I understand that Unstable abilities provide a powerful effect but are risky if used more than once during the same encounter. I’m not a big fan of a player having actions “wasted”, even if they took a risk. It just feels discouraging to ever try going for any unstable attempt beyond the first each encounter. It’s also VERY punishing to close off the Inventor from using several abilities/feats, or even a majority of their abilities if most of what they took were feats with the unstable trait.
Rather than having the actions wasted for failing the flat check, the effect should still get to happen, but then perhaps impart a slight penalty on the Inventor when using their innovation until they spend the 10 minutes outside of combat to retune it. Each time they fail the flat check this penalty would increase.
The penalty could start as simple as a -1 to attack rolls with a weapon innovation, -1 to AC for armor, and perhaps -1 to attack and AC for the construct? I think this would make attempting more than one unstable ability per encounter more usable and desirable than currently written. Yes, in theory you could spam a powerful unstable effect each turn, but with a DC 17 flat check you’ll likely incur large penalties on your innovation for doing so.
Just a note, but the Mark, the developer for the class, has stated that the DC 17 flat check was not the balance point he is looking at and it will change but this is a nice idea. Personally a lower DC and slightly more risky detriment might be a good balance point if these effects were supposed to be 'one or two a combat' and not 'as many penalties as you are willing to take.
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Also, a few hours ago, over in the "Drifter Gunslinger and Armor Inventor" thread, Mark just stated, "As mentioned in the welcome thread, the version that's in the file was a mistake and will not be the final version; you won't have to gamble your turn like that during an encounter. If there's a gamble, it'll be for the consequences that happen to you after."So, yeah, the playtest version of Unstable will not be the final version going in the book.
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Also, a few hours ago, over in the "Drifter Gunslinger and Armor Inventor" thread, Mark just stated, "As mentioned in the welcome thread, the version that's in the file was a mistake and will not be the final version; you won't have to gamble your turn like that during an encounter. If there's a gamble, it'll be for the consequences that happen to you after."So, yeah, the playtest version of Unstable will not be the final version going in the book.
That does leave me wondering how we're to playtest these abilities when we have no idea how the mechanic is meant to work: just knowing it's not presented correctly isn't overly helpful.
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I agree with graystone, but it's also true that patching can lead to muddled gametest results.
As I see it, we have two very easy fixes: one is rolling the flat check before committing to the action, and the other is letting the second unstable action happen, and then rolling to see if there are consequences.
Actually, if you roll immediately after the first unstable action, the result is about the same.
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Also, a few hours ago, over in the "Drifter Gunslinger and Armor Inventor" thread, Mark just stated, "As mentioned in the welcome thread, the version that's in the file was a mistake and will not be the final version; you won't have to gamble your turn like that during an encounter. If there's a gamble, it'll be for the consequences that happen to you after."So, yeah, the playtest version of Unstable will not be the final version going in the book.That does leave me wondering how we're to playtest these abilities when we have no idea how the mechanic is meant to work: just knowing it's not presented correctly isn't overly helpful.
Given that the sticky post has a version of Errata, it is interesting that Mark hasn’t posted an update on this. If it is to be playtested, throw something in there folks can...test. Telling us it’s currently wrong, but folks are still playtesting it as if it isn’t is more than muddling the data.
Then again, fully 67% of statistics are misleading, so what would I know.
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Considering we are at best 1 behind the hit chance of other martials for half our career. I'd almost rather waste my actions then have my hit chance reduced for the entire fight.
He is how it works for me in terms of preference.
1- my abilities should just work. I shouldn't need more hoops than the system already has, such as needing to roll to hit or have something make a save. I don't want to have to do x thing+the two things I mentioned to get one result.
2- if I'm forced into such a scenario, failing upwards is always the correct decision. Your suggestion doesn't really fit that imo.
3- if I have to choose between getting screwed for an entire combat or one round, I'm going to choose the one round.
Imo any change to unstable needs to be with these 3 things in mind.
Unstable actions should just work. No roll required beyond the need to hit or save. After the first use, the second one should work regardless of pass/fail on a check. But lock you out of them until you spend time repairing the condition. There can be done detriment to this fail, but it needn't be anything that screws your entire combat. Doesn't even need to destroy your round. Just take some blowback in terms of damage (even make it so you can't resist said damage) and locking you out of using it again should be enough. We don't need more classes who when they fail to do their class shtick they are rendered impotent for a period of time. It's annoying and part of the reason I've largely kept to the core classes after trying the new ones outside of investigator (Wich I love btw)
