To Slip the Surly Bonds of Earth

Devin, I’m not denying it can be a dick move. I’m saying that it should not be discarded out of hand as a valid tactic.

In theory every party should be able to CRUSH some kind of encounter, and in theory every party should be DESTROYED by a different kind of encounter, its all in the luck of the draw

Make the spells harder: is there a blindness advanced spell that the shamans could try to cast instead so that they have more of a failure chance? Drop their skills a small amount so that they cannot auto cast it? Give them a different spell to use instead? Let the players use cover to avoid line of sight? Depending upon how the encounter starts can they back off and try again later? Can they set up an ambush? Can they parley their way out of the combat or to chance the conditions of it? Is there a character that represents something (holy symbol, ethnicity etc) that will incline the shamans not to kill everyone but rather just vanquish them? Could a time limit be imposed so that if they aren’t dead by 24 ticks the enemys get called away to more pressing matters?

john you misunderstand me, in saying that “its up to the chronicler” is that its a point for negotiation Or for leniency.

expectations on anything are a bad idea

I dispute that there is strategy in point-and-pox spellcasting. They roll some dice, usually weighted nicely in their favor, at my Fortitude and than I’m out of the fight ’til someone ‘gets around to it.’
This is the same suicide-strike tactics that sometimes plagued 3.X. An enemy caster has zero reason to act like it exists outside it’s encounter, so it’s got just as many reasons not to be as big a hindrance as possible. I generally don’t kill for it’s own sake, but the shaman who sprays around crap like that is the shaman who arrives in the cauldron with their lungs bashed out through their spine.

Err, sorry. Didn’t mean to be so vitriolic. And it’s unfair to categorize the locals that way. There is a little, but it’s fair (balancing priorities is part of the fun), and it could be far more.
The problem is the basic Caster Conundrum. Them who cause the problems also get to be the solutions. I’m 1.6, I’ve got a 21 Fort, I should be doing ok…? No, not really.

Part of it is surely systems mastery -is a 21 Fort ‘acceptable’ for 1.5-1.9 combats? I don’t actually know. I took my +2 Defenses bump, should I have torpedoed my mental stats to try to put a spike in my defenses? My to-hit is 19.5 -three ranks, 3d10. Should I have taken my skill increases sooner? I hit a low 20’s Avoidance pretty regularly. Seems to be ok, though I can forget Disarming and Guarded Attack is more of a problem then a solution. These are surely things with which I struggle.

Actually, let’s look at that. If my Gladiator decides to Guarded Attack I lose a d10 and pick up 4 to my defenses. This could be a good counter-action to getting blinded, but the problem is timing. I never know when I’m being targeted. I know when the Shaman will be casting, but not at whom. It might be the one I’m banging on, but it might also be a buddy who’s waiting for his other friend to step away so he can hex me without a penalty. And very importantly, I’m not contributing anything while I’m turtled up. My chances to score a hit have gone from “average roll” to “on a Crit,” and he’s still one decent roll from taking me out for a while.

Maybe there should be a Defensive Dodge mechanic? Eat like 4 ticks, 4 recovery to go into GA retroactively (but before the roll total is announced)?

I’m also at a disadvantage -the classic disadvantage, really. He can leave my threatened area at will, and I’m always catching up. And has been said, it’s Save-or-Suck. I really dislike how Crits tend to work out -very long odds, and Standard enemies who have more than one wound make the idea fairly moot.

That’s the core of it all, right? As a melee basher I have to get in range, and smack my target around. The Shaman just has to hit my Fortitude once, and I’m done. It’s being generous mechanically that I’m not caught in the d20 quagmire of just locating my target before I even try the -6 to hit. I’ve been there; I don’t care how “realistic” it is -it’s misery.

And it’s only going to more broken. As the tiers climb the cannons will evolve past Glass and into Glassteel, and the Martial type will be even less likely to correct that save-or-suck problem without help. And then there’s Ward of Shielding. Wow.

Edit 2: found my book! Oh. Guarded Attack only affects my Avoidance. Well, nevermind!

It’s also who gets caught.
Josh, sir Val’Sungha, Harvester of the Iowa, you know I build for character over efficiency. I have a baseline “must not be a drag on the team” expectation, but after that I’m the one who sees the new Claw Fighting feats in Ssthregore and thinks, “hey that could work!”

No it couldn’t.
It doesn’t.
It never does.

Ain’t a thing changed in that regard.
I’m a Dark-Kin! I have Wings and Horns and Natural Armor! It’s badass!
It’s also 95% friggin’ useless.

I really appreciate that Eric targets based on threat instead of likely hood of success, because that rarely makes me the biggest problem. And I Challenge stuff all the time, too!
(love me some Challenge! )
However when it’s “there’s enough Blind for everyone,” I’m hosed. I know everybody gets their time in the deep fat fryer, but how does it look to turn the whole experience into a county fair (terrible metaphor)? I’m easy to lock down and keep down, I didn’t roll a Caster, and I come with no direct countermeasures.

That said, lest there be any confusion, I did enjoy the mod. I almost always do. I think if I had to name an Arcanis mod I didn’t like, I probably couldn’t. I even liked Living Nishampur, and for 100% of the classes I like the entire idea was “kick you when you’re down, should have been a Wizard.”
Arcanis mods are like se- lasagna. I’ve had some that wasn’t great, but I’ve never had anything that was truly bad.
There are very few bad stories in gaming. There are however plenty of bad mechanics, and that’s a thing really critical to our odd hybrid of interactive drama and challenges.