Hello Everyone!
For years now, we’ve all had issues with the battle system - it’s clunky, it takes forever to get through a battle, but battles are over in such few turns that it’s difficult to get a real sense of satisfaction out of them. Well, we’ve taken your complaints, critiques, and suggestions into account and are now rolling out a brand new update to the battle system. There’s been a lot of shuffling around, and the results of that are described below. This has been a long, arduous process and I genuinely hope you’ll enjoy what we’ve put together for you!
Updates:1. We have added HP - equivalent to stamina x5. This means that moves will still do damage as expected, but it will take longer to whittle down your opponent’s health. Don’t worry- we’ve come up with ways to get through the turns faster to make up for it. But essentially, this means that instead of battles being a race to see who can make the first hit, you can set up strategies that pay off later and make good use of moves that change stats, heal your pet, and deal damage over time.
2. The dexterity system before was that whoever had the higher dexterity automatically goes first, and whoever goes first usually wins. We’ve changed this to a dexterity
contest that’s rolled at the start of each turn. Each creature has their dexterity added together, and whoever the dice lands on happens to go first.
For example, say you have a creature with a dexterity of 7 going up against a creature with a dexterity of 3. That means you would roll a number between 1 and 10 (7+3=10). If it lands on 1-7, the first creature goes first, but if it lands on 8-10, the second creature goes first. This guarantees that even if your creature is slower, there is still a chance it might get lucky and go first, and it means that creatures that should be more closely matched in terms of dexterity will have more of a struggle for dominance.
3. We have gone over every. Single. Ability and move. In the entire game. We have edited them for poor phrasing, vagueness, typos, and grammatical issues. But more importantly we have gone through and properly defined mechanics, made sure that all wording was consistent with the battle system (Ex. some moves used to mention “defense” and “speed” instead of resistance and dexterity.), closed weird unintended loopholes, and set down solid definitions for what different moves and abilities actually do as opposed to relying on “you’ll know it when you see it.”.
For example: the ability “Immobile” used to say that “It cannot use any moves or abilities that require it to move on its own, such as jump, run, etc.“. But what does that mean? It leaves people wondering “Well, does move “x” count as something requiring movement? Does “y”? Is this ok?”. For each of these that are vague, we have gone over and made definite lists of every single move and ability that could be affected. No longer are players at the mercy of whoever is modding a particular match- the effects of all moves and abilities are now solidly defined.
In addition, the following have been renamed:
Wooden Spear is now
Branch Stab,
Chaotic Prowess is now
Chaotic Speed. These moves were renamed as there were other moves that were too similar.
4. In a similar vein, many moves have had their effects adjusted. Yes, this does admittedly include nerfing a couple of very powerful moves. But in return, many moves that were outright useless have been improved such that they’re actually viable in a fight, have more interesting effects, and actually match with the descriptions as written. Moves that would end a fight in one hit are now more reasonable, and moves that were absolutely useless are now at least worth considering using. Feel free to take a look and see if there’s anything that catches your eye!
5. The TP needed to train a move or ability has been completely overhauled. In addition, we now actually have internal rules of thumb for determining how much TP a move should be to start with based on damage done and number/strength of side effects as opposed to a very vague sense of “how difficult it is to teach”, which was always very subjective. Be sure to check the amount needed and compare with your pet’s current level to be sure. If your pet’s current list of known moves has a higher TP requirement than their level after the change, then they will NOT have any moves taken away from them/“untaught”, but they must be leveled over that new total TP before anything new can be taught. If your new TP total is lower than before, congrats on the free TP!
6. Some abilities have been moved from “abilities” to “moves” and vice versa. Some moves had very passive effects that didn’t make sense to be “activated” in battle (such as Sparkling Dust and Deceptive Lure), and some abilities had far too active and specific effects that had to be trained and activated in battle anyway to be properly considered as abilities (such as Fly and Swim).
This change will affect existing offspring. If you have offspring whose parents have these moves or abilities, you will need to remake your offspring stats to reflect the new number of moves and abilities the parents have. You can do this by taking the parents' stats, moving the necessary moves and abilities to the right place, and creating your offspring stats again based on this system. See below (#8) for more information about remaking and revamping existing creatures.
7. Before, there was a LOT of confusion on what moves and abilities a pet could reasonably learn based on their base stats. It’s been difficult for both staff and players to field questions based on “My pet has X and Y in its base stats, could it learn Z?” It’s not fun to ask and wait for a result, and it’s not fun to give people a disappointing answer either! As a result, we’ve gone through all moves and added requirements needed to learn them, making it a LOT easier to tell if it’s something your pet could learn. If your pet no longer meets the new requirements, then they will not be able to have that move anymore under the new system. In addition, in the near future we will be refreshing the movesets of older creatures to give them moves and abilities that they definitely should have based on their descriptions, and simply to make older creatures more fun to play with.
8. We realize that points 5, 6, and 7 on this list have… severely messed up some pets’ training. We also realized that changes made to different moves and abilities have changed the meta and thrown off a lot of custom critters that were planned around it. As a result, we will be giving everyone the opportunity to
re-spend their TP for every trained pet they have.
You do not
HAVE to convert your pet’s training if you want to just RP with them as they were (including building up TP, playing around in loot areas, etc.), but if you want to enter your creatures in any event, contest, or tournament, they will have to be updated, even if you only resubmit them and keep them the same. For the record, this is why we had everyone re-register their customs and offspring several months back and updated training records- we wanted everyone to be all up to date on their pet stats to make this process as easy as possible.
The stat overhaul will work as follows: Any creature that has had training done prior to this update can reallocate their TP. This applies to all TP, so you can even reallocate TP spent on tricks into moves and abilities. The reallocation is a one time event per pet. You cannot reallocate again later, and any leftover TP from the reallocation becomes regular TP that can be spent as usual.
You can use that TP on ANY move or ability that your pet meets the requirements to learn. That is to say, you can use TP point buy on things that aren’t in the creature’s base stats, just this once!
We will also be allowing a redo on all custom creature stats. Don’t like the new elemental basis your creature has? You can move some moves around so they don’t have it anymore. Does that one key move that your creature’s strategy was focused around not work the same way anymore? No problem, feel free to redo it so they have a new strategy! You can do this even if your creature has had offspring in the past- all old legacy stats are being saved.
9. Moves that previously required specific objects/conditions (such as Travel By Moonlight, Telekinesis, Stalk, etc.) can now be used freely in the fighting pit! You are more than welcome to describe small arena decorations such as large rocks in the dirt that your creature could maneuver around, climb, hide behind, or throw at the opponent to make such moves work. In addition, creatures with moves like aquatic, lava bathe, sand swim, etc. can be assumed to have their environment of choice available to them in the arena so they can be entered in more land-based tournaments as well. (Basically - no banned move list!)
However, environment based abilities (such as Plains-Runner, Jungle Dweller, etc.) do not function in the arena unless otherwise stated for a particular tournament.
10. Many effects now have proper definitions as well, instead of being up for interpretation. For example, “half accuracy” could be interpreted as halving your to-hit dexterity roll, halving your dexterity and then adding that to the roll, etc. Now such things have solid, written definitions so no one can forget or get confused. Feel free to get up to date in the
glossary!
11. Most moves no longer have a fixed amount of base damage, but instead a range of numbers that can be rolled for. This was a bit of a balancing act on our part. We knew that having a set amount of damage can be kind of boring and makes battles too predictable. Many people don’t want to enter a fight if they can do some napkin math and realize there isn’t even a chance of them winning, so this helps address that.
That being said, a lot of us are used to games like Dungeons and Dragons where damage is done by rolling a set number of dice, such as 2d6. However, we also didn’t want people who trained their pets to have very powerful moves to have the chance of rolling a 1 and doing a pathetic amount of damage due to bad luck. Sure, this could be adjusted by adding more dice or by raising the highest number on the dice, but that risks going too far in the other direction and making it possible to do insane amounts of damage in one hit and end a fight too early. We believe that allowing there to be a range of damage, but with a set minimum or maximum sets the right balance between tantalizing chance and disappointing results.
12. We now have a new element- plant! Plant based moves had been folded in with “Earth” for years, despite the fact that these moves have thematic and mechanical differences from moves related to sand, rocks, dirt, metal, etc. In addition, there are pets that clearly aren’t rock/stone themed, but were still stuck with earth element moves (Earth vs. Nature golems, for example).
This made earth an oversized and bloated post on the moves thread and occasionally makes earth weaknesses/resistances nonsensical for particular creatures. It could be argued that there are other elements that could be teased out of existing categories, but while most of them can be written off as a “combination” of elements (Ex. lava being a combination of fire and earth) or have a small number of related moves and abilities, plant had so many associated moves and botanical creatures that we felt the issue could no longer be ignored. Plant moves now have their own post in the moves thread and creatures can now have Plant Weakness, Resistance, and Immunity! We will be updating existing creatures accordingly, and you may update your customs and offspring as per the rules above.
13. We also have new tags on moves- [Rng], [Mel], [AoE], [Shd], and [Grp]! The definitions of them can be seen on the moves page or in the brand new glossary, but our reasoning for adding them is as follows:
[Rng] and [Mel]: Stand for “Ranged” and “Melee”. Many moves and abilities mention doing damage to opponents within a particular range- for example, “Corrosive Body” does damage to creatures that “touch” it. We have since changed it to any time a creature successfully hits with a [Mel] move, instead of just arguing about what counts as “touching it”. Similarly, [Rng] attacks are ones where the creature does not have to get up close and personal to make the attack. Some moves even have both- that is, they can be used up close or from far away with no change in the move’s function.
[AoE]: Stands for “Area of Effect”. Some moves theoretically cannot be aimed and would have an effect on many individuals on the field instead of just one opponent. For example, Explosion you would expect to hit everyone within the blast radius, not just a single enemy! Unfortunately, this does include allies unless otherwise specified in the move’s description- think carefully before using these if you have a friend on the field!
[Grp]: Stands for grapple. These were previously located under DoT and involved moves like Drown, Snatch, and Vice Grip- moves where the foe’s movement is restrained in some way and they have to struggle to break free. However, we noticed several moves, such as Rock Tomb and Choking Vines that have very similar mechanics but do not deal damage, which would remove them from the Damage Over Time tag. However, you would expect these moves to be “canceled” by the same group of moves and abilities as well- for example, you would expect Shadow Meld to teleport a creature out of a whirlpool as easily as a snarl of vines, even if only one of those was actually hurting it. As a result, we decided to separate Grapple out into its own tag to group together these mechanically similar moves.
[Shd]: Stands for shield. This tag includes moves such as Fire Shield, Big Bubble, Wall of Ice, etc. It involves moves where damage is blocked or temporary stamina is added, but may restrict the types of moves that can be used by both parties while the shield is up.
[Per]: The [Unl] tag, which previously stood for “Unlimited” has been renamed [Per] for perpetual. The function is the exact same, the name was just changed as we felt that ‘Unlimited’ was misleading for what those moves actually do.
Finally, the tag [Drn] has been removed. Very few moves had this tag, its use and definition were inconsistent and unclear, and no moves relied on blocking or affecting [Drn] moves specifically. (For example, there are abilities that cause damage to foes that use [Mel] moves on them, some moves explicitly clear just [Crs] or [DoT] moves, but we could find no such cases for [Drn].) As a result, we made the decision to remove it.
14. Resistance now applies to both mentality AND strength based moves instead of just strength (with mentality formerly being used as the “resistance” stat against [Mnt] moves.). This is because it didn’t make sense for a pet’s resistance to not apply to some moves. That is to say- armor plating will protect you against a very strong blast of water or a summoned gust of wind or a gout of flame just as much as it would sharp teeth and claws, even if those more “magical” moves were summoned with mentality. For moves that can be more considered a battle of the minds or souls, they have a special note that mentality is used instead of resistance for resisting damage, but the general rule is now that resistance applies to [Str] and [Mnt] moves.
15. There have been some tweaks to weaknesses and resistances, and there will be more to come in the future regarding how they work and how creatures are aligned to different elements. For now though, 1/4 weaknesses/resistances and 3/4 resistances are now referred to as "slight" and "strong" respectively, to create the following scale: Weakness, Slight Weakness, Nothing, Slight Resistance, Resistance, Strong Resistance, and Immunity. There is no weakness weaker than a plain weakness, and no damage reduction stronger than an immunity.
16. How to-hit rolls work has been changed. Before, it was a relatively straightforward 1d10+dex, with the number to beat being the opponent’s dexterity. Mathematically, this was really unfair for creatures with lower dexterity. Now we have a slightly different system. You still roll 1d10 plus your dexterity, but against a value based on your opponent’s dexterity. Specifically, a value of 3+ ½ of your opponent’s dexterity is the number to beat. So if they have 4 dex, 4/2= 2+3= 5. That means your roll plus your dexterity has to be over 5 in order for you to hit them- perfectly easy if your dexterity is already 5 or over, but maybe a bit trickier if you have a dexterity of 2 or 3, as you would expect it to be if your opponent is faster and more nimble than you! And of course, as before, rolling a 1 is an auto-miss and rolling a 10 is an auto-hit.
17. The actual process of play for the battle system has been rewritten. We have a brand
new tutorial for it here. Some rules are staying the same- if you don't post in a battle for a certain amount of time, it counts as a forfeit. However, we are now extending this time period to five days.
Much of it will look familiar, but some of the most important changes are that you no longer have to make an introductory post - your first post with your creature’s stats and items is the same post that you make your first move in. Because you’re PMing your choices directly to the battle mod instead of waiting to see what your opponent picks first, this will eliminate the game of “post chicken” that was a common issue in the past.
The intention of this is reducing the sheer time commitment it takes to participate in a tournament, making it more fun and making a loss less crushing. Even if you’ve spent a lot of time training your creature, the fact that tournaments go by so quickly means that there’s always next time!
If you have any questions, please join us in the
questions thread!
