 1D6 and the value on the dice indicates the power of the debuff, with 1 being fairly pointless and 6 being powerful on any basic or signature level mob, but fairly unimpressive on elite level mobs and above. So as you can see, it makes for a really exciting ability, because essentially nothing happens most of the time, and then all of a sudden – BAM! – a moderate DoT debuff that wouldn’t worry an asthmatic vole! Neat huh? What about you, Runekeeper, what sort of abilities do you get?”

“Well… I have this one skill, on a three second cool-down, which calls forth a fiery apocalypse and delivers death and ruin to everything between the heavens and the land in a radius of fifty yards from the point of casting.”

“Oh. Oh nice. But what else does it do? I mean, is there a random chance that it will rain badgers? Some sort of unpredictable chance of it causing anything it hits to sing Barbra Streisand’s Woman In Love? Will it cause your nipples to spontaneously shrivel and turn green if you roll an even number on a 1D10?”

“No, no. Just the universal destruction of all living matter. It’s quite basic really, when you put it like that.”

“Sounds a little bit dull. I mean where’s the excitement? Where’s the gamble? Where’s the spark of surprise and the element of joy when something unexpected happens?!”

“Well, I suppose there’s the part where if it crits then it wipes out all life in a three hundred mile radius and I automatically win whatever dungeon I happen to be running at the time. I guess that’s kind of neat in a random sort of way.”

“Ye… bu… tha…ah Ah! But! What else do you bring to a group other than breathtaking, almost god-like, levels of damage?”

“Well not a great deal.”

“Ah then. Ah -dear sir- ha!”

“I mean, I suppose I have healing powers that would make Jesus rage-quit a group. I can’t do the fish and loaves thing though; I did try once, but I just ended up incinerating the waiting crowd when I crit my basic fire attack while trying to cook the loaves.”

“Yeah? Well I can turn invisible! Hah, there! Where am I now? Poof! Where did I go? Eh? I mean, okay, it’s utterly an pointless ability other than for skipping the odd roadblock of crap mobstacles, and it’s all but entirely useless in a group setting, but it does mean that I can flick V signs at overpowered classes without them knowing!”

“I can hear you, you know. And I, uh… I can still see you. Is that a V sign?”

“Oh, hah, right. I forgot that it only works on enemies. If they’re four levels below me. And looking the wrong way. And blind. Even then they still have a chance of spotting me, and usually do. But that’s the fun of the gamble though, right?!”