sweetidealism Wrote:Awesome. Puppetmaster happened to be my favorite job in FFXI. I loved how intricate it was, and I just love the style of it; the automatons are adorable~
I've been trying to whip up a Puppetmaster class for my setting, but it's proven rather daunting; there's so much to keep track of! Most of the attachments were easy enough to translate, but there are a lot of them. I've made it so maneuvers are essentially swift actions, allowing a puppetmaster to piggy-back them onto other actions so that one doesn't have to spend several rounds just stacking them. I also want to include a burden/overload system. I've even got some ideas as to how it would all work, but... like I said, lots to keep track of, and all for just for a handful of NPCs! It may turn out so stressful that I'd end up avoiding the use of them! As none of my PCs care to play PUP, I probably shouldn't even bother pouring so much energy into it, but, y'know... it's my favorite class. :<
Haha, I guess what I'm getting at is, how did you guys manage it?
DISCLAIMER: I've never played Puppetmaster, so if I'm wrong with how anything, please forgive me.
I ran into the same problem at first since I only ever had 1 PC make a puppetmaster, and it was only for one session before they decided they didn't feel like playing that character any more. NPC Puppetmasters are very few and far between as well, so I never completely hashed out the rules on them to a point where I believed they were balanced.
Firstly, you can buy all of the attachments at a shop and equip the attachments any time outside of a battle. Likewise, you can choose to equip them with any of the different frames. The hardest part, for me at least, was to figure out the Automaton's base stats so it was neither broken or stupidly weak. Much like my issues with Dragoon's Wyverns. I've quickly learned that Pet Jobs seem to be the most powerful in my current system, but even the smallest tweaks and they're suddenly the weakest. Here is a sample character sheet for Akah:
A few things to note:
- Akah does not actually use Nunchuks. I haven't implemented Hand-to-Hand Claw type weapons, but there are a few weapons that can be used with Martial Arts, and Nunchuks are one. They're only there to serve as a stat boost until I finish balancing Hand-to-Hand weapons properly.
- He currently has negative points because of job tweaking I did with Puppetmaster in an attempt to balance it more. During ability cost tweaking, I let character get up to a -40 in points before I make them start scrapping abilities simply because the nature of ability cost tweaking may see that number go up and down over a short period of time and I don't want to have people keep buying and scrapping the same abilities until I get it right.
- I equipped Midge with all of the different Puppetmaster Attachments/Weapon skills in Alphabetical order to test them, since Akah is the only reliable Puppetmaster NPC that appears in the game. Once I test all of the different attachments I'll equip Midge with more abilities that actually make sense.
As far as attachments, you can only equip a certain amount of attachments to your automaton based on your level. Some of the attachments needed to be re-worked so they actually worked with the system, but I tried to give each separate attachment some usefulness.
As far as controlling the automaton, rather than make it so your actions/health total/Automaton's health total/attachments/etc. determined it's actions, I decided to just give the person controlling the automaton free range to use it as they see fit, just as Dragoons can command their Wyverns, and Beastmasters can command their pets in this system. The main reason I believe the PC was not given the ability to control their pets in XI were game limitations, where as in a table top game, one can have direct control over both and suffer no consequences to the game engine.
As far as actions are concerned, as I said before, I use a battle system much like Final Fantasy Tactics. You get one Movement, and one "Attack" Action per round. However, Buff moves (Such as Berserk, Warcry, Aggressor, etc.) follow a slightly different ruling. It's similar to swift (If I remember correctly, those were the free actions taken on your turn, but can only be done once per turn? Or am I thinking quick?) where you can use one buff on your turn with no penalty. However, you also have the choice to use your "Attack" action to apply a second buff on yourself. I found this really speeds up the game and makes buffing abilities more useful, since before characters would rarely waste an attack action on buffing unless it was pivotal to the encounter.
Finally, as for a Burden/Overload system, I haven't tinkered around with that enough yet to make it work properly. If I had more PCs interested in playing Puppetmasters, I'd probably give it a little more thought. Seeing as Akah is the only Puppetmaster character that sees the light of day in the game at the moment, and he usually only shows up for the tournament or the occasional Mass battle, Puppetmasters don't get much field testing time.
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