mikestrauss
Squire
Everyone,
I want to discuss tournament events, because I am always seeking to make tournament more fulfilling for everyone.
Specifically, I want to discuss the combat events (Combat, Hero's Combat, Spellcaster). Due to how these three events are structured, a team practically is required to have three good fighters and one good spellcaster to meaningfully compete in the tournament. Furthermore, additional good spellcasters can't participate in a combat event and neither can rogues meaningfully participate (scouts maybe).
In my opinion, the current tournament structure highly limits what teams can be effective. The possible solution to this is to change Combat.
Currently, combat is melee (and arguably ranged) weapon fighting with three team members. My proposal is to change it to free-for-all combat (any PC skills) with three team members. Team members can be swapped out between fights. This suggestion has both advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages
-Teams won't require as constricted a set of members to be competitive
-Spellcasters (beyond the first) and rogues have a chance to feel more useful
-Combat is less likely to bog down (three shields vs. three shields can be dreadfully slow)
-Teams can strategically choose which members to use based on the competition
-Racial skills more likely to matter
Disadvantages
-Field of Glass (see below)
-More daily resources will be burned on tournament
-Some fights will be very unimpressive (Pin-Web... done)
The biggest disadvantage here is the "field of glass" problem. This is the problem that alchemy could simply trump everything else. Honestly, that might be true, but I think the problem is limited by the fact that their are a lot of other events. Winning Combat could be as little as a 1-point advantage over another team. That probably isn't worth spending upwards of 10 gold on, especially when the event itself is only worth at most 3 gold to the team and, on average, teams rarely earn more than 15 gold total for the tournament.
If this change is made, Spellcasters would almost definitely be during a different logistics period than Combat.
I am mentioning this now so decisions can be made well in advance of the tournament and nobody is caught unaware.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
-MS
I want to discuss tournament events, because I am always seeking to make tournament more fulfilling for everyone.
Specifically, I want to discuss the combat events (Combat, Hero's Combat, Spellcaster). Due to how these three events are structured, a team practically is required to have three good fighters and one good spellcaster to meaningfully compete in the tournament. Furthermore, additional good spellcasters can't participate in a combat event and neither can rogues meaningfully participate (scouts maybe).
In my opinion, the current tournament structure highly limits what teams can be effective. The possible solution to this is to change Combat.
Currently, combat is melee (and arguably ranged) weapon fighting with three team members. My proposal is to change it to free-for-all combat (any PC skills) with three team members. Team members can be swapped out between fights. This suggestion has both advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages
-Teams won't require as constricted a set of members to be competitive
-Spellcasters (beyond the first) and rogues have a chance to feel more useful
-Combat is less likely to bog down (three shields vs. three shields can be dreadfully slow)
-Teams can strategically choose which members to use based on the competition
-Racial skills more likely to matter
Disadvantages
-Field of Glass (see below)
-More daily resources will be burned on tournament
-Some fights will be very unimpressive (Pin-Web... done)
The biggest disadvantage here is the "field of glass" problem. This is the problem that alchemy could simply trump everything else. Honestly, that might be true, but I think the problem is limited by the fact that their are a lot of other events. Winning Combat could be as little as a 1-point advantage over another team. That probably isn't worth spending upwards of 10 gold on, especially when the event itself is only worth at most 3 gold to the team and, on average, teams rarely earn more than 15 gold total for the tournament.
If this change is made, Spellcasters would almost definitely be during a different logistics period than Combat.
I am mentioning this now so decisions can be made well in advance of the tournament and nobody is caught unaware.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
-MS