My stats are in the 100-200 range now and I automatically succeed on a lot of actions, even with stat lowering gear. Sometimes I want to fail in order to read the failure text in a story, particularly for exceptional stories where I can’t look for the failure text on the wiki.
What would be nice is a way of automatically failing an action, at least if it involves the four main stats. A poison you take to temporarily impair your performance or something like that. Or better yet, make it a piece of equipment so it can be used in areas where items aren’t useable. Like a unfortunate hat that curses all your actions.
You can get a Talkative Rattus-Faber for less than an echo at the Bazaar that lowers all your stats by 25. There are also Ridiculous Hats and Bottled Oblivions that permanently reduce your stats.
Yeah, I have a talkative rat but -25 stats starts to not matter on a lot of easier actions. And it would be nice to not permanently lower your stats every time you want to read a few bits of failure text.
Unfortunately, with the current card system, this would actually be super exploitable, specifically in the Cave of the Nadir, and potentially elsewhere as well.
It would have to also disable Second Chances, or you could spend a second chance and then auto-fail a card to delete it without gaining Irrigo.
That said, a lot of people like to create alts for that sort of thing. You could have a new character go out and fail at those things.
Perhaps fail-better could implement a new pet or article of clothing (perhaps even a set) for high level and maxed out characters that functions like the talkative fabber, but capable of dropping the players stats much lower when used in conjunction with one another.
I too would love this feature, I don’t think it’d be too exploitable either, there’s not many cards in the Nadir that can be discarded with the second chance trick, that and an increasing amount of second chances have to be spent to remove the same card again.
It used to be, that Bottled Oblivion was -5 to each stat, Ridiculous Hats -10, and the Talkative Rattus Faber only -5. I’d personally really like it if Bottled Oblivion and Ridiculous Hats became like Parabolan Kittens, negative stat modifiers and clickable, I’d love to see more dual purpose items like that.
Given that occasionally some storylets actually give better results on failure, I am guessing that they want to keep their options open on player success/failure - so no odd meta manipulation where the player get to pick whether they fail or not.
An end-game version of the Talkative Rattus Faber might be handy for some people occasionally, I suppose.
[quote=Estelle Knoht]Given that occasionally some storylets actually give better results on failure, I am guessing that they want to keep their options open on player success/failure - so no odd meta manipulation where the player get to pick whether they fail or not.
An end-game version of the Talkative Rattus Faber might be handy for some people occasionally, I suppose.[/quote]
Heck, even if it only worked during exceptional stories (and just when it’s not an exploit) that would be fine. You can read the failure text elsewhere, except on fate locked stuff.
I’m all for Talkative clothing for other slots. I’m certain something from Polythreme could scream loud and constantly enough to be properly made into boots/gloves/hats/etc.
It is worth noting that a lot of high efficiency options are locked or unlocked based on stat level (I know a lot of people complain about losing a super efficient suspicion reducer when their shadowy gets too high) so it would have to be very costly, but I’m always down for an expensive end game grind that yields a useful item.
I suppose there are much better ways to exploit the Nadir now, so that’s not really a reason to bar stat lowering items…
A negative mood option would be a surprisingly good addition to those cards, since at higher levels there aren’t many uses for moods. After SotC 21 and such there’s very little which needs them.
[quote=Ian Hart]Unfortunately, with the current card system, this would actually be super exploitable, specifically in the Cave of the Nadir, and potentially elsewhere as well.
It would have to also disable Second Chances, or you could spend a second chance and then auto-fail a card to delete it without gaining Irrigo.
[/quote]
That wouldn’t be perfectly exploitable as the cost of SCs spent goes up every failure that you opt out of retrying. You try that too much and the cost can become quite large. even those who have them capped would not last long spending 7+ per discard.
[quote=Vel Farre][quote=Ian Hart]Unfortunately, with the current card system, this would actually be super exploitable, specifically in the Cave of the Nadir, and potentially elsewhere as well.
It would have to also disable Second Chances, or you could spend a second chance and then auto-fail a card to delete it without gaining Irrigo.
[/quote]
That wouldn’t be perfectly exploitable as the cost of SCs spent goes up every failure that you opt out of retrying. You try that too much and the cost can become quite large. even those who have them capped would not last long spending 7+ per discard.[/quote]