Signature Attack Q&A

Quote (Goroke)

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[30 Damage Heal {40} / 2TCD] OR [20 Damage Life Drain {40} / Melee {Free} / 2TCD] {80 pts}

Is this ok? I personally doubt it, but I wanna use it like that >___>

Or there's this, which would most likely be used in the later future.

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[8x10 Damage {80} / Long {Free}] {80 pts}

It says in the rules...

"NO MULTIPLE USE SIGNATURE ATTACKS"

So uh-

Yeah.

Just make two smaller sigs, boyo. :'D

This question comes from a new member:

Quote (Kasu)

Also the rules state that I may not create a situation in which I generate both damage and a weakness to that damage. One of these examples, it that I may not change the terrain and attack at the same time, I assume this means that I may not make grass terrain and then double damage with a fire attack.

Correct. Rather you can't do that in a single action. You can, however, do that over the course of multiple actions in a single turn, and they can follow one another. So, you got it right.

Quote (Kasu)

But may I generate lava terrain in conjunction with fire damage?

You may.

Quote (Kasu)

Or some other combination that does not double the power of it's own attack?

Absolutely. You're on the right track.

Okay, so time to annoy some people with my ways:

[*] If I was to change a playing field using a Terrain Change, and I have an SP with an element different to my navi, the terrain effects would not be reflected in both, correct? It would be one or the other. In the example of Lava terrain, if I was to change the whole field to Lava, would my SPs take damage for being on them without shields, defenses, and/or Air/Float/OmniShoes?

[*] It's been discussed that Break attacks used to destroy shields completely still filter through to deal the original damage. This is not the case with regular attacks though, right? Ignoring effects like Impact and Phasing, if a regular attack with 60 damage hit a 60 HP shield, the shield would be destroyed, but no damage would continue on to hurt the target, no?

[*] Even after reading the posts earlier in the topic, I still don't understand why anybody would use "Buster Base" effect attacks. I'm probably not reading it properly, if anybody can explain it better it would be appreciated.

[*] What is the point of "Planesswalker Effects" signature attacks? For their cost, I see all the Planar effect add-ons as their regular counterparts, except that you must be standing on an element for them to have an effect, and the only benefit is that they withstand half damage from the element imbued and double damage from said element's weakness. With all that in mind, what's the advantage? Why would I buy this instead of the regular counterparts, who are guaranteed to work 100% or the time with no other drawbacks?

Quote (Signature Attack Effects List)

But at the same time, absolutely none of these effects will operate on Normal Terrain, all but two of them will not work on Non-Elemental Terrain types. In these cases, the effects turn themselves off, but leave the rest of the signature operating normally.

[*] More of a mistake buster than a question, but... which ones does that refer to?

Quote (Signature Attack Effects List)

Folder Crash: 120 (Per Round, Per Target) [Disables an enemy's ability to use New battlechips for X turns. Bypasses Anti-Debuffing clauses, except Folder Guard.]
Silence: 80 (Per round, per target) [Prevents Chip use.]

[*] What are the differences between the two? To me, one just looks longer and uses more points.

[*] Can I make signature attacks that affect two people? Say, one signature attack that puts two separate X-hit shield on two separate targets?

1. Umm, the SP is a seperate entity. If you have a fire navi with a water SP and you use a lava stage change, the SP will be dmgd by the lava. HOWEVER, SPs can be upgraded to have terrain immunity relatively easily, so this is not much of an issue.

2. From my understanding, it works something like this:

IF dmg > than the health of the barrier

Dmg dealt= dmg done - barrier's health

If there is break/impact involved

dmg dealt= dmg done - barrier's health/2

So, with examples.

50 hp barrier gets dmg for 30 (30-50=-20) -> 20 hp barrier left.
50 hp barrier gets dmg for 60 (60-50=10) -> 10 dmg dealt.
50 hp barrier gets dmg for 30 and break (30-50/2=5) -> 5 dmg dealt

since break/impact only doubles the effectiveness of the attack against defenses, you'd have to double the dmg, deduct the barrier, then half the dmg back. it's easier to just half the barrier's value

3. Alright, you get why someone would use free action busters, right? 30 points for 50 dmg is awesome, even though you need to upgrade your buster to max for it. Now, the problem with this is that it doesn't carry any effects. It cannot be used to break, or have any element, or base barrier HP on it, or anything like that. Buster base is weaker point by point, but it lets you modify the "type" of the dmg.

4. Flexibility. With clever use of terrain and sigs, you can always have an elemental advantage. I do admit, they feel a bit underpowered, but not overly so.

5. I think that's actually effect rage and effect skill, both of which are crossed out right now DX

6. Folder crash can only be stopped by the crash counters, silence can be removed by status curing effects. Crash can also ruin your systems for good.

7. Yes.

See, I would love to use Planeswalker effects, but if that's the only benefits, I see no point in wasting my points on an attack that is dependent on something largely out of my control.

Otherwise, thanks for clearing all that up.

New question: if I imbue a battlechip with my navi's element, does it get elemental bonuses?

Yes.

Was about to edit post, but a quick reply sends me reeling. Not complaining though.

If I perform a Stage Change, do any underlying traps get removed, or do I have to add Nullify to do that?

Traps stay.

EDIT: Stupid question, duh.

Whoa whoa whoa, back up. Shin lied. You do not get elemental bonuses for a Normal chip that was Imbued with your element. Trust me, I've been Imbuing more than anyone else on this board. XD

Why are free dodges 40 points, whereas shields are 20? I know, Break vulnerability and all that, but as far as I'm aware, a shield's chance to successfully absorb a (non-break) attack is superb. Dodges, on the other hand, are hit or miss in certain conditions. It's strange that they would cost double.

A dodge works with a % against every attack. A shield works against an attack coming from ONE direction. Not just that but it can be screwed over by both break and multi hits, both of which are cheap and common effects. Dodge can be beaten by homing which costs 40 points; at the very least you got the value of your effect back.

Is it possible to use a SigAttack to create a multi-swing weapon that lasts across several turns, until overridden or expired?

I would say that I could just make a damaging sig with recovery actions, but clearly, that would be cheating, because recovery actions can't be spread across turns.

If this is not currently possible, why not?

We were thinking about doing something like that, but it is horribly non-cost effective with our current ruleset (i.e. every swing gets 30 extra nerf points as that counts as a charge time action or something, that's well in the scope of acceptable since you don't get the benefits instantly either; a 6 swing 80 dmg sword would still be something like 400 points), and no one wanted to come up with an effect just for this (if you have an idea, feel free to). Your best bet is probably an object with a passive if you want this cheap...

Multiple Use
Cost: 40 Per turn plus two points per point of damage of the sig after first 20.
Effect: Able to use the granted effect as an action for a number of turns equal to the duration.

I did the math out and this is approximately what the cost would be for a reasonably priced effect that was described above. It might be due for some tweaking, but that is about it.

I was more thinking of what Knight said.

Nerf: Split attack
This SigAttack's damage is not done all at once. It is divided evenly into several "swings" in the same fashion as a Sword chip. Effects besides damage are also divided evenly.
Value: 30 points per "swing"

Example sig: Hidden Blade
200 damage over 4 swings
200 points, Nerf 120 (effective nerf 100), 100 points used, Cooldown 5

Example sig: Taser
Stun x4 over 4 swings
160 points, Nerf 120 (effective nerf 80), 160 points used, Cooldown 2

The nerf is worth 30 points because a Recovery Action is worth 40. This is a weaker nerf than a Recovery Action.

RoboTek's idea is a little different (and not perfectly balanced) because it's on a turn duration, not a number of swings.

when would cooldown start?

since it's pretty much an attack with 4 'charges', it would only really make sense when you run out the cool down starts...

Ugh. That would make it unusably weak.

Mine is different from yours as I was attempting to balance the drawbacks of the use.

Yours is actually already an available ability based upon various interpretations of the nerf system.

The problem with balancing it upon the number of actions the player takes is that there are no passive limiting drawbacks (like there are with duration effects), meaning that you either would get an underpowered effect that has a small level of unique variability (like yours) or a clearly overpowered ability that can simply be used to efficiently distribute and increase damage over multiple actions.

Actually looking at mine, it is surprisingly well balanced when you look at what possible sigs can be made.

Will look into how to tweak it.


Oh, and niax, cooldown always starts on the action the sig was activated, for all sigs. It used to be the case that barriers were like what you described, but now there is nothing like that.