It seems that now Ablative shield gets distributed to the Familiar as if it were a 5th minion. I think this is a good idea, because it really is a 5th minion.
In a 4 minion setup, total experience is divided up between the 4 minions normally--X/4 experience. In a single minion team all of that total experience goes to the one minion--(X) experience. If all the minions in a 4 minion team received X experience, it would be unfair, and basically everyone would have 4 minion teams just to keep up.
Now, as far as I know, the Familiar doesn't get factored in the experience gained. In other words a single minion with a Familiar gets X experience and the Familiar gets Y experience. Since we have moved to factoring in the Familiar in calculating AS, wouldn't it be logical to factoring it into everything, including experience gained.
I don't know if I'm making myself clear, but a Familiar is another minion and why wouldn't the experience calculate into that?
I guess my additional observation and conclusion is that a Familiar is gaining experience relatively greater in a multi-minion team compared to a single minion team, and I think this is basically unbalanced.
mchaos
July 15 2005 12:50 PM EDT
This has been brought up before, and someone (sorry can't remember who) said that the way to look at it is like this: Tattoos represent "free" xp, in that they don't take away xp from the minions on the team. The price of this xp is that you can't use a cloak or body armor on one minion, and, you don't get to choose how the xp is trained, Tattoos divide it up automatically.
If tattoos took a "share" of xp, there wouldn't be much of a point to them (except maybe the inigmatic TOE) since you'd be giving up the ability to wear armor without getting anything. You could add a minion and train it to be a FF etc., or you could create an enchanter to duplicate the effects of a TOA etc.
That still doesn't respond to the issue I raised in my second post. The new AS rule looks at Tattoos/Familiars as an additional minion--it really isn't balanced to not do that for everything.
And why should a 4 minion team's familiar grow as rapidly as a single minion team's familiar. There is unbalance there.
wow, it must be "I suck at math" day on CB
sure, we could easily treat tattoos as minions for the purposes of xp gained, but that would mean instead of gaining N xp, a 1T char's minion would gain N / 2
that wouldn't be more balanced, it would just be different
...and sucky, which is why it doesn't work that way.
Yes, but a 4T characters Familiar would gain N / 5. This would certainly be different, and may factor in the decision to add minions while utilizing a familiar.
Just a thought--I do appreciate the feedback :)
"being different" is a really lousy reason to suggest a change on CB.
as surprising as it may be to some, change months are so I can improve things, not just for the sake of making things different.
thread closed.
The point is... to make everyone with one minion and a tattoo have to cut their xp in half from here on out is ridiculous. I'm glad it's like this, especially because tattoo demand would plummet if jon changed it the way you suggest. No one would want to use a tattoo anymore, and the values would drop. Not to mention the growth of newbs after the tattoo change would drop dramatically as well. Cutting their XP is exactly the opposite of what Jon's trying to do. i.e. NUB.
