[PAM][Beta.76] Players Against Maul

I wouldn't mind a weaker maul, say this attack can happen 1 or 2 times (3 or more is ridiculous) in a row and it can be used every other attack turn. Ya I just had fun dealing with this.  I lost 2 heros in one turn... (FUUU....)

I played WoM a bunch back in the day and just got into the FE beta today.

I had lovingly crafted a sovereign, Niobhe, and an Empire of Manflayers to call her own, and I started the game.  

About eight turns in, I had recruited a champion, trained a militia, and summoned a couple clay golems or whatever they're called.  With this small army, I spotted a bear near my empire's capital and decided to attack...  What did I have to fear from a little bear?  Everything, apparently.

I moved my troops in and hit the bear a few times, removing about 1/3 its health. I'd heard they saying "don't poke the bear," but until now I had no idea...  Nothing could prepare me for the beast's combat turn.  He attacked my champion and I saw the word "Maul" float above him.  I laughed.  But the bear attacked again and again, with the word "Maul" appearing above the beast.  The bear's first attack round ended with my dead champion.  

My laughs became tears and I ran.  Unfortunately, my sovereign couldn't get away because those golems were blocking her (who knew I would run from a bear)...

The bear attacked my sovereign with three mauls on its next combat round and killed her.  The great Empire of The Manflayers had been decimated by a bear.

A bear.

I am [PAM].  Niobhe is (was) [PAM].  The Empire of Manflayers are [PAM].

I like Maul in the game - but not for factions. Once you get a beserker axe and equip a high level champion you have just won the game.

If the attack became more unstable after each success I would like it.

Cap it at 2 extra hits with -10 and -20 acc. Even today after the nerf I've had 6 hit maul chains land on my characters. Honestly until it's nerfed much more it's just going to cause people to reload a lot. What's the point of talents like double attack anyway if maul is just so much better?

We're still tweaking it.

Galwinganoon lol.  And +1 for seanw posting that pic.  Maul is OP no doubt, but don't knock it till you try it, as Das mentions if you can find a weapon with it you just won the game 

Is there a maul spell?  That would be a fun nature enchantment.

Recruit Parties (or Groups) of regular troops. Use them in the army. Put them between the Sovereign/Champions and the mauler(s). Use the proper timing to have first attack against the mauler (like checking his movement rate).

Also: ranged attacks, Bloodthirsty trait, summons as meatshields,... and keep some regular troops near to cover the possible loses.

Also too: don't get near mauler in the strategic map.

Maul could use some variable values depending on the level of the creature (and type?). So a bear cub cannot maul as much as a black bear.

How about new tweaks in this week's slipstream? 

The good news is you guys are great at making epic weapons. Maybe make an Ancient Beserker Battleaxe that is used by some endgame villain? I do like how it forces me to cast alot of spells to keep that bastard away from my units. 

Quit attacking bears dude!  LOL!  I bet you wouldn't be against MAUL if we had BEAR CALVARY!!! 

P.S.  Don't tweak too much.  I like maul.

@Wintersong being required to develop tactics such as 'sacrificing troops' and 'don't get into melee combat' scream that the ability is out of balance with the rest of the game. Maul is rediculous because it trumps special abilities. Maul would be fine if it functioned once at half damage. I would even be okay with letting special abilities proc maul if it worked this way.

Indeed all special abilites should proc crits, poisons, slows or whathaveyou that the weapon normally does on attack. Using special abilites should be weighted against the pros/cons of other special abilities, not against the regular attack option.

why not just make the accuracy compounding? so -4, -8, -12, -16, etc... there is no way it can continually hit. I am sure at -8 it would miss.

I like it in the game, but I look forward to tweaking it. The hit chance needs to be reduced after each successful hit or something. My sovereign's early game army was destroyed by an upgraded butcherman unit with Maul. My sovereign of about 60 hit points was taken down in a single around with -4 to -10 damage hits.

Maul + High accuracy = pure death.

You can have units with high enough accuracy to make Maul hit 10-15 times. A -50% accuracy would help. 

i thought the point of maul was to force the player to use units with high dodge to tank the bear. if this is the case then it's good and should be kept.

Which is fine as long as it is reserved for high level units and the tag for combat rating is greatly increased. Getting hit by it from a bear cub on turn 24 before i have had a chance to get anything resembling a rogue defender (dodgy tank) is not what I call balanced. More importantly the PAM Superpac does not call it balanced. 

one simple solution is to not attack bears if you're not prepared. i think the whole concept of maul could be introduced slightly more gently though. perhaps there could be a couple of bear encounters that the player can survive but get punished if they don't have the apropriate squad to deal with it and later have encounters with more bears or stronger individual bears.

Setting up special bear encounters to ease the player into learning about the horrors of maul is not good game design. The better choice is to make it something that scales. Using an attribute like Accuracy is the right direction, it just needs to be modified to make low level bears possible to kill, as well as high level Martyrs. A percentage (Accuracy is reduced by 40% on second strike and by 70% on all others) would be a pretty good solution. Having an Accuracy rating of 25 or more is rather common for endgame units. Another way to go is to have Maul I,II,III. That would lend to more units using it and the player being more familiar with it than just two basic units. 

Blind works great.

Look, Chuck Norris can hardly beat a bear... how do you expect us to?

I support this measure. Please reduce it's effectiveness and accuracy! Save Chuck Norris.

Killed by bears in: Dwarf Fortress, Skyrim, Oregon Trail, Cabala's Hunting... nerf mauling.

It's not that maul is impossible to counter, it's just too common for being so very devastating. An ability that can kill champions in one round should not be on common early game foes, and likewise an ability that can kill drakes in one round should not be on easily obtained midgame weapons. Really it's the latter that bothers me more - bears need to get lucky to get the most out of maul, but champions can be specifically built to get ridiculous strings of hits that make any other ability or non-maul weapon you could use instead obsolete.

If it's really meant to be so common, it shouldn't be so powerful (say capped at 2 extra attacks with a harsh enough accuracy penalty that landing the second is unlikely). If it's really meant to be so powerful, it shouldn't be so common - impossible for the player to get, only seen on uber endgame bosses that should be this devastating.

Ideally you could have both - a much-nerfed maul on bears and berserker axes, the original version on an endgame boss. Just don't call the boss's version "Maul," you need a name that better captures what the ability does. Something like "Unstoppable Fury of Doom and Death - Really, You Should Just Start Running."

i think it's alright that it's powerful,

i was not getting at special, automatic bear encounters to teach the players, but more along the line of having like you say, perhaps a Maul I ability on early game bears that the player might encounter in the wild that sort of introduces the concept without killing the player outright.  on the other hand, this is a thing that you learn quite quickly anyway after playing a couple of times so perhaps it's just a matter of making high dexterity scores slightly more effective at countering the maul ability.

Derek and I found a bug in the maul code this evening. It's supposed to lower your accuracy by 4 each time you strike but it wasn't working as designed. Next patch will fix it.

it's still OP but the berzerker's weapons getting toned down a lot helps. (just now i had a one-turn 8-shot of Procipinee, where in 0.75 it would have been a one-turn 4-shot).

agree that there can be a nerfed version for bears and common weapons, and retain the current thing as Embrace of the Depths for level 16 drowned undead bears.

edit:  oh great it's fixed

Well, even though PAM no longer has Maul to fight against, we will stay strong as any other group like this does. We will find another issue that is similar and claim it is exactly the same situation. The only hard part is finding another issue that starts with M. Maybe Players against Masterquests? Mysteries? Mammals? We will think of something and be back on top of the protesting game. 

Funny you should mention mauling, my first fight in FE was against a bear cup, who's constant maul attacks put my sovereign into a permanent state of stun, causing him to lose the battle... twice.