User talk:Mystify

Formatting

I've worked up a few formatting templates to better match the legend style, and to remove a 3.5e link from the pages. Feel free to use {{LSLA}} for spell likes, {{LSU}} for supernaturals, and {{LEX}} for extraordinary abilities (the L is for "legend" for back-end differentiation purposes). I've already replaced them in your articles as well (yay automated search and replace!) so there's nothing to go back and clean up. If you'd like any other formatting tweaks or standardized display layouts for things, feel free to ask on my talk page. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 05:27, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Great, thank you.Mystify (talk) 05:32, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Stop Not Liking What I Like

I wish I could show you the beauty of understanding a fictional system and the intellectual satisfaction of thinking of unexpected consequences or tricks before they are presented to you. But I'm apparently not quite that good at communication, so I can only recommend that you read a Brandon Sanderson book (Mistborn is good) or try building something odd out of a limited budget of magic items. --Foxwarrior (talk) 04:49, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I understand that perfectly fine. I've made my own share of flying invisible-teleporting jets using D&D's magic rules. I have also seen the havok it causes and the destruction it can bring to otherwise good games, and all of the absurdity that comes from using a system outside its intended parameters. Legend is a system that you don't have to twist on its ear to make interesting things. The entire system is begging you to do that. It just lets you do it in a balanced manner that results in good gameplay when you are done.

In fact, that is what I like most about Legend. In D&D, you can cobble together all sorts of crazy builds that do crazy things, and they end up who-knows-where in eventual power. And when the entire party doesn't land next to each other in power after whatever stuff they do, it creates a dysfunctional game, and you can only hope the person with a pathetic character is someone who genuinely doesn't care. Legend, in contrast, it specifically designed to let you create whatever crazy things you want, has plenty of room to optimize and have that be meaningful, yet when everyone brings their characters out they all fall within a fairly tight power band, despite having crazy powers that do completely different things.

All of this is made possible, in part, by the more abstract approach it takes. Mystify (talk) 05:48, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

So you mean you've made vanilla 7th level wizards? :P

I agree with you that having significant imbalance at character creation is a terrible thing, actually. It's nice when all players have the capacity to overcome the challenges they are presented with using the powers of the character(s) they control. Against character optimization generally: the most rewarding solutions are made to fit the problems they solve, and in those rare opportunities when you get to make a character to solve a problem you know about, it's generally too easy. --Foxwarrior (talk) 06:48, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Legend is very good at ensuring that anyone can solve problems. Everyone may not be able to solve the same set of problems, at least not easily, but "be a spellcaster" is far from the dominant method.

So, you are saying you are against character optimization, but you want abilities that are specific enough to twist around and optimize their use? I find it doesn't particularly matter if your optimization is in character creation or in ability utilization, allowing you to optimize too highly is disastrous. Legend leaves both plenty of room to be toyed with, but not so much room as to be exploited. Legend's combat can be extremely tactical, with a wide variety of abilities being used to manipulate things. They even have a class which is explicitly designed to function purely at that level. However, even the case of "two beatsticks duel" can end up being a tactical experience. Mystify (talk) 13:58, 17 October 2012 (UTC)