itch.io

I'm digging through the three new classes here at the moment and I'd like to specifically offer some feedback of Summoner. I think this one in particular needs some more time cooking. And it's mostly the core talent that's the problem.

The way this reads is that the summon has a 4d pool that drops to 0 then always, arbitrarily, and immediately, goes back to full. This is not related to its harm or whether it's on the plane etc. 

Unless I've seriously misread it, in which case that's a different issue but still an issue with the text... That's... really extremely disconnected from any sort of narrative. And almost strictly worse than a normal animal companion in most cases when it's not rolling that maximum. It seems that the writers have made a lot of effort to make the fiction tie into the mechanics in a better way with a lot of the OG classes (Psion for instance is a genius change to how its resources operate), but this one strikes me as a complete miss both mechanically and narratively. Why is it randomly losing power if that doesn't banish it? Why does it recover infinitely at 0? Etc. The design just doesn't make any narrative sense.

It also reads like this pool is specifically for directing the creature. Which naturally implies the summon doesn't act without being directed manually by the summoner. The talent is a bit wishy-washy on its specifics, so I'm not sure that's actually the intent, but I also can't help but notice this class does literally nothing in combat other than this so I'm guessing it is. In a funny way, the CE has fixed my problem with the warlock - a lack of actual magic without taking 'multiclass' talents - in exchange for doing the same thing to the summoner.

You can get up to three of these eidolons as well, but it's not actually clear from the text whether that gives you three power pools or if they share one power pool that's related to you. It cannot recover naturally, which also leads to situations where it'll be at 1d at the start of 'adventuring days' completely unlike any other class resource in the game.

That's only viewing it in a vaccum too. Keeping in mind as well, a wizard or anyone else with normal Potent casting can according to the Summoning Spells part of spellcasting, definitively make creatures with equal 4d power pools, except they can do it multiple times in the same combat, all independantly able to act for however many times the wizard can cast a potent spell. Those creatures cannot take any hits, true, but the eidolon can only take three before its completely out of action, while a wizard could theoretically summon a 4d pool creature every single turn for three turns at level 2 and make the summoner look like a chump, mechanically. Meanwhile the Ranger gets to probably very effectively use weaponry while his pet also at the same time gets 3d attacks of its own. Technically speaking Summoner doesn't even actually have any sort of spellcasting touchstones so it also cannot benefit from Ritual summons, which a wizard can summon with some prep-time for 8d creatures. 

Both rangers and conjuror wizards can easily also outperform this class by simple action-economy, even in a freeform initiative system, if the above assumption that they can do things like shoot while the pet also attacks, meanwhile a summoner is forced to direct the pet, which also makes having three useless except for versatility while the wizard straight gets versatility and power.

If you ask me what the solution to all of that is, I think it's pretty obvious the pool should be a per-session resource pool for summoning, rather than a power pool for summoning and pet actions. The pets should just have 3d on anything within their vantage and 1d on anything else, more like an animal companion. This also makes having three of them pretty meaningful. It can't be overstated how little this class does in combat except for those pets though. If the idea is that the summoner should be pushing themselves to bolster their pets, then maybe they should have an in-baked ability to assist the pets magically, maybe with a push? A little side ability like the Witch's Ritualist sub-talent bonus where the Summoner gets free access to actual summoning touchstones instead of just only planar travel as a side-ability and +1d boost to rituals related to conjuration would go a decent way to rounding out their magical feel too. Any summoner worth their salt is obviously going to want to perform a Ritual of summoning at some point for a big nasty demon or something like that for a climactic moment, and this as written cannot even do that.

Just found this now and I have to agree this is incredible. Lots of great additions to the player and GM side of the game and removes a lot of the rules ambiguity. Just looking through some of the classes now and the rebalance and addition of some of these classes is really well done.

I always thought this game was something special, if a bit rough, but you've clearly gone through a lot of effort to try and make it perfect. Bravo.

Still didn't work I'm afraid. Same error, within one folder within the root drive. It's actually a different file that says is a problem now though.

Edit: note that was with windows native extractor. 7zip allowed it to be extracted correctly.

I cannot fully extract this file for whatever reason. Made a bug report with your form. Whatever it's doing, it prevents launch of the game.

From a reader perspective, this actually makes me quite tentative in a bad way. While I'm definitely desperate for more MinoH, I actually would rather receive something resembling a full mini-arc per release, rather than something chopped up, even if it means a bigger wait. The only thing that gives me pause on that is the sheer amount of words and cgs that seem to be here. It seems like this actually isn't a chapter, but several, and probably should've always been considered such. Unless it's just so dense in choice that from a reader perspective it's much smaller?

I'll be completely blunt in saying the last release was pretty unsatisfying because it lacked any real resolutions. It was essentially one big cliffhanger and set-up for other things. That's fine from a planning and delivery perspective internally, but it's just annoying as a reader consuming it piece-meal over months, knowing it's not going to actually reach anything weighty. It matters just as much how you read something as it does the quality of the work, which is always stunningly good from you.

I guess my question would be should I wait until Chapter 20 is done in its entirety to reach the narrative payoffs with the chapter? Because the way you described that seemed to imply these releases will cut off during the actual scenes.

You don't understand a thing about the law. There are laws actively preventing interfering with individuals in banking. Again. This is a suit waiting to happen, or more, a political smackdown. The Japanese are already starting to take notice of the attack and retaliate.

If they shut down *all* payments because they opened a suit, that would be ruinous for *mastercard* in court, not for itch. It's just a matter of whether itch can afford the suit itself.

They absolutely have a choice. But the only viable choice left is a lawsuit against a hyper-rich corporation. It's a gamble. But at this point they should sue. 

Takedown notice for real images in this fully anime game. Fuck you itch.io

Are you an idiot? Nothing about mastercard's pressure warrants instant removal of all these games with no notice. Furthermore, this *is* something itch could have fought. There is absolutely a bubbling tortious interference case or something to that effect that's going to come out of all of this one day.

Imagine running defense for this outrage. This is insanely overreaching, way more than anything Steam did in response. This honestly might be grounds for Tortious Interference.

Mino Hotel is 100% special to me, as far as any of these visual novels go. I was already disappointed I could not give some sort of kickback to you - at least a one time donation - for something that's hit me as hard as this story has.

Definitely make some platform we can donate to you with, and do so soon if it will help at all.

This is a wonderful book that makes U'Duasha much less of an afterthought, I've been running through it for a few weeks now with a group and it's been great. We're having great fun so far being bravos in Pasarhantu meddling with the coliseum and Anrakhis. There's enough prompts and characters etc. here to actually get a faction meta-game going here, which I think Blades desperately needs in order to be engaging and U'duasha sorely lacked before.

My only minor criticism would probably be the map itself is not particularly useful for doing things like visibly carving up turf, and is actually smaller than the OG map. In an ideal world I'd have wanted map with as much detail and scale as Duskwall has, but obviously that kind of cartography is rare and it's easier to just abstract it, and I totally get why it's not there. I certainly don't have the skills to do it myself, heheh

Really? Huh. Learn something new every day.

I would just point out that you seem to have it so that bark makes rope instead of vegetation. I'm guessing that's unintended.

Just seconding what's been said, this is amazingly done and beautiful, but the lack of customizability for the names is a sadly a deal-breaker in the only use-case I'd actually have for it outside of a curiosity - TTRPGs. 

The cheat screen has this bug in F&H2 whenever you attempt to give yourself an item.

Doesn't work. On startup just says Failed to load: mods/commonLibs/_common/compatibility.js

I like the idea of Athena's influence somehow being the cause, it would explain why the two characters of the different routes feel so at odds. Though I would contend essentially all of the things you put forward as signs of imperfection: None of those are imperfections, they're just character traits, and ones that don't cause the MC any real direct and personal stress. And I would point at that as far as I can tell there is no middle ground or friendship route at the moment - From my attempts at playing through it there's no recovering Asterion's trust once he's sent out so the point of him sending him out innocently is moot given that he then goes full Athenian Archon.

But yes, I think reflection is the issue as well. He doesn't have the opportunity to ever express doubts and fears, which makes it seem like he simply doesn't have them. My mind immediately jumps to all of the decisions where he does have the opportunity to go down the Ruthless route, where the choices are presented almost completely neutrally - If you choose a good option, it is not presented as if the MC had a choice there, it's presented as if the MC was always going to act that way, and never had second thoughts. 

Honestly, the gold-and-leaden arm-rings thing grates me here as well, because at that point it isn't a choice for the MC. It's fine that it isn't a choice, but it's clear what it tells the player about the MC: He's so saintly he's not even going to put forward any real argument against wearing something that can and quite probably might sever his arm at some point. The contract as put forward only requires Asterion to be bludgeoned over the head before he can say "I want to go out into the valley" and then be dragged into the valley and the MC either dies of shock and bloodless or is an amputee. I wouldn't have agreed to this contract, personally, at all. For someone who clearly has the malevolence of otherworldly entities following him around I actually think it's strikingly foolish of Asterion to suggest in those words - It begs to have the gods punish him directly for his hubris by setting up a torture he designed.

I like the meat of the writing of the MC a lot when you take basically any scene he's in individually. It's the portrayal of his morals and ethics overall that strike me as a bit off. I feel like the main game's protagonist is a hyper-idealized individual, who's far too competent and not particularly human. In truth, if anyone was going to secretly turn out to be a god, my money might've been on the MC if not for the clear characterization telling us otherwise, and the contract.

Even in the Ruthless route this gets turned on its head in the worst way rather than the MC actually being base in some way. His reasons for going off the deep end are specifically because of delusions of moral superiority. Even as a monster, he is evidently not capable of doing what he thinks is the wrong thing. That feels particularly alien to me. 

There's a lot of talk about him putting aside negative thoughts or impulses for the sake of Asterion in the main route, but what I find odd is that he simply doesn't have those thoughts expressed at any point. And like someone said prior, when he's put into difficult situations he responds with not just the patience of a saint, but the competence of a trained psychologist, in most if not all circumstances, such that he never actually feels like he has to deal with Asterion's clear trauma in the way that someone normal probably would. There's no accidentally triggering him, or just even being around him when he's triggered. He shows sadness, but not anywhere near the shaky, aversive, shut-down he does in the ruthless route for instance, and sidestepping that sort of thing completely isn't something someone easily does.